Forty Naughty Girls

Three actresses played schoolteacher/amateur investigator Hildegarde Winters in the RKO B series based on the novels of Stuart Palmer: Helen Broderic, Zasu Pitts and Edna May Oliver. The inimitable, irascible James Gleason played her fiancé, Oscar Piper, in all the movies.

All three actresses were sterling comedians, although of highly different types. In this movie we have Oscar investigating a murder backstage, while Hildegarde Winters does all the real work.

Unfortunately, neither story nor actors are well served in this particular outing. Comedy directing great Eddie Cline doesn't seem to have allowed Miss Pitts nor supporting comic Tom Kennedy the time they needed for their slow-take comedy.

Instead, we have Piper arresting people for the murders, being persuaded he was wrong, and then on to the next suspect. Perhaps Cline simply did not care. In any case, the result is unremarkable.

... whoever is responsible for this travesty was very naughty and deserves to be grounded. It takes a great deal of effort to make either James Gleason or Zasu Pitts boring - in fact I'd never seen it happen before - but this film did it.

This film was supposed to be a continuation of the James Gleason/Edna Mae Oliver crime mysteries starting with Penguin Pool murder in 1932. Those two had great chemistry and were a believable pair both in the sleuthing and possibly even romantic categories. The zingers and one liners flew in their films, even after the production code came in. Here Zasu Pitts is replacing Ms. Oliver as schoolteacher Hildegarde Withers as she and detective Oscar Piper (James Gleason) step out together to watch the show "Forty Naughty Girls". Beforehand there is a set-up of situations that show the eventual murder victim causing trouble for various people associated with the show. When he predictably turns up dead, Piper and Withers are on the scene to solve the mystery. The problem is, from that point forward they are not really acting as a team as they were before. They seem to be operating independently and just bump into each other as a matter of circumstance or slapstick.

The show that acts as a backdrop for the mystery just doesn't seem very naughty or even funny for that matter, the suspects are not very interesting or memorable, and our two leads are poorly served by the entire mess. If you want to see what this crime series was at its peak watch "Penguin Pool Murder", "Murder on the Blackboard", or "Murder on a Honeymoon". If you want to see James Gleason and Zasu Pitts be entertaining, watch just about anything they ever did but this.

I watch these because the 30's was a period of experimentation with narrative form, from which we invented a few new things. What remains is a Burgess Shale deposit of narrative models that for some reason were left behind. One of the more interesting of these is this model. You've likely seen it a dozen times in detective stories from this era.

A homicide detective just happens to be at a play. A murder occurs, then another as the investigation is underway but the play goes on. Required elements include: a doofus; a prop gun apparently used in a real murder during the play; a space under the stage; love affairs, betrayal and blackmail.

Optional but highly desirable is some reference to authorship; here it is the disclosure that the play we see is purloined, as of course it is. At one point our woman detective looks at the audience and remarks on the play within the play, and the joke is that she does it in the play within the play within the play.

By this time the Hildegard Withers franchise was completely worn out. There's scant humor and what we have are recycled jokes. One example: while investigating in the space under the stage, Zasu hooks her dress on a coat of armor. These always must have been carefully placed on a wheeled platform because they always follow their hapless target around comically.

This would be the last of the Hildegard films. And viewers would soon say goodbye to the play-murder form, designed in part to give us a few songs to fill in for the usually thin plot. But this play, stage, murder business would stick as something to reference instead of use directly. "The Illusionist" used it in the story within the story within the story, (complete with stage basement) in order to fool the respective audiences about a murder.

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

Schoolmarm Hildegarde Withers (Zasu Pitts) and her friend Inspector Oscar Piper (James Gleason) go out for a night on Broadway. Naturally, no evening on the town can take place without murder, not when Hildegarde and the Inspector are around. This entry in the series is played more broadly for laughs than its predecessors but not much more than typical for the B-level crime movies of the day. The problem here, from my perspective, is that Zasu Pitts's character is so different from the great Edna May Oliver's that only the name appears to be the same. Edna May's Hildegard Withers was a feisty old girl who basically ran the Inspector's case for him despite his grousing. Zasu plays her standard ditz and the movie suffers for it. It's hard to imagine the Inspector putting up with her; moreover, some of the slapstick seems forced. On the other hand, this entry is saved by a very clever plot with plenty of false leads and twists. The film might have played better as a straight mystery rather than mystery/comedy. By the way, the lovely Marjorie Lord gets an early turn here as a singer/hoofer type.

EDNA MAY OLIVER is the missing ingredient in this feeble murder mystery with JAMES GLEASON as Inspector Piper attending a theater with his friend ZASU PITTS (as Hildegarde Withers), but soon in charge of investigating a double murder.

This backstage comedy/mystery tries to follow the pattern of other such mysteries featuring Gleason and Edna May Oliver, but fails to register strongly enough in either the laugh department or the serious stuff.

It has the feel of a low-budget programmer shot in ten days with no chance for character development or original plotting. Even revelation of the murderer is handled in such a low-key way that any viewer will be half asleep before the solution even occurs.

Not recommended for fans of this series.