CONFIDENCE GIRL

Hillary Brooke

CONFIDENCE GIRL (1952). Written and directed by Andrew L. Stone. 

Roger Kingsley (Tom Conway) is a supposed insurance investigator who is working with the police to bring down confidence woman Mary Webb (Hillary Brooke). In reality Mary is Kingsley's girlfriend and his helpmate in various crooked shenanigans. Kingsley has gone so far as to circulate a phony picture of Mary and to pass off the fingerprints of an unidentified dead woman as Mary's. Kingsley's latest scheme involves setting Mary up as a genuine psychic in the hopes that it will lead to lots of cash. But will the cops be fooled so easily? 

Tom Conway and Hillary Brooke

The cheaply-made Confidence Girl is more entertaining than it might seem at first, though one has to take it with a large grain of salt. Some of the tricks that Mary and Roger use to fleece people seem very genuine, but the business with the psychic is another matter. Doing her act in a nightclub, Mary is given tips about people in the audience from the parking attendant and the hat check girl. Reasonable so far. But then we learn that there's a whole group of people working upstairs with peepholes over every table and hidden mikes. How Roger hopes to make any money by employing over a dozen people to help Mary in her act is a question that's never answered. Mary tries to unveil a murderer at one point, and when she realizes that some people could be fleeced out of their life savings she develops a conscience. 

Confidence Girl begins well as Mary and Roger play their cons on a department store (for a mink coat) and on a pawnbroker who gets greedy when he thinks a cheap violin is worth thousands, but the business with the psychic and a man accused of murdering someone with poisoned liquor doesn't quite work. Andrew L. Stone went on to much better things, such as The Last Voyage and The Steel Trap. 

Verdict: Entertaining enough if minor-league. **1/4.