iMDB.com says of Confidence Girl (1952):
“Two conartists swindle a Los Angeles department store out of a mink coat, cheat a pawnbroker out of $8000 and leave the police baffled.”
Confidence Girl (1952) is worth a watch to learn how several types of scams are played out. Other than than, not so much. The structure of the story was an interesting idea.
They played out three schemes. The first and most basic was department store thief using a blocker. In this case, they used a three person team. The older lady identified and got access to the coat to be stolen. The younger lady stole the coat. Her blocker was pretending to be a detective and helped her flee the store. This technique is still used today. When someone goes out and a store alarm goes off, they have people with them that stop and block the store security. They allow themselves to be searched while the rest of the team gets away with the good.
The second scam was variation of what I call the Black Pearl. I am sorry, I don’t remember the show I first saw this own but it goes as follows. A person comes in with a rare item, such as a single black pearl. They tell the mark they want to buy an exact match and tell what a high price they are willing to pay. The greeder the mark, the higher the price. The mark just happens to get word, or may already have gotten notice of where they can buy the match. The mark negotiates with the second con artist and pays a much higher price than the pearl is worth, expecting to make a bundle on the sale to the first con artist. Of course, both con artist vanish leaving the mark with a pearl for which they over paid.
In this movie, it was done with a violin that was pawned. Con 1 gave the pawn broker a promise of $10,000 with a $1,000 deposit. Con 2 is the person that originally pawned the violin. The pawn broker eventual pays Con 2 $8,000 for a $400 violin expecting to make a profit of $2,000. The cons disappear and the pawn broker is out $7,000.
The third scam was a variation of a psychic reading. In this movie they were running a big scam and had a nightclub, wired, viewed, and staffed with fellow cons.
In Nightmare Alley (1947), they used a view through the floor. In Confidence Girl (1952) they had staff with binoculars looking through ports in the ceiling. All tables were wired for sound as were the bathrooms. The car lot attendants searched the cars for clues, the coat check girls searched for clues in coats, and the wait staff kept their ears open. All the information was sent upstairs and compiled. It was transmitted to an earbud the fake psychic was wearing.
It was good to see Jack Kruschen as Detective Sgt. Quinn.
Confidence Girl (1952) Actors
Tom Conway – Roger Kingsley
Hillary Brooke – Mary Webb
Jack Kruschen – Detective Sgt. Quinn
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