Murder on the Campus

I guess college isn't quite the way it was in my day. Young men and women living in extravagant suites, in the lap of luxury. They also looked a bit old for college students. This is a bit soporific. It involves a woman who works at a nightclub who is studying for her law degree. Once again, people are kept in the dark about the realities of things. I've seen so many movies where the characters keep things a secret, even when they don't have to. A man has been murdered in a bell tower and there is an investigation. I can see no reason whey the principles in the movie are even suspects, but they are. The detectives and a reporter continually coming in contact as the body count rises. I'm still not sure of the motives and the cover-up. Reputation? Fear? Love? Not sure. It also ends a bit suddenly. I suppose the young woman is going to marry the hunk and give up that nonsense about having a career. It's the thirties; it's the depression. Oh, well.

Veteran police captain J. Farrell MacDonald and young newspaper reporter Charles Starrett: Why are they such good friends? MacDonald is, as usual, the crusty police captain who suspects everyone and trusts no one...except, apparently, this cub reporter who follows him around on this case and is readily admitted to all interviews and interrogations, even though Starrett's character is quite frankly in love with the main suspect MacDonald is after. In any case, the two actors play well off of each other, and together they keep the story moving fast.

There's been a murder up in the campus bell tower; the murdered character was apparently something of an uncultured impostor who was only in the school because of his athletic prowess. (Little else is known about him except that he had been brought out to the college from some godforsaken outpost called Minnesota.) Chemistry student Lillian Voyne (Shirley Grey) had had an appointment to meet the victim right at the time of the murder. Did she do it? How could she have—the body was locked alone at the top of the tower! What about her friend, the suspiciously behaving Ann (played by Ruth Hall in a too small part)? And what is the part in all of this of the mysterious gambler Blackie Atwater? Can noted criminologist Prof. Hawley (Edward Van Sloan, looking very at home in the role) assist in solving the crime?

It's a pretty slick 70 minutes that doesn't hold a lot of surprises but does pack in some suspense. Well worthwhile for us fans of these B mysteries.

N.B. Those looking for a realistic depiction of college life in the 1930s are advised to stick with the Marx Brothers' Horse Feathers.

I love these Thirties movies. Everyone reviewed the mystery but what interested me was the college life. Clearly, this was an expensive eastern private school, home of the Gentleman's C. In the Depression there were basically two types of college students--the rich and those on scholarships and/or just getting by on various part time jobs, often having to stop for a semester or year when the money ran out. As Johnny Carson used to say, you buy the premise, you buy the bit. So I think these rich kids were kept here by their parents because they were totally useless in the real world and there weren't any jobs in the Depression for people who couldn't do anything but hang out with their friends. It was cheaper to keep them in school than let them ruin the slim profit margin of their parents' businesses. They were perpetual students and perpetual slackers. I imagine they were in this college until they all had PhDs or they got sent abroad, whichever cost their parents less. The men would be old enough when WWII came along to get cushy war jobs via the old boys' network, and the women would marry, divorce, and remarry within the same network.

Now, our heroine was obviously the other type of student. She was taking forever to get through school because it was taking her forever to earn the money. And since nobody was shown in a class, one has to assume that slowed down her progress, too. She won't "marry well" because the reporter got in the way and reporters were notoriously poorly paid. I hope she dropped out and married him right away because if she wasn't going to marry a rich student, she was wasting her money at this institution of learning nothing.

The dead fellow in the bell tower seemed to have been someone's project. I didn't understand why he was at the school but if he only had two years of high school he would have fit right in, academically. He seemed to have been enough of a slacker to concentrate on athletics instead of his bell tower job or school so if he had lived he might have done well in the culture of the place but alas, his quest for the old school tie was cut short. Another five or six years of frat life and he probably would have been indistinguishable from his wealthy brothers.

The professors at this college seemed to have as little interest in education as the students, to judge by the small sample we are shown. Apparently the perks of being employed by the college of "couldn't care less" included having time for extracurricular activities.

Because much of the wealth in the Depression era came through illegal or marginally legal activity, there was plenty of that going on with the students and their associates. Because superficiality and wealth were valued, snobbery, pettiness, and revenge were rife.

Prohibition was just ending, so no more bootleg booze, but there was the excitement of dead bodies littering up the campus so that was diverting. These people were such dullards it didn't even cross their minds to be afraid in the middle of a crime wave! The leaders of tomorrow--which accounts for a lot of things....

Charles Starrett is a reporter trying to figure out how a guy could be shot in a bell tower while no one is around. He ends up investigating another murder and an apparent suicide. Shirley Grey plays his romantic interest. Edward Van Sloan plays a criminologist; after all, he has plenty of experience killing vampires. As usual, the cops, led by J. Farrell MacDonald, are imbeciles, and Starrett has to solve the mystery for them. The ending is somewhat clever, although by then, I had figured out who the killer was - but not the method. As a bit of trivia, I had never seen Grey before, only to discover she was born not too far from where I live. MacDonald looks and sounds like William Frawley.

Shirley Grey is a very popular girl on campus, despite having to work. For that, she's a singer down at a local night club. When a series of murders occur, she winds up as a suspect. But her boy friend, reporter Charles Starrett, doesn't believe she did it. This cuts no ice with chief of police J. Farrell MacDonald, nor his sergeant, Dewey Robinson.

It's a Chesterfield picture, directed by Richard Thorpe. He was slowly climbing his way out of Poverty Row. This means he gets good performances out of a cast that includes Edward Van Sloan, Maurice Black, and Al Bridge.

The problems arise with the issue of uncovering who committed the murders, and why. Miss Grey is an early suspect. She clearly knows things that's she's not telling, which makes her a prime suspect in the eyes of the police, if not of anyone who knows how mysteries like this are plotted. Just once, I'd like to see the girl friend turn out to be the murderer, despite the insistence of her adoring lover. The information is revealed in clumps as they are told to Starrett, with a log monologue to explain method and motives Still, despite problems with the script, it's a good mystery, and the performances are nothing to sneer at.