EXPOSED (1947)

This film attests to the low-budget efforts of director George Blair for Republic Pictures. Royal Cole and Charles Moran wrote the tedious, confusing screenplay with an innocuous score by the future’s more important, Ernest Gold. There is little need to share details about the plot that concerns an heir to the family fortune, a deceased wealthy businessman, and—no one anticipated this—a possible cure for alcoholism. This routine fifty-nine-minute film involves a number of intertwined characters where an extra ten minutes might have helped clarify them better. The deflated ending makes a stab at doing so. Still, one may need to rewind. The film might give the sense this is just one in a string of films about a father-daughter crime team. Except this film was one and done.

The spirited twenty-three-year-old Adele Mara brightens up the screen and is about the only reason to make the film. Mara was perhaps the best composite of another Adele (Jergens) and Audrey Totter. The captivating opening is a good start. She appears to be in jeopardy right from the start while seated in her favorite restaurant. Bob “Chicago” Steele approaches her table, removes his hat, sits down. Not in the least bit intimidated, she coolly asks him to take his hat off the table because she is allergic to dandruff. The hat hides a gun. He escorts her from the restaurant only to be met by the extra-large William Haade, Mara’s bodyguard and aide. The duo shut down Steele’s plan and they motor off. The self-confident beauty is a sassy private investigator in a man’s world. The early scenes establish her character as a savvy woman in total control of all things crime. There are a number of quips for Mara to deliver.

You have seen these father-daughter battles before. Armstrong tries to reign in his daughter for her own safety and lack of experience handling danger. She thinks dad is old-fashioned. Still, they provide the only energy in this film, as faint as it is. Well, there is a rousing choreographed fistfight between tall Haade and short Steele of western stunt film fame. Ironically, the distant shots using stunt doubles. Mara is an adept pickpocket as well. While hugging dear old dad, she lifts his badge from the side pocket of his suit which gets her access to places off-limits to ordinary citizens. Armstrong castigates her for impersonating an officer with serious jail time being a possible outcome. Recognizing it is his own badge, he hits the proverbial ceiling. Yet the two pool their resources and round up the rest of the cast like so many Agatha Christie films. Everyone gathers—minus the deceased—in one room for the finalé and to expose each one’s motive during the mystery.

Note: Adele Mara, born Adelaide Delgado, churned out film-after-forgettable-film in the Forties. In a Hollywood full of petite, pretty blondes cast in low-budget films, Mara’s career simply ran out of steam. She turned to television by the mid-Fifties. She is the older sister of television’s Luis Delgado, a regular on The Rockford Files and Garner’s on-set personal aide for many years. Fortuitous in that Mara would marry Roy Huggins in 1952, the man responsible for the Rockford character.