The best Joan Marsh’s crime movies

When misfortune hits hard on the Jordan family of Chicago's upper class, Bonnie Jordan, a dazzling and witty girl, finds a job as an aspiring reporter; however, his naive younger brother Rodney takes a twisted path and gets involved with the wrong people.

A gang of tough street kids decide to go straight and get jobs in order to free draft-age men for the war effort. However, because of their past tangles with the law, they can't find anybody who'll hire them. Finally one of them gets a job at the department store where his sister works, but runs afoul of a store executive who is in league with a ring of hijackers.

Returning from European exile where she avoided testifying against her criminal associates, a former singer with a tell-all diary is murdered to insure her silence.

WBLA is on the air, presenting the live music, the sudsy dramas and the sell-sell-sell of commercial interludes that keep consumers buying and sponsors smiling. But one sponsor, a producer of plumbing supplies, isn’t happy. So WBLA scriptwriter Bill Grimes is bounced from his job, setting in motion this movie’s turn from comedic to darkly tragic. William Haines, two years removed from being Tinseltown’s top male star, plays Grimes in a melodrama noted for its glimpses of live radio production and for a Depression-era ethos that includes peroxide cuties eager to land a job, a sugar daddy or both.

Muggs and Glimpy, two East Side Kids in the army, return to their neighborhood, supposedly on furlough; actually, Muggs has been honorably discharged with a physical defect, but he tells no one of this. Danny, another East Side kid, is in jail because a large amount of medical supplies have been stolen from the warehouse where he works. Muggs see Spider, a new member of the gang, flashing a large amount of money around, and Muggs shrewdly turns toughie, boasting that he has a dishonorable discharge because of thievery. This leads Spider to confide in Muggs that he is the one who has been aiding in the theft of supplies from the warehouse, and he gets paid for the loot by Larry, operator of a nightclub where Muggs' sister, Milly, is an entertainer. Fingers, a henchman for Larry, kills Spider when he learns that Muggs has been let in on the operation. The police then suspect Muggs of killing Spider.

A widow's decision to run for mayor kicks off a battle of the sexes in a small town.