OFF THE RECORD. Warner Brothers, 1939. Pat O’Brien, Joan Blondell, Bobby Jordan, Alan Baxter, Morgan Conway. Director: James Flood.

   Joan Blondell plays a reporter (Jane Morgan) in this movie, and so does Pat O’Brien, but he’s the kind of guy (named “Breezy”) who thinks women should stay at home and be married (in this case to him) rather than have a career, especially writing for the same newspaper.

   To show him, Jane finds a story on her own – successfully, too, as it produces several headlines and puts a punk hoodlum into prison and his young brother (Bobby Jordan) into reform school. The big boss, though, as big bosses have a way of doing, manages to stay on the outside.

   Feeling guilty about the boy in reform school, Jane persuades Breezy to adopt young Mickey. And of course to do that, they also have to get married, although Breezy is the last to know that’s the reason — and the first to object when he finds out.

   The first third of this 60-minute movie is in the same dark and gritty mode as many of the Warner Brothers gangster films being made around the same time, and so are the last 15 minutes or so. In between, if it’s not a comedy — young Mickey definitely does not want to be adopted – it is considerably lighter in fare than the rest of the film.

   Bobby Jordan made a career out of playing pseudo-delinquents and young toughs on the fringes of the law, including long stints with the Dead End Kids, East Side Kids and the Bowery Boys. In this one, at the age of only sixteen himself, he reminded me of none other than a young Lloyd Nolan, often wearing a felt hat, necktie and a suit jacket that looks a size or two too large for him and trying to look as grown-up as he could.

   But to my mind, Off the Record is Joan Blondell’s picture. She uses this film to show off her fine ability as a straight actress as well as a flair for wisecracking comedy. Although she’s largely forgotten today, both of these talents stood her well over a long career in movies and TV, which extended from her debut in 1930 to her death in 1979 at the age of 73.