Smart Girls Don't Talk

Plot synopsis:
When small-time hood Johnny Warjack and his gang hold up the Club Bermuda, a nightclub/gambling den, he is recognized. Club owner Marty Fain (Bruce Bennett) orders his men to deal with Warjack and offers to make good his patrons' losses. Socialite Linda Vickers (Virginia Mayo) and gambler Nelson Clark (Ben Welden) both try to take advantage of Fain's generosity. He does not believe either of them. Nonetheless, Fain deducts Clark's claimed $10,000 loss from his outstanding debts, but then demands the remaining $13,000 be paid within a week.
As for Vickers' $18,000 of stolen jewelry, she claims to have an insurance policy for that amount. Fain insists on seeing it, so they head for her apartment. The nightclub attendant says her car is parked far away, so Fain drives the woman home in his car. At her apartment, Vickers admits she lied. Fain is not surprised, having read of her financial troubles in the newspaper. They begin seeing each other.
The next morning, Vickers is awoken by police Lieutenant McReady (Richard Rober). Warjack was found murdered, and her car was spotted at the scene. Vickers has an alibi and sees no reason to divulge her suspicions. When she tells Fain of McReady's visit and mentions her excellent memory, Fain writes her a check for $18,000. She later returns it uncashed and breaks up with him.
Her brother, "Doc" (Robert Hutton), arrives in the city to take up a new medical job. He does not approve of his sister's boyfriend, though he does not mind being introduced by Fain to Toni Peters (Helen Westcott), the club's singer.
When Fain's men return empty-handed from trying to collect from Clark, he takes matters into his own hands. He sneaks into Clark's building and kills him, but is shot and seriously wounded himself. He manages to return to the nightclub before falling unconscious. One of his men spots Doc in the club and gets him to take care of the wound. However, when Doc refuses to accept a large bribe to keep him from reporting it to the police, Fain sends his hoodlums to persuade him to change his mind. When Doc tries to run, one of them shoots him.
Vickers takes the news of her brother's murder hard. She agrees to help McReady try to incriminate Fain. Fain is suspicious when she asks him to take her back, especially since it is so soon after Doc's murder. When they are in her apartment, he finds a hidden tape recorder and turns it off. He then confesses he killed Clark, but that his gunman murdered Doc against his orders. Unbeknownst to him, there is also a hidden microphone, and the police are waiting when they emerge from the apartment. Fain is ready to give up, but Doc's killer uses Vickers as a shield. Fain struggles with him, and both men are killed by the police.

