Starring Glenda Farrell as Torchy Blane, a fast-talking wisecracking female reporter, teaming up with her boyfriend detective Steve McBride, to solve the killing of an investor who just bought a popular local nightclub.

In 1936, Warner Bros. began to develop an adaptation of the MacBride and Kennedy stories by detective novelist Frederick Nebel.

For the film version, Kennedy was changed to a woman named "Torchy" Blane and became the love interest of the cop.

Glenda Farrell had already played newspaper reporters in earlier Warner Bros. films Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933) and Hi, Nellie!

The film was based on Nebel's short story "No Hard Feelings" published in the Black Mask magazine.

[4] Warner Archive released a boxed set DVD collection featuring all nine Torchy Blane films on March 29, 2011.

[5] Frank S. Nugent of The New York Times writes: "In Smart Blonde, in which Glenda Farrell imitates a reporter and Barton MacLane libels the homicide squad, we have a murder mystery solved by an endless succession of door-openings and shuttings, taxi-hailings, jumping in and out of automobiles, and riding up and down in elevators.

Mr. Shaw's pet antipathies are present, too, as well as one shot of Miss Farrell swinging aboard a moving train.

For all this activity the film is a static and listless little piece which never made us at all curious about the killer of Tiny Torgensen, night club operator, and Chuck Cannon, who had been Suspect No.