... there was this prescient little piece that involved girls' professional baseball.
The whole thing starts when the sports reporter of a local paper, the creatively named Jimmy Jones (Charles Quigley), is sent out to interview girls standing in line applying for a modeling job at a photographer's studio for a human interest piece. The girl he strikes up a conversation with, Ann (Julie Bishop), doesn't get the job, so she decides to go back to playing girls' professional baseball, playing for a team sponsored by the local drugstore. The reporter thinks that the owner of the drugstore, Foy Harris, might be into something shady because he used to be a gangster. Jimmy's boss doesn't like the angle at first because the drugstore means big ad dollars to the paper. Jimmy's suspicion is heightened more when, while talking to Harris in his office, somebody opens the door and points a gun at Harris and doesn't kill him only because Jimmy knocks the gun from his hand. The would-be assassin then gets away. Jimmy tells Harris he'll keep the gun as a souvenir and begins to investigate.
What follows is an interesting tale involving a telegram that seems to be in code, the man who tried to kill Harris being found on a train dead by poison, and a cross-dressing criminal. The players are just average in their roles with one exception - a very young Rita Hayworth as a member of the girls' baseball team and Harris' girlfriend. She is a real stand-out in this Columbia B in both beauty and screen presence. But don't let the rather mediocre performances steer you away from this, as the pace is fast moving and the premise a unique one. Besides Hayworth, the minor role of the reporters' always insulting but somewhat admiring editor is well played and reminds me of the kind of roles that Walter Connolly would often play at the same studio (Columbia) during the 30s.
