Forty Naughty Girls

I watch these because the 30's was a period of experimentation with narrative form, from which we invented a few new things. What remains is a Burgess Shale deposit of narrative models that for some reason were left behind. One of the more interesting of these is this model. You've likely seen it a dozen times in detective stories from this era.

A homicide detective just happens to be at a play. A murder occurs, then another as the investigation is underway but the play goes on. Required elements include: a doofus; a prop gun apparently used in a real murder during the play; a space under the stage; love affairs, betrayal and blackmail.

Optional but highly desirable is some reference to authorship; here it is the disclosure that the play we see is purloined, as of course it is. At one point our woman detective looks at the audience and remarks on the play within the play, and the joke is that she does it in the play within the play within the play.

By this time the Hildegard Withers franchise was completely worn out. There's scant humor and what we have are recycled jokes. One example: while investigating in the space under the stage, Zasu hooks her dress on a coat of armor. These always must have been carefully placed on a wheeled platform because they always follow their hapless target around comically.

This would be the last of the Hildegard films. And viewers would soon say goodbye to the play-murder form, designed in part to give us a few songs to fill in for the usually thin plot. But this play, stage, murder business would stick as something to reference instead of use directly. "The Illusionist" used it in the story within the story within the story, (complete with stage basement) in order to fool the respective audiences about a murder.

Ted's Evaluation -- 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.

Three actresses played schoolteacher/amateur investigator Hildegarde Winters in the RKO B series based on the novels of Stuart Palmer: Helen Broderic, Zasu Pitts and Edna May Oliver. The inimitable, irascible James Gleason played her fiancé, Oscar Piper, in all the movies.

All three actresses were sterling comedians, although of highly different types. In this movie we have Oscar investigating a murder backstage, while Hildegarde Winters does all the real work.

Unfortunately, neither story nor actors are well served in this particular outing. Comedy directing great Eddie Cline doesn't seem to have allowed Miss Pitts nor supporting comic Tom Kennedy the time they needed for their slow-take comedy.

Instead, we have Piper arresting people for the murders, being persuaded he was wrong, and then on to the next suspect. Perhaps Cline simply did not care. In any case, the result is unremarkable.

... whoever is responsible for this travesty was very naughty and deserves to be grounded. It takes a great deal of effort to make either James Gleason or Zasu Pitts boring - in fact I'd never seen it happen before - but this film did it.

This film was supposed to be a continuation of the James Gleason/Edna Mae Oliver crime mysteries starting with Penguin Pool murder in 1932. Those two had great chemistry and were a believable pair both in the sleuthing and possibly even romantic categories. The zingers and one liners flew in their films, even after the production code came in. Here Zasu Pitts is replacing Ms. Oliver as schoolteacher Hildegarde Withers as she and detective Oscar Piper (James Gleason) step out together to watch the show "Forty Naughty Girls". Beforehand there is a set-up of situations that show the eventual murder victim causing trouble for various people associated with the show. When he predictably turns up dead, Piper and Withers are on the scene to solve the mystery. The problem is, from that point forward they are not really acting as a team as they were before. They seem to be operating independently and just bump into each other as a matter of circumstance or slapstick.

The show that acts as a backdrop for the mystery just doesn't seem very naughty or even funny for that matter, the suspects are not very interesting or memorable, and our two leads are poorly served by the entire mess. If you want to see what this crime series was at its peak watch "Penguin Pool Murder", "Murder on the Blackboard", or "Murder on a Honeymoon". If you want to see James Gleason and Zasu Pitts be entertaining, watch just about anything they ever did but this.

Warner Brothers made some amazing Hildegarde Withers mysteries starring Edna May Oliver. Unfortatunely, Oliver left the studio after making a few of them and the studio tries making a few more of these films with a different woman in the lead. While the substitutes weren't bad, they lacked the wonderful qualities that made the Oliver films fantastic. "Forty Naughty Girls" is one of these Oliver-less films the studio made to try to recapture the magic...and it's the last of second films with Zasu Pitts in the lead.

The story begins with Oscar (James Gleason) and Hildegarde (Pitts) going to see the Broadway show "Forty Naughty Girls". Not surprisingly, during the show there is a murder...and since it happens behind the scenes, the pair investigates while the play continues. Oscar thinks he's figured it all out...the playwright stole the play from a dead author. While this is true, it seems too easy...and it's only about 15 minutes into the movie. Surely there's more to it than this. And, when a second body is discovered, it's obvious that there's more. Can Hildegarde unravel this mess?

This film is a bit unusual because Hildegarde is not that prominent in the story. Much of if shows Inspector Oscar Piper going through his investigation...with Hildegarde showing up here and there to help. Overall, however, it's quite enjoyable even if it was relatively Hildegarde free! An interesting case and well written...but also not quite up to the quality of the older Oliver ones.

Most of the earlier reviewers obviously did not like this one much, but I think it was actually a rather enjoyable movie, which mixed three very popular genres of that era: murder mystery, musical theater story and screwball comedy. No, of course it is far from being great, but it is an entertaining little whodunit.

The murder mystery part of the plot is nothing special, but it is fine, definitely better than the earlier Hildegarde Withers outing, Murder on the Blackboard, which, during the book-to-screenplay transfer lost all that made it originally good. The musical numbers never get center stage (and honestly, aren't very good either), but the comedy works fine and the fast moving plot easily holds it all together.

As always, James Gleason is great as the grumpy detective and I actually like ZaSu Pitts' Hildegarde quite a bit. While Edna May Oliver seems to be everyone's favorite Hildegarde Withers she was always too much for me and I like both Helen Broderick and Ms. Pitts a lot more in the role. As for the rest of the cast: they are doing OK, but they are nothing noteworthy, except maybe Tom Kennedy, who plays a bumbling police officer that hauntingly similar to his role in all those Torchy Blane movies. Obviously it wasn't much of a success in its time either as it was the last of the series, which is too bad as I would definitely love to watch a few more films with witty ZaSu as the elderly hobby detective who solves the crimes instead of the grumpy inspector.

Edited: One of the reviewers stated that this is a remake of the "German language film named Premiere". Since writing my original review I managed to track down and watch that movie and the reviewer is clearly wrong. Besides both being about murders happening during a musical show there aren't many similarities with the script, the culprit, the motives and pretty much everything being totally different. Not to mention this movie is based on a 1934 short story while Premiere was released in 1937.

However it turns out that Premiere (which is a truly excellent film by the way) is clearly a remake of 1934's Hollywood movie, Murder At The Vanities.