Crime Does Not Pay #4: “A Thrill for Thelma” (11/23/35)

After a two-week hiatus from the blog, Crime Does Not Pay returns to Thrilling Days of Yesteryear…and I should probably issue this heads-up: this bedroom office desk chair of mine, being the most uncomfortable piece of furniture in the house, is going to be a major impediment in my making sure I crank one of these out a week.  It was so much nicer when the CDNP shorts were available on YouTube; for the tragic tale of how that was “nipped in the bud,” you’ll need to brush up via the presentation of the last short, Desert Death (1935).  Suffice it to say, the vacation I took from CDNP was essentially an engraved invitation for all the well-honed wits on Facebook to jockey for seats at the Algonquin Round Table with pithy observations like “Crime Does Not Pay…where Ivan’s concerned.”  Fortunately, I touched upon this week’s entry, A Thrill for Thelma (1935), in a blog post back in 2010…which means I’ll be able to recycle a few of the jokes.

After the Gang Busters-like opening credits, the MGM Reporter (William Tannen) invites us to pull up a chair at “Women’s State Prison,” and have a bit of a chinwag with “Warden Hannah Graves” and “Captain Richard Kyne.”  The (always reliable) IMDb does not identify the dour actress playing “Warden Hannah” (perhaps one of you character thespian experts could lend a hand in the comments) but the actor essaying the role of Kyne is Robert Warwick, a veteran performer whose films include The Little Colonel (1935), Romeo and Juliet (1936), and The Sea Hawk (1940).  Those of us with more of a comedic bent recognize Warwick from several Preston Sturges-directed pictures including The Lady Eve (1941) and Sullivan’s Travels (1941); as for myself, I remember Warwick best as the dipsomaniacal actor pal of Humphrey Bogart in In a Lonely Place (1950).

“There is your answer,” Graves replies to MGM Reporter Guy as she stares out the barred window at a line of female inmates, because he’s started in on his “crime does not pay” spiel as he’s required to do.

GRAVES: Those women are living out their hopeless, empty lives…because they tried to beat the law…

“Hopeless, empty lives?”  I’m going to take a stab in the dark here and guess that Warden Hannah is the last person they notify if a female prisoner is on Suicide Watch.  Graves singles out for Reporter Guy a “red-headed girl” who’s “a living example that crime doesn’t pay.”  Because Captain Kyne worked the case, the two of them get their tickets punched for Flashback City and recall two years ago that young Thelma Black (Irene Hervey) was graduating with her classmates at Debutante High School.  As they wait in line to receive their diplomas, one of Thelma’s fellow matriculates asks what her plans are after high school.  “I’m going to get a kick out of life while I’m still young enough to enjoy it,” she firmly declares.

Thelma is played by Irene Hervey, a 1930s ingenue who appeared in such classics as The Count of Monte Cristo (1934), Three Godfathers (1936), and Destry Rides Again (1939).  Hervey also graced a lot of programmers (San Francisco Docks [1940], Night Monster [1942]), and around the House of Yesteryear she’s remembered fondly as the heroine in the serial Gang Busters (1942) and as “Aunt Meg” on Anne Francis’ TV show Honey West.  As Thelma, she has been summoned by the jovial Warden Graves to her office “to tell her story.”

THELMA: After I graduated…I went to a school of beauty culture…and then I got a job in the Astor Salon…I made up my mind that I was going to get everything life could offer…I wanted money, clothes, luxuries…

A wealthy salon patron, reeking of high society, gives Thelma a tip because she’s humble and lovable.  (She does not bite down on it, because it is paper money.)  The scene shifts to a nightclub, where Thelma is enjoying the company of Steve Black, a handsome young swain portrayed by Bob Livingston.  Livingston began his film career in the silents in various bit parts and continued his extra work with the arrival of talkies.  He had a bit part in a previous Crime Does Not Pay short, Buried Loot (1935), but really didn’t become a big name until he moved to Republic Pictures…where he not only starred in such serials as The Vigilantes are Coming (1936) and The Lone Ranger Rides Again (1939), he played “Stony Brooke” in that studio’s popular Three Mesquiteers B-western series.  He later teamed up with Al “Fuzzy” St. John in PRC’s Lone Rider franchise, filled in for Gene Autry when Gene went off to “do his bit” in WW2, and finished his onscreen career with numerous character parts.

