Nine Girls

Ann Harding is a chaperone spending time with pledges and sorority sisters in a mountain cottage in 'Nine Girls," from 1944.

The young women included Jeff Donnell, Nina Foch, Evelyn Keyes, Jinx Falkenburg, Anita Louise, Shirley Mills, Lynn Merrick, Marcia Mae Jones, and Leslie Brooks. William Demarest plays a police officer.

One of the young women, Paula (Louise), hated by everyone, is murdered some time before the sorority gets to the mountain cottage, and they hear about it on the radio. The police arrive to get some information. Gradually the women start to suspect one another.

This is a comedy-drama, kind of silly but fun. It's dramatic in the beginning and end, with Demarest providing the comedy in between. One of the women, played by Lynn Merrick, imitates Katharine Hepburn throughout.

The starlets went on to various success - Jinx Falkenburg was actually a top model and crowned Miss Rheingold at one point. Evelyn Keyes, Anita Louise, Nina Foch, and Jeff Donnell enjoyed varying degrees of success. But each woman went on to some sort of a career.

There are some funny scenes - Demarest thinking his breakfast is poisoned and having Donnell test it, Demarest being discovered in long underwear, plenty of screaming and lights suddenly being turned off.

Enjoyable B.

Nine girls go to a mountain retreat as part of a college initiation trip but only eight of them arrive. Paula (Anita Louise) never shows up because she has been murdered. The eight girls and their teacher, Miss Thornton (Ann Harding), are visited by police Captain Brooks (Willard Robertson) and his side-kick Walter (William Demarest) investigating the murder. The killer is amongst them......who dunnit?....

This is a short film with moments of good dialogue, eg, "No-one liked Paula more than me...and I hated her" William Demarest is pointlessly slapstick and plays his part badly. We needed a serious policeman not a clown. He is involved in most of the bad scenes in the film, eg, the scene where Butch (Jeff Donnell) brings him breakfast and then engages him in a conversation about poison to which he gets suspicious and asks Butch to sample every option on his tray. She ends up eating the whole breakfast. We can see this coming from a mile off, it drags on and it's not funny. His attempts at humour are also not needed because the characters of the girls bring their own humour to the proceedings, although Eve's (Lynne Merrick) Katherine Hepburn impression gets tiresome. It's good entertainment with some snappy dialogue but let-down by an unnecessary William Demarest.

A madhouse of a movie! Of course one cannot expect good characterisations of young females in a programmer like this. By the way, even in serious A-films of this time you seldom find a teenager who looks and acts like a real teenager. In this film here you see nine girls who look much more like young women (with one or two exceptions). Worst of all, they represent all stereotypes of females when it comes to a crisis. Since other reviewers already sketched the story quite vividly I just say what I felt about it. The main problem is that the girls all have a motive to dislike Paula, so why are they with her? The majority of the girls are so silly it is hard to watch. You think they are just 10 years old although they look at least twice that age. The way they are presented is: one is the bad apple, one (seems to be) the most advanced, one is the beautiful blonde, one learns a lot, one is a tomboy, one is the favorite in the story, one is a chatterbox with too much fantasy and one is plain silly (and one I forgot completely). And the only sensible woman in the film is the chaperon. The film is made for laughs too, and the dialogue is often witty. But the constant repetition of faintings, screams and mindless accusations and behavior weakens the real fun. William Demarest as sidekick to the police lieutenant does his best to divert the attention away from the unbelievable females. Once or twice there are even serious moments and they are well executed. The film gets darker at the end and there is a thriller feeling in it. Could have been much better with more believable characters.

Today, many people think B-movies are synonymous with cheap, bad films. Well, that's not what the term originally meant. Back in the 1930s and 40s, going to the theater was a huge thing, since there was practically no television. So, instead of offering patrons just a film, they often had shorts and two movies. The prestigious and higher budgeted movie was the A-picture and the lower cost, shorter film was the B-movie. A typical B lasted 55-65 minutes and featured mostly lesser-known actors and actresses. In the case of "Nine Girl", however, we have a film that isn't quite an A or B picture! In style, it clearly is a B...but at 78 minutes, it's awfully long to be considered a B. So, I guess it's really a B+ movie!

The story is a very standard sort of murder mystery, the type that were made by practically all the larger and tiny B production companies. The usual cliches are there....the victim is thoroughly despicable and you see her mistreat EVERYONE about her and one of the folks involved in the case isn't about to let the police solve the case...she'll do it herself! This is a funny cliche, as again and again, films of the era made it look incredibly easy for ANYONE to solve murders...except for, of course, the police!!

As for the specifics, the story begins at a sorority house. Paula is a god-awful lady who steals other ladies' boyfriends and uses blackmail and extortion to get what she wants. By the time the police announce to the girls in the sorority that Paula's been murdered, everyone watching the film has grown to hate Paula!

Like many Bs, this one has its share of bad actresses...with some really overwrought performances. Oddly, however, the film ALSO has a few decent names...folks with respectable reputations, such as Nina Foch, William Demarest, Evelyn Keyes, Ann Harding and Anita Louise (Paula).

The overall film is watchable but predictable due to the many cliches and, occasionally, really over the top when it comes to some of the acting. Watchable....not much more.

Ann Harding is the house mother of a sorority chapter with nine members. One is snobbish, one is smart -- she wears glasses -- another is athletic.... well, you get the idea. Then one of them is dead. And then the police (in the persons of wise, avuncular Willard Robertson and dumb cop William Demarest) show up to investigate the murder.

This junior-league version of THE WOMEN has a lot to recommend it, even if only three of the actresses playing college students were of college age; the others ranged from 25 to 30: not that I'm complaining. They are a lovely and talented bunch, and attention is given to each of them in the script, even if Evelyn Keyes get a lot of attention and Jeff Donnell gets to be straight man to Demarest.

Director Leigh Jason was mostly a B director, but he seems to have had a knack for directing ensemble casts of women. I think his best movie is tHE MAD MISS MANTON, also a comedy-mystery. If this one isn't as good, well, it's a solid cast, even if it doesn't have Barbara Stanwyck and Henry Fonda. But it does have Ann Harding.