A Very Missing Person

Something no one has said yet is this is the seventh movie of Hildegarde Withers from the 1930's! The previous movie, Forty Naughty Girls was in 1937!

An OK, made for TV mystery, which I figured out before the end. And with a kind of "quick" ending. Eve Arden did a great job I thought, for this movie series not being made for nearly 35 years, nobody would probably remember and compare her to the actresses before her. James Gregory as Oscar Piper was OK, but not as irascible, as James Gleason's portrayal. I did laugh at the banter between the two and found it to be entertaining. I would liked to have seen at least one season, or one summer season of episodes, where character development could have taken place. Other than that...it is OK.

Interesting to see the Great PAT MORITA, 3 years before he did Happy Days!

If you are into 70's hippie culture and don't mind an original Star Trek plot rip-off, you might like it. I did.

Hildegarde Withers first appeared in novels with The Penguin Pool Murders in 1931 and was based on author's Stuart Palmer's high school teacher. She was described as a tall, bony spinster ex-school teacher who wore unusual hats and carried a black furled umbrella. Her unofficial partner as well as friend was crusty Inspector Oscar Piper of the NYPD who actually proposed to her at one time but retracted the offer at the last moment. Novels and short stories would continue into the 1960s until Palmer's death in 1968. Hildegarde was portrayed in the movies by Edna May Oliver, Helen Broderick and Zazu Pitts and Oscar was portrayed by James Gleason. In this film, Eve Arden was chosen because physically she looks much like how the character is described in the stories. The teleplay is based on the novel "Hildegarde Withers Makes the Scene" which was completed by Fletcher Flora upon Palmer's death and released in 1969. So here we see a much more liberated Hildegarde in a much more liberated time. This is a pilot for a proposed "rotating" series called The Great Detectives which would have alternated with Sherlock Holmes and Nick Carter. I think Hildegarde could be adapted for contemporary times much like Agatha Christie's Miss Marple has been done from time to time, but most fans of her in fiction would find this adaption a bit jarring. The novels spanned from 1931 to 1954. In 1963 there was an additional novel penned by Craig Rice under Palmer's direction and in 1969 Fletcher Flora completed what was found of Palmer's notes for the final Hildegarde novel.

I saw this movie when it came out in '72. I was just looking to see if I could find it on DVD or video, but did not see that it was available. Eve Arden was incredible. At this point of her career she was in her early 60s (she was born in 1908; not in 1912 like some biographies say). She had the starring role in this movie, and she carried it off so well. As is always the case, with her movies and guest spots on TV, she was so charming and classy; also very funny. And for a woman 63 or 64 years of age, she seemed to have a boundless amount of energy----looked to me like someone who had no plans on slowly down, anytime soon.

And, in my opinion anyway, Eve always looked so much younger than her chronological age. I am reminded that, in the late 60s, she was playing the role of a mother-in-law, who was supposed to be in her 40s, when she was already right around 60 ("The Mothers-In-Law"). Also, in the class movie, "Grease", she was about 70, when she played the principal. She looked more like her early to mid 50s in that role.

In "A Very Missing Person", she played a woman who had been an English teacher. I wonder if her popular series, "Our Miss Brooks" (in which she also played a teacher) had something to do with why the producers picked her for this role (one could say the same thing about "Grease", since she was also in "Education" there).

I would have to disagree that "Grease" was her swan song, like one of the other reviewers of this movie pointed out. If you look at her IMDb credit list, she continued to make films, and do guest spots, well into the 80s (and not just Grease II). The long illness and death of her husband, in the 80s, no doubt slowed her down (and not just her own later health problems).

I remember really enjoying this movie. I have not seen it since 1972, so I don't recall everything about it. But I would have to agree with the reviewer who said that Eve would have made a great Jessica Fletcher on "Murder She Wrote". May Eve rest in peace. The 16 years, since her death, are 16 years WAY TOO LONG. How I wish she were still with us, and as healthy as her character in "A Very Missing Person".

Police Inspector James Gregory has orders come down:find missing heiress Skye Aubrey. He doesn't have the manpower, so he asks his lady friend, retired schoolteacher Eve Arden to do the legwork. She finds a yacht filled with people looking to found a doomsday colony and assorted corpses.

It's based on HILDEGARDE WITHERS MAKES THE SCENE, the last Miss Withers mystery, started by Stuart Palmer and finished after his death by Fletcher Flora. Earlier books in the series had been turned into a fine series of B movies, originally starring the formidable Edna May Oliver as Withers, Miss Arden's role, and James Gleason as Oscar Piper, Mr. Gregory's role. This TV movie was essayed because ABC wanted to compete with the NBC Mystery Movies, which rotated such popular series as COLUMBO and MACMILLAN AND WIFE. ABC planned to revive other old mystery characters, such as Sherlock Homes, Nick Carter and Charlie Chan. The project died a-borning.

This one shows why. Gregory is excellent a the irascible Piper, Eve Arden was undoubtedly cast because she had played the wise-cracking second lead to perfection in many a movie in the 1930s and 1940s, then had achieved TV stardom as a schoolteacher in OUR MISS BROOKS. However, there is something wrong with her timing here. She plays the prim retired lady with a taste for old-fashioned hats very well, but her line readings lack snap, there is no chemistry with Gregory, and the writing lacks the morbid humor that the 1930s movies had. Pity.

This TV movie was intended as a pilot for an unsold series, starring Eve Arden in the role of a detective, of sorts. Consider it a precursor to "Murder She Wrote." Arden was a fantastic character actress, who could most likely have held her own in a series, which she did, of course, in "Our Miss Brooks." The TV industry today would KILL for a woman of her talent to help sell a series. I am uncertain as to why she could never find success after "The Mothers-In-Law." I guess we consider the "Grease" films as her swan song, although she certainly deserved better. I've always thought that she would have been great in "The Golden Girls" - I wonder if she might have been considered.