Murder on the Blackboard

Decidedly dated, early mystery starring Edna May Oliver as the irrepressible sleuth Hildergard Withers, Murder on the Blackboard is all fun. Oliver excels as the wise-cracking "Lady" teacher sleuth who finds that a young, pretty music teacher has been killed in her school - as both have stayed late working. Oliver enlists the help of detective James Gleason(an always reliable character actor) and the one-liners between the two begin to ensue as the track down the murderer. The writing in this film is witty, sharp, and rapid-fire and both Gleason and Oliver do more than justice to their respective roles. The list of suspects is limited(really only four people) but amongst them are Bruce Cabot and Tully Marshall. Because it was made in 1934 it is somewhat stagy and creaky, but the film is elevated by the two acting leads. Oliver on screen is pure magic as she is able to look oh so dour and be oh so sarcastic at every turn. A crackling whodunit in the old-fashioned sense of the word.

Murder on the Blackboard is the second of three Hildegarde Withers stories that Edna May Oliver and James Gleason were teamed for. Today the charm of these two people, two of the best character actors that movies ever saw carry this rather dated and melodramatic story.

One of the teachers at Edna's school, Barbara Fritchie, winds up very dead and she's quite the lively corpse as the perpetrator keeps moving the body in an effort to be rid of it. In fact the only way the crime is discovered is because that day Edna kept young Jackie Searle after school.

Unlike the Thin Man movies where you could have as many as ten suspects or more in a room as Nick and Nora reveal all, this is not MGM with their lavish productions. This is RKO and this studio had a limited budget for their films. We only have four suspects so your chances of guessing who did it increase quite a bit.

Edgar Kennedy as the dumb cop who gets clunked on the head and develops amnesia is his usual funny self. In fact he's the foil used to catch the murderer in the end. As for the end, I found it a bit melodramatic for my taste and let it go at that.

But for fans of the wonderful Edna May Oliver and the dependable James Gleason this film is a must.

When talkies happened, there was a mad rush to make films of mysteries because they were enormously popular in the pulp trade. Series of published stories became movie serials as if by accident and it took nearly a whole decade for the movie industry to figure out a basic cinematic vocabulary apart from books.

So when you see something that worked during that transition, its worth figuring why. Almost always it was not because of anything in the film itself, rather the stage presence and usually humor of one or two characters.

This formula started in 1932 as one of the early talkies. It depended on the character of the nosey biddy and whatever humor could be milked from it. A cartoon cop was the foil, and a pretty effective one too.

In this, the second, his cartoonishness becomes self-referential. There are at least three major jokes in the thing where he talks about what he would do if he were a movie detective. One time, the schoolmarm treats him like he is irrelevant and he says: "What am I here, the costume designer?"

This was the same year that "The Thin Man" hit on a better, more dialog-driven comic formula that would lead to screwball. So this series flagged a bit, dragging on with different twists.

Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.

Murder on the Blackboard (1934)

*** (out of 4)

The second of six films in RKO's Hildegarde Withers (Edna May Oliver) series has the wannabe detective working at a school when a music teacher is shot dead. Inspector Oscar Piper (James Gleason) is soon helping on the case, which features the usual suspects including one played by Bruce Cabot. I've got the first film in the series, Penguin Pool Murder, recorded but haven't watched it yet so this is the first film from the series that I've actually watched. There's nothing overly special about this film but it does stand apart from the countless other mystery films of the decade. For one, Edna May Oliver plays her role pretty well and while it's somewhat over the top she never goes way past that line to where the character becomes obnoxious. She manages to bring a few laughs to the film and keeps the film going throughout. The actual mystery is also done pretty well with some nice atmosphere trapped in the small school.

If anybody thinks that teachers' lives are dull, you need to watch this film. Louise Halloran, the school's young music teacher, is found bludgeoned to death, by Miss Hildegarde Withers (Edna Mae Oliver), at the school. She has a student call Detective Oscar Piper (James Gleason), with whom she worked on the Pengun Pool Murder. First the body disappears, and Piper thinks Hildegarde crazy - that there never was a murder. But then the murderer makes some mistakes - digging a grave in the cellar, hitting another policeman over the head, trying to dispose of Louise's body in the school incinerator and not quite beating the police to it, and then escaping out of the school emergency exit chute. So now Oscar knows the crime is real - as Louise may have died from the blow to the head, but she would have died anyways since the medical examiner determines that she was dying from pernicious anemia of the bones at the time of her death, which could have been induced by slow poisoning. Could there have been two different killers, each one unaware of the other's plot? Hildegarde pretty much solves this crime herself. Being a Renaissance woman who notices everything and has a variety of hairpins to help with tricky locks helps her along.

And she'll need her powers of observation. Because everybody has a motive. Louise's roommate, fellow teacher Jane Davis, has won the Irish Sweepstakes with Louise and her death allows Jane to keep all of the money. Then there was a romance between Louise and teacher Addison Stevens the previous summer that Stevens broke up so he could take up with Jane. Then there is principal McFarland who tried to take up with Louise also, wrote her love letters, and Louise would not let him have them back. McFarland is married, but that hasn't put a damper on him going after the younger female schoolteachers. Finally there is the school janitor who has tunneled his way into a warehouse of booze and has been taking some and selling it to the schoolteachers. Louise refused to pay him right before her death, claiming if she outed him he'd be fired.

Basically it boils down to Oscar controlling the cops and Hildegarde controlling the investigation. After they succeed at solving the crime they are having breakfast at a diner, and let's just say that Oscar has the last laugh as Hildegarde's sensibilities are shocked about how long it takes to grieve the loss of a loved one before replacing that loved one with another.

I'd say this didn't seem quite as good as Penguin Pool Murder, because the first one was such a welcome surprise, but it was certainly a worthwhile entry.

An aside - At the conclusion of Penguin Pool Murder it was insinuated that Oscar and Hildegarde were on their way to get married after a very rushed pretty much mutual marriage proposal. Here they are just friends. Being a married couple would have painted the humor into a corner, and it works better with them being allied, maybe even being a little bit romantically interested, but never really doing anything about it. Recommended.