STEVE: Having a good time, honey?

THELMA: Oh, I’m thrilled…

STEVE (leaning in): Like me a little bit?

THELMA: Steve, I’m crazy about you…

I think it’s just the champagne talking.  As Steve lights Thelma’s cigarette, he glances over at a neighboring table to see another customer paying his bill with a ginormous bankroll.  Seeing that Bucky McBigBucks is leaving with his lady friend, Steve suggests to Thel that the two of them “go places” as well.  Soon, they’re tooling down a stretch of road with Thelma at the wheel as Steve gives her a kiss.

STEVE:  Say…there are a lot of parked cars along here…

THELMA: Yes…other people seem to have the same idea we have…

Hot monkey love!  Spotting the gentleman from the restaurant, Steve tells his lady love: “I’ve got a swell idea for a gag.”

STEVE: I’ll bet we could give a couple of those front-seat wrestlers a scare that would stunt their growth…you game for a big laugh?

Thelma, who has already been established as a gal looking for thrills, is ready to be dealt in and so Steve instructs her to pull over, whereupon he exits from the vehicle and walks back to the car where Rich Restaurant Guy is inspecting his girlfriend’s tonsils.  Brandishing a pistola and making sure he’s covered his face with a muffler, he relieves the gentleman of the weight of his wallet…and back in the car with Thelma, the two of them have a healthy chortle at Steve’s prank.

STEVE: You should have seen their faces…scared?  I thought the girl was going to fold up like a camp chair, and the fellow’s teeth were doing a castanet routine!

(Thelma laughs…and then she sees Steve counting the contents of the man’s billfold)

THELMA: But you’ve still got his wallet…

STEVE: Yes…so I have…

THELMA: Well…let’s take it back to him…

STEVE: Oh, I’ll send it to him by special delivery tomorrow…

“Oh…okay!”  Seriously—Thelma didn’t spend all that time at Debutante without learning a few things (I’ll spare you the details), and she calls bullsh*t on Steve by turning the steering wheel hard, intending to return to the scene of the crime.

STEVE: Hey—what do you think you’re doing?

THELMA: We’re going back!

STEVE: Oh, no we’re not—keep going!  Keep going!

The two of them struggle for control of the car, unaware that there’s an automobile approaching from the opposite direction.  The second car swerves to avoid Thelma and Steve, crashes through a fence and lands on its side…and then immediately catches fire.  Thelma faints at the wheel, so Steve takes control of the car…and a scene shift finds Thelma contemplating the foul, evil deed that she’s done.  After handing her a stiff belt to deal with her anguish, Steve elects to tune in a news broadcast…and that’s when they get the bad news…

RADIO ANNOUNCER: Police tonight are searching for the hit-and-run driver who crashed into a car on the High Line Road a few hours ago, causing the death of J.J. Willis, the driver, and gravely injuring his wife…police believe the hit-and-run car is the same which carried the bandit pair, a man and a red-headed woman in a tan coupe who held up a parked sedan on Willow Road shortly before the accident…

Sweet honey bee of infinity!  You’re in terrible, terrible trouble, Thel!  She rises from his chair and makes tracks for the door.

STEVE: Hey, you going someplace?

THELMA: Yes…to the police!  I’ll tell them how it was…I’ll tell them I didn’t mean…

STEVE: Sure, sure you will…but remember…you just killed a guy…you were driving the car at the time of the stickup, don’t forget that!

THELMA: Oh, Steve…what are we going to do?

STEVE: Well…we’ve got to get out of here as soon as we can…

THELMA: Okay, Steve…let’s go right away…

Now…had you or I happened to be in that same room with our budding Bonnie-and-Clyde, our advice to the impressionable young Thelma would surely have been “Don’t listen to Steve!”  But while you can learn many things at DHS (Debutante High School), good judgment is apparently not part of the college preparatory curriculum…

STEVE: Now listen, honey…I’m wild about you…I’m sorry I got you into this mess…but you and I are going to stick together…

THELMA: Steve, I’m afraid…

STEVE: Don’t worry…I won’t let you down…

Spoiler alert: he’s going to let her down.  Thelma even acknowledges this as we return to her confession in Warden Graves’ office (“That was my mistake”).  “I was frightened,” she says tearfully, “bewildered…I couldn’t think clearly…I realize now that what I should have done was go to the police to tell the truth…but instead I took the easiest way…”

