Saturday, July 21, 2018

'Fly Away Baby' is a fun mystery

Fly Away Baby (1937)
Starring: Glenda Farrell, Barton McLane, Gordon Oliver, Raymond Hatton, Tom Kennedy, and Marcia Ralston
Director: Frank McDonald
Rating: Seven of Ten Stars

In order to unravel the mysteries surrounding the murder of a jeweler, scoop-hunting reporter Torchy Blane (Farrell) joins two other reporters (Hatton and Olivier) for on-the-spot coverage of an around-the-world-record flight attempt. The other reporters are keeping secrets... but is one of them a killer?


"Fly Away Baby" is the second film in the "Torchy Blane" series, and like the first one, it clocks in at about an hour... and it makes good use of every second of running time, with a tightly delivered story, a lively cast delivering sharp and witty dialogue, and nice cinematography and sets that make the film look like it has a bigger budget than it did.

The relationship between Torchy (Glenda Farrell) and her police detective boyfriend Steve (Barton McLane) is again a nice center to the picture. It's also nice to see recurring supporting characters get some meaty scenes, like Tom Kennedy's dimwitted cop (who quits his job for reasons that become clear when he, too, shows up as part of the junket following the around-the-world flight).

The only serious complaint I have about the film is that it takes too long to get the characters in the air and overseas, and then doesn't spend enough time along the way. As a result, the climax feels a bit rushed and a lot deus-ex-machina with a heavy dose of "characters gotta do stupid things, or the story won't resolve in time" or the story won't resolve it time. This may sound like a bit of a contradiction to my comment above about the film making good use of its run-time, but it basically does: There is't a second of padding here and the clumsy plotting doesn't actually make the film any less entertaining. It does knock it from an Eight Rating to a low Seven.

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