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Thursday, October 26, 2017

NANCY DREW . . . REPORTER (1939)

Fun. Second of four Nancy Drew programmers from Warners’ ‘B-unit’ has Bonita Granville as an exhaustingly energetic, pint-sized teenage crime solver. (The influence of M-G-M’s Andy Hardy/Mickey Rooney series hard to miss.) This entry has Nancy conniving so lawyer dad John Litel (he's like the opposite of a helicopter parent) will work a hopeless murder case Nancy’s written up for the local press. But she’ll need exculpatory evidence to bring Pop around, so plays detective with three neighborhood pals: little Dickie Jones (who does a great Donald Duck*), young Mary Lee (with ‘swinging’ vocal chops) and boy-next-door Frankie Thomas (a ringer for FAMILY TIES’ Jonathan Taylor Thomas in looks & demeanor). These three pretty much steal the pic, especially Thomas who even faces the probable killer in a boxing ring. With decent production values and a solid storyline, delivered in pacey style by journeyman megger William Clemens & sharply lensed by Arthur Edeson, this is just what you hope for (and rarely get) from one of these little things. And that includes a spiffy DVD from Film Detective sourced from a near mint print.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Dickie Jones may have picked up a few Donald Duck vocal pointers over at Disney where he was recording the voice of PINOCCHIO/’40 at just about this time.

DOUBLE-BILL: Hard to separate Granville from her signature role as the terrifying lying school-girl in William Wyler’s THESE THREE/’36. A perf she never came close to matching.

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