The Affairs of Jimmy Valentine (1942)

I might have raided The Affairs Of Jimmy Valentine a bit higher on the scale had it not had about a third of the film gutted for television. Watching this you have to fill in too many blank spaces.

There's a radio contest where Dennis O'Keefe is accepting the challenge of Gloria Dickson to find the infamous Jimmy Valentine, safecracker of the gaslight era who disappeared after doing his bit for burglary in the TR-Taft years of the 20th century. $10,000.00 is at stake for O'Keefe as he arrives at a small midwestern town where not too terribly much has happened, only thanks to the contest the eyes of the nation are on this place where Jimmy Valentine was last heard from.

O'Keefe meets lots of resistance especially from city editor Roman Bohnen although he gets an admirer in Bohnen's daughter Ruth Terry. But a couple of murders are committed in the search for the legendary safecracker with the sandpaper fingers or that's how the famous Gus Edwards song goes.

Suspense is let right out of the bag when we find out right away who did those murders. Still The Affairs Of Jimmy Valentine is a pleasant enough film with a cast of familiar character players from the studio era of Hollywood.

Though why I didn't hear the Edwards song is a mystery.