Review of Smart Girl

There's scandal in the oil industry, and for two sisters (Ida Lupino and Gail Patrick), there's also scandal between them as Lupino is in love with Kent Taylor, the man Patrick seems to have stolen from her and married! But the materialistic Patrick is soon seeing another man on the side, and with the help of her hat manufacturer employer (Joseph Cawthorn), Lupino manages to get involved in big business, culminating in a fraudulent oil scheme that somehow connects brother-in-law Taylor and her sister's secret boyfriend (Sidney Blackmer). It's a convoluted plot with a messy script, some truly forced comedy (Cawthorn's cackle is nerve wracking), and a plot that goes into so many directions that even Google maps couldn't locate it. Lupino and Patrick are both good actresses but they deserve better than playing sisters who seem not only complete opposites but strangers as well. They pretend through their decent acting to know that they are sisters, but that is never quite believable. Pinky Tomlin, a comic actor I can take or leave, is harmless but annoying still, as Cawthorn's son, and Greta Meyer, as the matriarch of that family, seems to treat both husband and son as if they were still little children. Lupino, not looking anything like she would once settled in films as a femme fatale, does prove herself to be a smart girl, but it is too bad that she just didn't have a better film in which to be a genius.