The Big Tip Off

Richard Conte stars in The Big Tip Off, featuring Bruce Bennett and Constance Smith, two fascinating Hollywood stories I will get to later.

Conte is a columnist for a low level newspaper. A break comes to him in the form of a gangster, who will give him an exclusive on mob goings on in the city - as they're happening. Things like murder.

Around the same time, Bennett and his assistant Smith come to town. Bennett is an old friend who has become a major fundraiser. Conte suggests a Catholic school. The nun he deals with, however, is suspicious of Bennett. Did both the mob and fundraising enter Conte's life at the same time coincidentally?

This is average fare.

Constance Smith was a beautiful woman who was getting the star buildup at one point. However, she was difficult to work with and eventually rejected by Hollywood. Sadly at one point she was jailed for murder. After several suicide attempts and forays into drugs and alcohol, she took work as a cleaner. She died, very unwell, at the age of 74.

Bruce Bennett's real name was Herman Bix. He was an Olympic silver medalist for shotput. After making dozens of films, including Mildred Pierce and Treasure of the Sierra Madre, he retired, dying shortly before his 101st birthday.