Thelma continues her tragic tale of her quick descent into crime.  “Such an easy way to get everything I wanted out of life…luxury…money…excitement…”  A montage shows our heroine and her ne’er-do-well beau living the high life downing quarts of champagne—though in his defense, he does make an honest woman (well...kind of honest) and “put a ring on it”:

Okay, enough with the oohing and ahhing.  “Oh, I thought I was riding high,” Thelma narrates.  “Things I craved were coming my way…I wanted thrills and I was getting them.”  But not only is crime a dangerous gateway drug—there are certain side effects involved, so ask your doctor is Crime© is right for you.  As Thelma and Steve lounge in their luxurious flat, a newsboy hawks papers outside, informing potential customers that there was a victim who perished in the latest “bandit heist.”  “Well, I had to do it,” Steve explains as he receives the stink-eye from his girlfriend.  “He wouldn’t behave.”

THELMA: The police will get us for this!

STEVE: Oh yeah?  (Laughing) Not the way I operate, baby…don’t I use a different gun every time?  Don’t I use a different car every time?  Oh, come on, honey—no dumb cop is gonna get me…I’m too smart for ‘em!

Cocky will come back and bite you in the ass every time.  That’s…Burke’s Law.  “We thought we were smart,” laments Thelma, “but the police were smarter.”  At this point in the narrative, Thelma demurs to brainy Captain Kyne to explain just how the gendarmes brought an end to the “bandit heist” crime wave.

Truth be told, the cops didn’t have to be that much smarter than Steve.  They were already clued into the fact that different weapons were used in the holdups, and that the bandits relieved their victims of their transport during the robberies…with those cars later found abandoned.  With the help of his sidekick, John Hennessey (Pat O’Malley), Kyne interrogates the woman who was snogging with the murdered victim at the last holdup, and she fills in some much detail on how the robbery went down.

"I can't swear to it...but I think the hold-up man was Bela Lugosi!"

At the mention that they had just left the El Royale Club, Kyne and Hennessey swing into action.  You see, Steve the Brainiac has been operating his crime wave in an area that makes it devastatingly simple for the police to stick pins in maps…

…in fact, as the two men are going over their theory, there’s a notice over the station intercom that there’s been another stickup—near the 22 Club!  The solution to stopping Steve the Mastermind is to station cops—a lot of cops (what would be the proper nomenclature for that, I wonder—a pigpen of cops?)—in the various nightclubs in that area.  The police impersonate doormen, waiters, and patrons—and they’ve been told to keep an eye out for a red-headed dame (because a strand of Thelma’s ginger hair was found in one of the abandoned vehicles).  Finally, their persistence pays off; one night, a customer clearly in his cups whips out a fat wad of moolah and starts spreading it around to the waiters and a cigarette girl…that sort of behavior attracts Steve like flies to you-know-what.

The customer (an undercover cop) and his concubine (another cop) leave the nightclub and drive down the road some ways, noticing that Steve and Thelma are following.  As the two detectives pretend to do a little passionate necking, our couple drives by them…and then turn around in a clearing to go back the other way.  Steve is completely unaware that once he exits the car to rob his next victim, a pigpen of cops will gun him down like the mad-dog killer he is…

 …Thelma speeds off in a desperate attempt to escape the consequences for her pathetic thrill-seeking life…but as we know fully well by now, something something not pay.  Still, we should feel a little sympathy for Thel…a good girl who only decided to accelerate the acquisition of those shiny trinkets that our rotted-with-corruption capitalist system assures us we need to own.

KYNE: Thelma made a complete confession and was sentenced to twenty years…the best years of her life will be spent behind prison walls…

I’m sure she’ll make a lot of new friends.  And there’s a ping-pong table, they tell me.  But here comes Warden Laugh-a-Minute with the kicker:

GRAVES: The state saved Thelma’s child the stigma of being born in prison…but her greatest punishment will be throughout the years to come…Thelma will be denied seeing her child for twenty years…her trail of thrills has ended in the knowledge that her baby must never know that his mother is a convict…and that his father was a murderer slain by the law…

“Well, gotta run—there’s bread and water to be supervised!”  Next week: Hit-and-Run Driver (1935).  G’bye now!