Fly Away Baby (1937)

Awesome Movie

Absolutely Fantastic

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

Second in this entertaining series sees Torchy taking to the air by plane and zeppelin in order to catch a murderer. One of the better Torchy Blane movies. Glenda Farrell as Torchy and Barton MacLane as her boyfriend Steve the cop are both pitch perfect. Fun support from Tom Kennedy and Hugh O'Connell. The cast is good and the runtime is brief so things move along pretty quickly. Perhaps there's not a lot of meat on the bone with movies like this but they sure are enjoyable.

Fly Away Baby (1937) ** 1/2 (out of 4) The second in the series has Torchy Blane (Glenda Farrell) and her boyfriend Steve McBride (Barton MacLane) trying to solve some smuggling as well as a murder and the two end up flying across the world trying to catch the killer. FLY AWAY BABY is certainly a step up from the previous film as the story is a lot stronger, the characters more fun and we even get some nice support this time around. One thing that would have made the film even better is if it had been filmed with any sort of budget because one of the big things in the story is that it takes place in various locations throughout the world. These cities are just seen inside hotel rooms and other locations because they obviously didn't have the money to film at these places. In their place is a bunch of stock footage, which obviously makes the film look somewhat cheap but outside of this the story is pretty good. I thought both Farrell and MacLane were even better here than they were in the first and it seems that the two of them really worked on their chemistry. The duo come across here as a lot of fun and they certainly help carry the story with their charm. Gordon Oliver and Hugh O'Connell also add some value in their supporting roles. The film certainly doesn't become a classic and it's far from perfect but I think fans of the genre or fans of Farrell should at least have a good time with it.

The second Torchy Blane film is relatively short on mystery (there are only 2 real suspects for the crime, which in this case is the murder - and diamond robbery - of a jeweller), but for a "B" production "Fly Away Baby" does a pretty amazing job (through special effects, title cards, and stock footage) of simulating a plane (and zeppelin!) trip around the world. However, at the risk of sounding stupid, I don't understand why this trip is being promoted as a "race" in the movie - the supposed contestants are all traveling together and they don't seem to be competing against each other in any way. Anyway, Farrell and MacLane are fun as Torchy and Steve, and Tom Kennedy gets an expanded role as the poetry-loving and none-too-bright cop Gahagan, who wants to "retire" and start a new career as a private detective! **1/2 out of 4.

Its rather amazing that this series isn't more widely seen.Superficially, they are B movies and at the cheapy end. They have incredibly uninteresting stories, stuff about the mob.But they're really impressive in a way. I guess it doesn't register today, but these were either important in their day or if you wish reflected something important.For non-US readers, you have to know that women couldn't vote until very late in the history of the US. Blacks first, then women. The time of this movie is five times further away from us than it is from the first national election where women voted.A woman could be a wife, a nurse, teacher, secretary, whore.Or, in movies if she was bright, a newspaper reporter. You have to understand also that the thirties was a period of great experimenting in narrative folding: stories that in some way included the making of stories. One common fold was the newspaper guy who "got the story" just as we are. He was our avatar, our representative in the thing.These experiments from the thirties played with different notions of storygetter, some comic, some inverted.So here you have a bright woman reporter. Feisty. Pretty. She's engaged to an "official" detective, a cop. But she keeps missing the wedding because she goes off chasing the story.Together, they get the crook and solve the case, but always with her in the lead. He protects and she loves him, the "big lug." Though this is black and white, the audience would know (from posters, fan magazines and her name) that she is redheaded.It was a long-lasting sequence of movies, as many as, say, the Charlie Chan ones and with far more than the celebrated "Thin Man." So I invite you to watch this — or any of the series. She's an icon that's all the more fascinating because it has ceased having power. Now that's interesting.Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.