Torchy Blane.. Playing with Dynamite 1939

Torchy Blane, Jane Wyman, is a sharp-eyed reporter who covers a bank robbery—the latest in a string of crimes attributed to Denver Eddie Eddie Marr. On her way back to the newspaper, she’s pulled over for speeding, and because she doesn’t have her driver’s license, the officer takes her to court. In the courtroom, she meets Jackie McGuire, Sheila Bromley, the girlfriend of Denver Eddie, who is jailed for shoplifting. After Torchy’s boyfriend, Lt. Steve McBride, identifies her, she is released. Yet she soon insists that Steve help put her back in jail, realizing that Jackie is tied to Eddie and could be the key to a lead.

Torchy schemes to get herself thrown into jail so she can befriend Jackie and press for information about Eddie. The plan doesn’t click at first, but when a fellow prisoner tries to stab Jackie, Torchy’s intervention helps subdue the threat. Jackie suggests an escape, and Steve agrees to cooperate once Torchy reveals that the reward money for Eddie’s capture could finance their marriage. With the tacit help of Steve and the police, Torchy and Jackie slip out of custody and head for San Francisco, where Jackie is due to meet her boyfriend.

What follows is a careful chase. Steve and his assistant, Gahagan, track the fugitives, while Steve hopes to trap Denver Eddie and claim a $5,000 reward to secure a home for himself and Torchy. He chooses not to alert local police to Eddie’s impending arrival, a choice that raises suspicion among the authorities who wonder if Steve and Gahagan themselves are criminals. Jim Simmons, a San Francisco policeman, tails the pair, but Steve manages to persuade him that Gahagan is merely a wrestler and that Steve is his manager.

Meanwhile, Torchy signals Steve by hanging stockings on the fire escape, a signal that complicates the tense dynamic between escapee and pursuer. Gahagan spots Jackie hanging the stockings to dry, and the room is suddenly crowded as they discover Eddie has not yet arrived. Torchy quickly fabricates a cover story to explain their presence, maintaining the ruse under pressure.

When Eddie finally arrives, one of his lieutenants recognizes Steve as a cop but pretends that Steve is another criminal, throwing the plan into added confusion. Steve proposes that Eddie join him in a wrestling-stadium robbery, and Eddie agrees—yet he also arranges for his men to abduct Steve on the way there, deepening the peril.

At the wrestling arena, a reporter pieces together Torchy’s true identity, threatening to expose her. In the chaos that follows, Steve races to the arena where Gahagan, masquerading as a wrestler named Harry the Horse, is tossed from the ring and lands squarely on Eddie as he attempts to escape. The shrewd intersection of distraction and timely action pays off: Steve and Gahagan are credited with the arrest, and Torchy and Steve finally win the chance to marry, bolstered by the reward money and the successful capture of Denver Eddie.