Confessions of Boston Blackie

This time Blackie is suspected of being the murderer of an art dealer at an auction attended by Inspector Farraday. Blackie has to spend the rest of the movie exonerating himself of the crime and discovering what happened to the missing body of the art dealer.

Female interest is provided by HARRIET HILLIARD, wife of "Ozzie" Nelson(the bandleader), who was making a few rather unimpressive appearances in films around this time. She's interested in purchasing a statue of Julius Caesar. Blackie is up to his same old shenanigans in throwing Farraday off his trail and proving that he's not guilty of a murder he never committed.

Interesting plot has to do with the missing body of the dead man and how it was accomplished with a phony statue. The story follows the usual Boston Blackie formula and this one is not quite on the same level with the first Blackie film. Still, for detective fans, it manages to move briskly within its short running time.

Once you've got into that 'Boston Blackie' movie series, you just can't stop - they're so wonderfully funny, just plain 'murder entertainment' with vanishing corpses, car chases, and Blackie and the police (in particular Inspector Faraday) in turn working together and against each other to solve the most crazy murder mysteries. Probably that's EXACTLY what the audience wanted during the War: just plain entertainment to get away from the cruel reality for a short while...

This time, Blackie, trying to save a young lady's life, again becomes a murder suspect. The body (with the bullet in it that would prove Blackie's innocence) vanishes, the police chase Blackie, Blackie chases the corpse, the forgers chase the corpse AND Blackie - and finally the whole lot of them end up in a locked vault three stories below the ground and have no idea how to get out of there...

This hilarious adventure, just like all the 'Boston Blackie' movies, just NEVER gets dated - they're in black&white, you can tell from the clothes, the hairstyles, the cars that they were made in the forties... But are there any crime adventures today - complete with color, special effects and all - that are as entertaining as this great stuff that's more than 70 years old??

The only way currently to see an old Boston Blackie movie is to buy a copy that has been copied off television somewhere, sometime. I think they are priceless. I bought this one off eBay. You can't use them to study law or police procedures and usually they have a spot or two that defies chemistry or physics or even common sense. But they are always fun. Just fun. No reality. I think this one was great. I especially like the scene where the radio was reporting on Boston Blackie's escape. And the newspaper headlines. I really wish the studios would release these on tape or DVD.

After a period of amazing experimentation in the 30s, the detective genre settled into a few tracks. One of these consisted of series films with previously well known characters, usually from radio. Some actually pretended to have a mystery, while others like this did not. The main appeal was supposed to be in the characters and their traits.

Boston Blackie's character is one of the more endearing, which allowed the extremely low budget production room to continue.

Blackie is a successful thief, one of those charming, superclever types that appeared in the 20s and early 30s. Blackie stole because the rich deserved it, pure and simple, not out of selfish greed, and in fact his story always mentions how he gave the proceeds to the starving. He was one of the inventions we created during the last period where the difference in the wealthy and poor was immense.

By this time (1941) he had been reinvented. Now he was a retired thief, with his cleverness turned to solving crimes the police were too dumb to understand. Along the way, the police (always the same guy) would suspect Blackie of the crime. So in addition to outwitting the criminals — which was ordinary in such movies — he had to more severely and embarrassingly outwit the police. That's the added piece here.

His two sidekicks are runt, a Runyon-esquire character, and Arthur, a rich but clueless playboy. Arthur is important because he anchors the political reinvention handily. He always has enough money which is freely available for Blackie's escapades.

I've only seen a couple of these, but this has something a bit extraordinary. Quite independent of any story element or need, we have a thread inserted. One of Blackie's affairs has resurfaced, a tall tough redheaded moll, who claims to be married to him and wants money... "or else."

Its a strange episode, obviously inserted to tell us something about Blackie that is expected to build his appeal and thus the franchise. He's a wisecracking guy clever guy who (almost) never resorts to violence. He's slick and chatty. But we get the idea here that in the bedroom he can master this wild amazon. Because in the US, we were deep in the stupid prurient code, there had to be this amazingly indirect way of telling us this.

I suppose its important, and that it worked. Blackie lasted for 15 films.

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

A common thing among B pictures is that several will have a title that has nothing to do with the film. In the case of Confessions Of Boston Blackie, Chester Morris didn't confess to anything that I recall.

In fact in this second Boston Blackie feature Morris is trying desperately to get out from under a murder rap. His playboy friend Lloyd Corrigan invites him to an art auction and during the course of it Morris foils an apparent heist, but in the process the owner of the gallery is shot. And the cops in the person of Inspector Richard Lane as always think that the famous crook and confidence man has done the deed. Throughout the entire series Morris was never able to convince the cops he'd gone straight.

There are two women of note in the cast. Sultry Joan Woodbury has picked this time to reenter Morris's life and he who bailed her out of a tight spot learns the meaning of the word 'no good deed goes unpunished' as Morris holds him up for blackmail dough.

Secondly Harriet Hilliard plays a rich woman who is putting up an ancient Roman larger than life statue for auction which is the Hitchcockian McGuffin of the piece. I wish they had given Hilliard a song to sing, she had a wonderful voice which later TV viewers didn't get to hear on Ozzie And Harriet.

This Boston Blackie film could have been better, there was a little too much slapstick comedy which was then followed by a very real danger that the cops, Blackie, and the crooks are all in at once. Columbia would tighten the series up later.