Murder on a Honeymoon

This was — I believe — the third of the series and the last with this woman. I like these because James Gleason does a ratatat detective, cigar-chomping, who always gets things wrong. The original idea was that a schoolmarm bests him, but her position as a teacher seems to have been forgotten after the first two.

In the first one, they actually fall in love. In the second, she establishes a new pattern as the pushy friend who seems to muddle through before the officials do. It was Gleason that makes these work. He's something of a genius.

In this one, two things are changed. The mystery goes from a pre-noir template to an Agatha Christie one: murder on a small airplane. That means you have only so many suspects and we have seen them all moving about and bumping each other, each doing something suspicious. So its mildly more engaging as a mystery than any of the others.

But something else changes here. There's much, much more physical humor. She tumbles about ungracefully as if that were a hoot. Gleason's inspector gets whacked by every door he gets close to.

Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.

Edna Mae Oliver and James Gleason are a perfect team. Their exchanges are hilarious.

The supporting cast are also first rate and the murder mystery storyline is done well.

Edna May Oliver returns as the indomitable schoolteacher/sleuth Hildegarde Withers. Even while on vacation in California she has no trouble in finding murders to solve.

Miss Edna May is again quite wonderful to watch. This was her third & final outing as Withers - she would soon be leaving RKO for MGM and other memorable roles there. James Gleason is back as her New York City detective boyfriend. Comic relief is provided by Willie Best.

The movie is enhanced considerably by location filming at Avalon, on Santa Catalina Island. The huge Casino, which dominates the Avalon waterfront, provides a spooky scene or two.

Murder on a Honeymoon opens aboard a seaplane flying several passengers out to a vacation destination: it's a neat opening scene that sets the plot in motion with a murder and introduces us to all of the suspects as well. Among those passengers is Hildegarde Withers, played one more time by the great Edna May Oliver, who is a bit sick during the flight but recovers nicely when the plane lands and it is discovered that a fellow passenger is dead.

James Gleason returns as Inspector Oscar Piper; it seems the murdered man was involved in a case his department is on, so he hops a flight himself and quickly joins his old collaborator Miss Withers. ("Hildegarde, you get screwier every day" is practically the first thing he says to her when they meet, thus quickly re-establishing their outwardly adversarial, genuinely affectionate personal relationship.)

Good photography—both of island scenes and in some atmospheric shadowy night shots—adds sparkle to a script that neatly balances comic banter with murder. A solid supporting cast features Leo G. Carroll as a big shot movie director (who carries a flask with two compartments in it—one containing the good booze he drinks, one stocked with the cheap stuff he shares with others) and Lola Lane as an aspiring actress hoping to catch his eye.

Overall, the suspense is a bit more taut, the solution more surprising than in the two previous Withers-Piper pictures; it's a top-notch B mystery.

Oliver, especially, is at her very best, especially when dealing with those who underestimate her—for example, the local police chief and doctor, who are beginning the murder investigation while still in their bathing suits: "Don't try to be impressive in that rig, my man," Miss Withers snaps when one attempts brusqueness. "You can't frighten me until you've put on your trousers."

... which would be Edna May Oliver as schoolteacher Hildegarde Withers and James Gleason as NYPD detective Oscar Piper. The first film had these two on their way to get married at the conclusion, but that would have ruined the sequels, so they are just good friends and colleagues. In this installment, Hildegarde is going to Catalina on a seaplane when a fellow passenger suddenly takes ill and dies. Law enforcement on the island seems rather lax, and the coroner is just going to chalk it up to heart failure. For some reason, Hildegarde thinks it is murder. Not getting any help from the locals, she wires Oscar in New York. It turns out the man who died was hiding from the police as he was a key witness to the crimes of a big city gang and was afraid for his life. Apparently he was justified in that fear. Oscar thus flies to Catalina to do further investigation, but then the body is stolen in the middle of the night so there can't be a proper autopsy.

So everybody on the plane is a suspect, and they could have been hired by the mob in New York to do away with this guy, but none of them have obvious criminal histories. The plot thus gets rather involved as is the search for the missing body. The fact that the production code is in force blunts the banter between Hildegarde and Oscar, but they are still good together. There was something special about Oliver as Hildegard - The way she adjusted her wrap after making a point, Those eyes that sparkled, the all knowing look she would give. Unfortunately this will be her last film in this role as she switches studios from RKO to MGM where she plays in support of a number of production code era costume dramas. I don't think that movie factory MGM ever got the mileage out of her that little RKO did. But I digress. I would recommend this one, but definitely see "Penguin Pool Murder" first as it lays the groundwork for the relationship between Withers and Piper.