That Brennan Girl
I'm Ziggy Brennan....there's a girl like me in every town!
Raised by Natalie Brennan, a flamboyant and irresponsible mother, Ziggy Brennan gets involved in hustling men at a young age. She hangs around with a wild crowd and learns gets her "street smarts" first from her mother, who wants everyone to think they are sisters, and then from Denny Reagan, an older man. He starts teaching her his tricks of the trade and she falls right in line with his crooked ways. Then one night she meets Martin J. 'Mart' Neilson, a tall, handsome, honest farmer boy who's a sailor and they fall in love. While he's away fighting the war, she discovers she's pregnant.
- Year: 1946
- Country: United States of America
- Genre: Drama, Romance
- Studio: Republic Pictures
- Keyword: mother, furniture, marriage, truck, promiscuity, disillusionment, custody
- Director: Alfred Santell
- Cast: James Dunn, Mona Freeman, William Marshall, June Duprez, Frank Jenks, Dorothy Vaughan
Hmmm. This film takes a pretty long time to depict the tribulations of the eponymous, pretty and shallow girl "Ziggy" (Mona Freeman) who lives with her floozy mother "Natalie" (June Duprez). This sets the scenario for the film: she's a bit of a chancer who lives her life fleecing gents and committing petty larceny. When she alights on "Denny" (James Dunn), they up their game and start to illicitly divert the furniture of people moving house - quite a lucrative trade, as it turns out. There is a little hope for the girl, though - she falls in love with a naval officer who is content to let her put her past behind her. Sadly, though, he heads off to war and is killed leaving her, quite literally, holding the baby. Nope, we are not yet done with the calamities the befall the girl. Now, she rather thoughtlessly goes on a date, leaving her newborn baby alone in her lodgings; the bairn falls from her cot, is rescued by a neighbour and the ensuing tribunal removes the child from the care of "Ziggy". What can she do? On a very wet night, she finds herself outside a church. In she goes, hoping to find some spiritual comfort and instead finds a baby abandoned on a pew - this is her Damascan moment, and you can easily guess the rest. There is an element of salvation, eventually, but otherwise this is really quite a dreary tale of a self-destructive character that engenders very little sympathy over a long 95 minutes. Freeman tries hard with the part, but she doesn't really click for me - a sort of poor man's Jean Simmons. Frank Jinks is quite engaging as the cabbie "Joe", perhaps the only one in the whole film with any semblance of decency, otherwise it's just an unremarkable melodrama.