Headline Crasher

If this film had been made over at MGM this might have been a Hardy family feature. Frankie Darro is doing his best Mickey Rooney imitation and all we would have to do is make Richard Tucker a judge like Judge Hardy who was running for United States Senator and we would have Lewis Stone.

The resemblance between Headline Crashers and a feature with the Hardy Family from Carvel is substituting Muriel Evans for the judge's secretary and Cecilia Parker could fit in nicely. And of course the film would benefit from the filet mignon of the MGM production values versus the hog's liver values of poverty row Conn films.

Frankie Darro is being mercilessly conned by people who are trying to get dirt on him to ruin his father's chances for re-election. At the same time bank robber John Merton is out of jail and he wants to settle with Tucker for putting him there as a prosecutor. The two plot elements collide at Tucker's vacation lodge.

There's also a nice part for Eleanor Stewart, Merton's moll who is the one who gets Darro's hormones raging which starts everything in the first place. She'd fit perfectly in a Hardy film tempting young Andy.

The film had possibilities, at a big studio this would have been something more.