Tags: murder

Review:
decent.
Virginia Mayo stars with Bruce Bennett in "Smart Girls Don't Talk," a 1948 noir courtesy of Warner Brothers.Mayo plays Linda Vickers, who is caught in a robbery at a gambling casino owned by Marty Fain (Bennett).
At one time, she had money; now she bounces checks.
Fain doesn't want the police involved, so he asks his thugs to pay the criminal a visit and offers to pay back the customers for what they lost in the robbery.
Vickers comes in with a tall story about losing $18000 in jewelry, and Fain demands to see the insurance policy.
They go to her apartment in Fain's car and he says hers will be returned to her in the morning.
At Linda's place (of course he knew she didn't have any policy) they have a drink...fade out.
The next day the police arrive, and she finds out her car was used in a murder.
The murdered man is the one who robbed the casino.
Vickers makes some not so subtle hints about blackmail.Linda's surgeon brother, 'Doc' (Robert Hutton) arrives and doesn't like Fain or the fact that his sister is involved with him.
The plot thickens and soon, Doc becomes involved in some bad business.Pretty good but not fabulous either in story or acting.
The main actors are all likable, though.
Mayo was very attractive with a terrific figure, and she did well in these noirs.
Robert Hutton in looks has always reminded me of Jimmy Stewart.
Bennett was always straightforward in his delivery with little variation.
Nevertheless, he was certainly a remarkable man, an Olympic Silver medal winner in shotput under his real name, Herman Brix, went onto a career in films and lived to be 100.If you are a fan of noirs, as I am, see this and enjoy it..
Mayo's winning as good-bad girl in well-plotted '40s crime drama.
The one with the brains in Smart Girls Don't Talk is Virginia Mayo, a good-bad girl a little down on her luck who's open to some fudging when it comes to a buck.
So when she's gambling in Bruce Bennett's Club Bermuda the night it's knocked over, she claims her paste ear-bobs were real diamonds.
Bennett, eager to cover his clients' losses so the police don't come snooping around, sees through her ruse but falls for her anyway.
(He drives her off to a ritzy roadhouse where they feast on châteaubriand - and after-dinner martinis.)When her kid brother (Robert Hutton), just appointed to the surgical staff of a New York hospital, hits town, he meets the club's canary (Helen Westcott, who treats us to `The Stars Will Remember' - twice).
But he disapproves of the company Mayo keeps.
Deep down, so does she, and breaks off her affair with the casino boss.
In a foul temper, Bennett kills a welsher in trying to recoup a bad debt, but takes a bullet himself.
He staggers back to his club where Hutton is romancing Westcott; the surgeon is press-ganged into patching Bennett up.
Rebuffing a payoff, Hutton raises fears that he, too, will turn canary, and one of Bennett's trigger-happy goons shoots him down.
At first, Mayo refuses to believe that Bennett could be involved in the murder.
Police detective Richard Rober (`I'm a policeman - I'm paid to have suspicions') tries to change her mind, and the wheels begin to turn....Smart Girls Don't Talk is a brisk, big-town story with serviceable work from Mayo, Bennett, Rober and Tom D'Andrea (as Bennett's 2iC).
Its director, Richard Bare, would work with Mayo again the next year in Flaxy Martin, where she played a duplicitous blonde (of course, she always played a blonde).
She fares better here.
Mayo lacked the tense skills necessary to project a believable femme fatale, but was quite appealing as a basically decent woman who's been around the block.
That's what made her so smart..
Should Have Been Better.
This is one of those movies that ought to be good, but isn't.
Probably because the dictates of plot require characters to change their stripes every 10 minutes, so that by the time we reached plot twist number 20, the willing suspension of disbelief is gone.Too bad, too, because the setup is a good one, and star Virginia Mayo is a babe of the first order.
Is Virginia Mayo a selfish wench that does not care that she is dating a gangster who casually orders his enemies killed?
Or is she just clueless, because the gangster has been to the right schools, and does romantic banter in the best old movie tradition?
Who knows?
The tension could have been interesting, but the melodrama of the plot requires that those questions be dumped, as the well-educated, successful gangster makes some really stupid business management decisions, and new characters show up, act foolishly, and kick the plot in predictable directions.
But hang on until the absolute end of the movie to see perhaps the most inappropriate romantic gesture EVER..
A Paint-By-the-Numbers Noir.
This isn't bad but it has a false ring.
Virginia Mayo is OK.
At the start we hear about her being from a high society family with no money left to back that up.
This gets lost.She gets involved in a gambling house raid.
The proprietor kind of likes her and also sees her as someone he could use.
Enter her brother, the honest "Doc," just out of medical school.
He sets her straight about the bad guys but they kill him.The settings are believable -- clubs, apartments, streets.
But it has no sense of reality.
It's very formulaic.The lower budget studios like PRC and Republic -- where have those all gone?
They used to appear on local TV regularly -- did noir well.
And surprisingly, MGM did it very well too.
Warner Bothers, which released this, had some very good ones but they were of a distinct kind.
They were about detectives often, though "Nora Prentice" has the same leading man and is head and shoulders above this.In sum, it moves along but it doesn't really work..
Virginia Mayo & Robert Hutton HELD Picture UP.
Always enjoyed most of the pictures that Virginia Mayo has performed in and also Robert Hutton.
In this picture, Virginia Mayo plays (Linda Vickers),"The Girl From Jones Beach",'49, where she has trouble trying to be a good girl and at the same time likes being bad and having a ball drinking and gambling with Bruce Bennett(Marty Fain),"Mystery Street",'50, who is up to his neck in trouble and winds up getting shot with a gun.
They seem to trace the bullet with old fashioned 1948 methods, nothing like CSI today.
Robert Hutton,(Doc Vickers),"The Secret Door",'64 tries to help his sister, Linda get on the straight and narrow path while she gets herself in deeper and deeper problems.
They use a Wire recorder to try and get evidence against the killer and everybody seems to all fall down a staircase together.
If it was not for Virginia Mayo and Robert Hutton, this picture would be long FORGOTTEN!.
Film Noir Lite.
Broke socialite Virginia Mayo gets involved with nightclub operator Bruce Bennett who has mob ties and ends up involved in three murders.
It all starts when the nightclub she is at is robbed, and the murder is traced to her car.
Two other murders follow while Mayo gets deeper in with Bennett until she decides to find the evidence to trap him.
This is one of the gangster films that has a few touches of film noir (particularly its title), but not a lot.
Mayo is serviceable as the socialite, while Bennett is a credible gangster with many levels to his character.
It's all rather ordinary, however, with a few neat twists and turns, but not enough to make it stand out.
An interesting element is the lack of familiar character actor names, rare for a Warner Brothers movie of the late 40's..
A disappointing movie!.
It's a bit sad to find such a fine cast in this rather labored and disappointing feature from Warner Brothers.
Admittedly, Ted McCord's noirish photography is right on the ball, but Richard Bare's direction is just that - bare!
Bare had excellent credentials.
In college, he majored in drama and cinematography.
He produced and directed "The Oval Portrait" which won the Paul Muni Award for the best college film of the year.
Normally, Bare worked in Warner's shorts division and it's unusual to find him directing a feature.
I particularly like his work on the Joe McDoakes series of shorts.
Bare also seemed to be top of the list when another Hollywood studio needed to borrow a director.
Bare was lent to Hal Roach Studios to produce and direct the "So This Is Hollywood" TV series; and to Republic for "Gangbusters" and "Joe Palooka".
For his home studio, he produced and directed the "Cheyenne" TV series.