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.

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.

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.

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.

... and though there are allusions made to the war such as references to losing ones ration book, this is really a story that could have been set anywhere anytime to get peoples' minds off the war and on to the kind of film they would have watched pre-war - a good murder mystery.

The opening scene shows nine girls posing for their college sorority picture. They are doing so on the front lawn of Paula Canfield's (Anita Louise) estate, with the girls all invited for a swim afterwards. Very quickly you figure out that Paula is bad news. She wants what she wants when she wants it and she doesn't care who she hurts along the way. Paula wants Alice (Nina Foch) to write her term paper for her. When Alice refuses Paula says she'll write her financially strapped family and demand the 100 dollars that Alice borrowed from her to buy an Encyclopedia. When Mary (Evelyn Keyes) overhears Paula trying to steal one of the girl's dates on the phone, she tells the girl who then tells off Paula. In revenge, Paula threatens to spread bad gossip about Mary's brother so that Mary's chances at a teaching job at an exclusive school after graduation will be ruined. All of the other girls have problems with Paula too, these are just the two arguments we see.

The girls are going on a weekend retreat in the mountains at their sorority lodge along with their chaperon Miss Thornton (Ann Harding). When they get there they hear on the radio that Paula is dead. Shortly thereafter they learn it is no accident - it's murder, because the police show up and tell the girls they prefer that they not go back home, as they were planning, and stay the weekend. Basically they are under house arrest.

There are any number of suspects. One girl - a medical student - arrived late to the lodge with a bandaged hand and blood on her suitcase. She claimed it was from changing a spare tire - was it? Mary drove separately from the other girls and was there when the others arrived. How did she spend the extra time? Alice is constantly bursting into hysterics, and then there are the other girls who seem too goofy to be anything but harmless, but are they? To keep this on the lighter side William Demarest plays a dim cop who is supposed to be keeping an eye on the group of girls but winds up being more trouble than he's worth.

At first blush this all seems like a very inventive premise - much like The Women, except you do see a few men. The fact is, necessity is the mother of invention, with that necessity being this: how do you make a film about young people in their early 20's when all of the able bodied men in their early 20's are in military service? Thus the concept of a murder mystery involving an almost entirely female cast, with the few men involved being too old for military duty anyways (the police, Paula's father).

Highly recommended as a wartime film that has absolutely nothing to do with the war and also happens to be one inventive little murder mystery that will keep you guessing as to what will happen next.