Smart Girls Don’t Talk ** (1948, Virginia Mayo, Bruce Bennett, Robert Hutton, Richard Rober, Tom D’Andrea, Helen Westcott, Richard Benedict, Ben Welden) – Classic Movie Review 13,721

Virginia Mayo stars as a socialite who gets mixed up with gambling club owner Bruce Bennett in the 1948 American crime drama film Smart Girls Don’t Talk.

Director Richard L Bare’s 1948 American crime drama film Smart Girls Don’t Talk stars Virginia Mayo, Bruce Bennett, Robert Hutton, Richard Rober, Tom D’Andrea, Helen Westcott, Richard Benedict, and Ben Welden.

Virginia Mayo stars as beautiful young socialite Linda Vickers, a debutante-turned-mobster’s moll who gets mixed up with gambling club owner Marty Fain (Bruce Bennett) and seedy gambler Nelson Clark (Ben Welden), and helps the cops to close down the local racketeer industry.

Released at the very height of gangster fever, this story of gangland power and destruction never strays far from the predictable and is rendered harmless by the high moral tone adopted by the heroine, presumably to please the Motion Picture Production Code, also more popularly known as the Hays Code.

Unimaginative casting of dependable actors makes the going smooth, but a bland performance by the strikingly beautiful Mayo in the lead adds nothing to the quality of the picture.

Will H Hays was president of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA) from 1922 to 1945.

The Sultan of Morocco said that seeing Mayo was ‘tangible proof of the existence of God’ but she was slightly cross-eyed and had to be carefully photographed. She was Paul Newman’s first on-screen leading lady, in the ghastly biblical epic The Silver Chalice (1954). Mayo was a lifelong Republican, endorsing Richard Nixon in 1968 and 1972, and her long-time friend Ronald Reagan in 1980.

Cast: Virginia Mayo, Bruce Bennett, Robert Hutton, Richard Rober, Tom D’Andrea, Helen Westcott, Richard Benedict, Ben Welden, Richard Walsh, Phyllis Coates, Creighton Hale, Harry Hayden, Bud Cokes, Eddie Foster, Edna Mae Harris, George Hoagland, Philo McCullough, Jack Mower, Ted Stanhope, Leo White.

© Derek Winnert 2025 – Classic Movie Review 13,721

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