A waste of 90 minutes of my life

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

When sweet Jane Bryan strikes up a friendship with Sheila Bromley, she gets caught up in a whirlwind of trouble. Sheila's a bad girl, and even Jane's overprotective parents, Elisabeth Risdon and Sig Ruman, can't stop her influence over their little girl. Soon, Jane and Sheila get arrested!Girls on Probation reminds me of the really old films of 1930 when Hollywood was just getting the hang of talking pictures. There's nothing original about the story or characters, and the acting is pretty hammy-which you might expect by seeing Ronald Reagan in the opening credits. Yes, he has a beautiful smile, but that doesn't mean he's a good actor. I only rented this movie because it was one of Susan Hayward's early flicks. She's in the movie for the first five minutes, and while it's cute to see her during the years where she was taking elocution lessons, once her scene is done, she's doesn't come back.

. . . 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.

The only significance that Girls On Probation has in cinema history is that it was the first role of significance for Susan Hayward who plays Ronald Reagan's date at a party. Susan was dropped by Warner Brothers after this film and her contract picked up with Paramount who saw what Jack Warner missed. Despite Girls On Probation Hayward went on to a great career.The subject of the film however is Jane Bryan who borrows a dress that friend Sheila Bromley who 'borrowed' it from the dry cleaner she works at. Fine, but at the party that Bryan goes to Hayward spots the dress and identifies it as her's and Bryan is arrested. She tells her story, but no one believes her but Reagan who is taken with Bryan. He's a lawyer and defends her and she's let off with a first offense.Not good enough for her strict father Sig Ruman who throws her out of the house. She moves to another town, but who does she run into but Bromley and gets whisked into a getaway car from a bank robbery driven by Bromley's boyfriend Anthony Averill. They all get arrested and Jane's now in a real jackpot.The girl just can't catch a break until a sympathetic probation officer Dorothy Peterson convinces Judge Henry O'Neill to grant her probation. Back she goes to her home town and takes up with Reagan who is now an Assistant District Attorney.Of course trouble follows and I won't say more because the story gets more clichéd as it goes on. Let's say it all conveniently works out in the end.Two things connected with this film. Jane met and later wed Justin Dart of Rexall Drugs and retired from the screen. When Ronald Reagan started a political career she got her husband behind him and he became part of the unofficial Reagan kitchen cabinet.Also when Susan Hayward was at the height of her career in the mid Fifties, Warner Brothers re-released Girls On Probation to take advantage of that. It was inflicted on the public again after Hayward scored in I'll Cry Tomorrow, an infinitely better film than this. I'm not sure she appreciated Warner Brothers gesture.She survived Girls On Probation and if you see you will too.

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.