Confessions of Boston Blackie

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.

Boston Blackie is in top form in "Confessions of Boston Blackie," a 1941 entry into the popular series that stars Chester Morris, George E. Stone, Richard Lane, Charles Winninger and Harriet Hilliard (aka Harriet Nelson).

Nelson plays Diane Parrish, who has given the wrong people an enormous statue to auction, not knowing that they copy the piece and auction the fake instead. At the auction, she realizes it's not the original statue, and chaos reigns, during which a man is killed - and of course Blackie (Morris) who had pulled his gun, is accused.

The statue has a piece that comes off in the back, and it's used to hide the dead body. Of course Blackie's wealthy friend Lloyd Corrigan (Winninger) buys the fake one for $200.

This film is grand fun, with Faraday (Lane) as bumbling as ever, Blackie getting away from him in no time. George E. Stone is funny as the runt, Blackie's sidekick. Playing Blackie himself, Chester Morris is handsome, demonstrating the character's good humor and relaxed manner with his great line deliveries.

There's a subplot here of an old flame of Blackie's showing up and trying to blackmail him. But we all know that Blackie gets around.

"Confessions of Boston Blackie," directed by Edward Dmytryk, is zany and keeps you hopping.

No wonder Chester Morris as Blackie is smiling so slyly through this film - he's the smartest guy in the room!. A group of art thieves are taking legitimate works of art to auction, making replicas, and then selling the replica and keeping the original. This time, though, the owner of the work up for auction gets suspicious in the middle of the auction, stands up, and declares there is something wrong. One of the bad guys thinks the simple thing to do - knowing there are cops in the audience - is shoot the owner! Blackie,also in the audience, is conveniently armed and shoots at the shooter. His shot causes the original bad guy to miss and shoot his own partner through the heart.

Of course the cops don't look any further than Blackie, but he easily gets away. The bottom line of this fast paced Boston Blackie entry is the police apparently can't count shots or do geometry or they would have known Blackie could not have fired all of those shots at those angles from where he was, don't even notice the body of the auctioneer for a good while, and never stop and ask themselves WHY would Blackie shoot at all of these people.

Now let's turn our attention to the IQ of the art thieves. They make hollowed out statue replicas that anyone that knows art could spot in 10 seconds, install secret panels in their statues which is a big tipoff that this is not an original, and insist on having their art studio in what is obviously an underground death trap under the right circumstances - it wouldn't take OSHA to spot the hazard here. And if their goal is to ultimately steal the original, why not just do that in the first place rather than stage this elaborate ruse with poorly made replicas?

So why watch this theatre of the absurd? Mainly because of the wit and wisdom of Chester Morris as Boston Blackie plus it's just plain fun. On the lighter side we get to see Blackies's sidekick, the runt, attempt to evict an amazon who claims to be Blackie's wife from Blackie's apartment. Recommended for the fun of it all.

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.

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??