A brief mention of Hi, Nellie!

TCM is running all the Glenda Farell Torchy Blane movies tonight in prime time. (I thought of using Torchy Runs for Mayor in last Thursday's TMP blogathon.) But before we get to see Farrell a that crusading lady reporter, there's an earlier movie with her as a reporter, Hi, Nellie! at 6:30 PM.

Farrell plays Gerry, who at the start of movie is writing the "advice for the lovelorn" column and wants to do serious journalism. She gets her chance when the editor (Paul Muni) won't run a piece on a banker accused of embezzlement, and the publisher demotes the editor to the lonely-hearts column. But he gets a letter that might just allow him to break the case open....

I mention the movie because it's a story that Warner Bros. wound up revisiting over and over. This was the first of four different movies of the same basic story that Warner Bros. made in the 30s and 40s, before TV took over and the studios weren't making B movies any more. The second version, Love Is on the Air, moved the story to radio, and if it's notable for anything it's that it's the movie debut of actor Ronald Reagan. (Reagan is as good as he is in his B movies, which means better than he generally gets credit for.)

In the 40s, there was You Can't Escape Forever, which TCM actually ran a few weeks back and which I thought I mentioned at the time for the same reason I bring up Hi, Nellie! today. George Brent must have done something after The Great Lie to tick off the studio bosses because he got put in this decided B movie. Finally, at the end of the 40s there's The House Across the Street which I don't think I've seen on the TCM schedule in quite some time. The first time I saw it my reaction was that this looks awfully familiar, and then I learned that it was a remake.

Hi, Nellie! was on one of those "Forbidden Hollywood" sets the Warner Archive put out a few years back, but it seems to be out of print.