Hillary Reads Minds

Having convinced a New York insurance firm to hire him, Roger Kingsley (Tom Conway) travels to Los Angeles and enlists the police department's help in trapping Confidence Girl (1952), Mary Webb (Hillary Brooke). Mary, he tells them, goes to high-end department stores and steals expensive furs. When the police consent to assist him in a sting operation, he waits with the store detective, Mr. Walsh (Roy Engel) for Mary to arrive and leave the store with a coat. However, it turns out that Roger is actually Mary's lover and accomplish - and he is trying to use police information to keep the larcenous pair one step ahead of being arrested.

This B movie crime drama is an interesting film, that with only a few exceptions keeps your attention throughout. The narration mimics the  Crime Does Not Pay series of shorts, with the LA Sheriff opening the film, and another narrative voice (supplied by Truman Bradley, NOT Robert Cummings as stated in the AFI Catalog) maintaining the "true crime" aspect of the film. Our major issue with the movie was that there is one too many cons going on - diffusing the effect of the major scheme - to set Mary Webb up as a psychic who will eventually be able to charge big bucks for her ability to read minds. With all these balls in the air, we wondered how Mary and Roger had time to engineer this complicated ruse.

Tom Conway is good as the suave investigator turned con man. Roger is a man who likes the action of the con - sure, the money is nice, but it's clear from Mr. Conway's performance that Roger's interest is in fleecing the mark. Mr. Conway looks a bit old to be romantically involved with the lovely Ms. Brooke; in actuality, there was only a ten-year age difference.  Mr. Conway's alcoholism, however, was unfortunately beginning to show on his face.  

Tom Conway changed his name after losing a coin toss with his brother, George Sanders (George Sanders, Zsa Zsa, and Me by David R. Slavitt). He assumed the role of the Falcon at his brother's suggestion (when Mr. Sanders was tired of the part); this gave his career the boost it needed. He's probably best remembered for that role, and for the part of Dr. Louis Judd in Cat People (1941). He worked in television and radio as well as films - in 1951, he assumed his brother's film role of The Saint in the radio show (The Saint.org). Married twice - both ended in divorce - his second marriage dissolved because of his drinking, which also caused his brother to cut ties.  By 1965, newspapers reported that he was destitute (New York Times). Immediately prior to his death of cirrhosis of the liver in 1967 at the age of 62, he'd been hospitalized. His former sister-in-law, Zsa Zsa Gabor visited and gave him money to tip the nurses (so he would have better care, she said); instead, Mr. Conway left the hospital, retreated to his girlfriend's apartment, where he died. 

Early in the film, Roger and Mary move into a house with a room designed for a child. Mary waxes poetic about her desire for a husband and children. Our immediate response was that the scene seemed out of place for the film - Mary is a thief, and it was odd to have her become momentarily sympathetic. However, Ms. Brooke is not playing a run-of-the-mill criminal. A failed violinist who is participating in the confidence racket to get enough money to live, Mary has a conscience - it's one thing to steal from a store, or bilk a man trying to cheat someone else. It's another to con simple people out of their life savings, or to ignore a potential act of violence. Ms. Brooke has shown before that she is able to make an unappealing character sympathetic (watch her as Beatrice Alexander in The Enchanted Cottage (1945).  You don't really LIKE Beatrice, but you can sympathize with her distress). She again manages to take a problematic character, and give her some heart.

Jack Kruschen (Sgt. Quinn) appears in a relatively small part as a police sergeant trying to find dirt on Mary's mind-reading act.  A staple on television from the 1950s through the 1990s, he was nominated for an Oscar for his role as Dr. Dreyfuss in The Apartment (1960).

While this is no means a perfect film, it is influenced by earlier crime films (TCM article) that give it a certain verisimilitude. A bit long at times (as we said, there really is one con too many), Confidence Girl is an entertaining film, and worth the 81 minutes you would spend with it.