It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

Director: WILLIAM C. McGANN. Screenplay: Crane Wilbur. Photography: Arthur L. Todd. Film editor: Frederick Richards. Art director: Hugh Reticker. Costumes designed by Howard Shoup. Music: Howard Jackson. Dialogue director: Harry Seymour. Sound recording: Leslie G. Hewitt. Producer: Bryan Foy.Copyright 3 August 1938 by Warner Brothers Pictures, Inc. A Warner Brothers-First National Picture. New York opening at the Criterion: 19 October 1938. U.S. release: 22 October 1938. 7 reels. 63 minutes.SYNOPSIS: Innocent girl becomes involved in a bank robbery.COMMENT: Early film of Susan Hayward (not her first, however, that was Hollywood Hotel) proves of more than passing interest even to non-Hayward fans. (She has two great scenes, looks terrific, and is her usual fiery, argumentative self). The lead role (despite the billing in the ads for the 1956 re-release) is most skilfully and very sympathetically rendered by Jane Bryan, with an able assist from Sheila Bromley as the no-good Hilda. Ronald Reagan comes over ably enough, though he disappears from the action for long spells and his role is really no more than a support for the Bryan-Bromley plot. Some fine character studies are provided by Rumann (a believable tyrant) and Risdon (her farewell scene at the bus staion is quite touching), Dale and Peterson. McGann has directed with plenty of pace and verve. All told, a fast-movingly suspenseful 63 minutes.

. . . Hilda Engstrom says with her dying breath to a random priest happening by her shot-up corpse-in-ten-seconds, as President Reagan beams approvingly nearby. GIRLS ON PROBATION is another one of Warner Bros.' always prophetic warnings to Americans of the usually far (and often further) future about their upcoming Calamities, Catastrophes, Cataclysms, and Apocalypti. "Hilda" is standing in for Nancy Davis during GIRLS ON PROBATION. Some viewers may mistake Hilda's gun-toting bank robber lover for John Hinckley, but closer examination reveals him to be Reagan's future "loose cannon" rogue operator Oliver North of Iran/Contra infamy. Like Ollie, "Tony" is a serial Evil-Doer. Instead of sending Tom Cruise flying around supplying rifles to Contras (see AMERICAN MADE), Tony arms his fellow prisoners at the state pen with rifles and shotguns during GIRLS ON PROBATION. Just as actress Nancy Davis Reagan missed civics class and felt no qualms about having her astrologer ruling the USA, Hilda managed to play hooky from catechism class so often that she fails to realize that she's about to board the "Down" escalator. At least Warner Bros. tried to warn all of us about our stumbling descent along the Path to Perdition in Real Life with GIRLS ON PROBATION.

An interesting example of the fast-paced low-budget melodramas the Warner Bros. "B" picture unit run by producer Bryan Foy churned out by the dozens back in the thirties, this film features the pre-presidential Ronny Reagan as a do-good handsome DA who falls for and protects the very likable Jane Bryan. (In later years Bryan's millionaire husband was to become one of the future president's kitchen cabinet.) Reagan played many dreamboat roles like this one in his Warner Bros. contract days and rarely got a chance to show that he possessed real dramatic talent. At the beginning of the film, the 21 one year old Susan Hayward, at the start of her long career, has a small but very noticeable role. Not only was she remarkably beautiful but she could act! Fans of the great German comic actor, Sig Rumann, ("To Be or Not to Be") will enjoy his transformation from Jane's stern Teutonic father to the proud future father-in-law of Reagan.

Just another one of those Warner Bros. B-films from the '30s where, if the truth were told from the beginning, the whole sorry story could have been cleared up without all the melodramatic fuss rendered here by the fast talking and very dated screenplay.But then we'd have no excuse to see RONALD REAGAN in one of his apprentice roles as an insurance inspector, JANE BRYAN as an "innocent" girl who just happens to get mixed up with bank robbers, and a whole cast of stereotyped actors from the Warner stock company going through the usual paces.Aside from Reagan and Bryan, SUSAN HAYWARD has a small role as a girl who reports a stolen dress to the authorities and starts the whole story about a girl (Bryan) who's unfortunate enough to be caught up in a chain of circumstances involving friendship with a "bad" girlfriend. Both of them end up serving time for a bank robbery, but it's only a matter of time before even more bad breaks put Bryan into the kind of situations that only Ronald Reagan can rescue her from.Done in the brisk Warner style with some tough dialog. After the final shootout, the fatally wounded bad girl says, "I'm on my way to see the boss." Although the plot is silly, JANE BRYAN gives a sensitive performance as the unfortunate girl while Reagan has so little to do he might as well have stayed home. Susan Hayward looks pretty but has only a bit part. Bad girl SHEILA BROMLEY is a nasty piece of goods in a very overwritten role as a spiteful young woman who makes life hell for Bryan.Okay for a vehicle that played the lower half of double bills in 1938.