Forty Naughty Girls

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.

Forty Naughty Girls (1937)

* (out of 4)

The sixth and final film in the RKO series has Zasu Pitts returning for her second stint as Hildegarde Withers and of course James Gleason is back as Inspector Piper. This time out Withers and Piper are attending a popular play on Broadway when the press agent is shot dead. The two begin the investigation and learn that he was trying to mess with an actress (Marjorie Lord), which didn't sit well with her boyfriend but there are a few others with a motive to kill the man. FORTY NAUGHTY GIRLS has a horrible reputation and it even managed to get a rare BOMB rating from Leonard Maltin who rarely goes that low on older movies. After viewing the film I don't think it's that bad but at the same time this thing is still a complete disaster that has very little going for it. I think a lot of the blame can be pointed at RKO taking this "B" series and dropping it down to a "D" level. The screenplay, the look of the film and the overall production values are a lot lower than what was seen in earlier movies and I'm going to guess that someone needed to finish off a contract and this film was thrown together to do just that. The screenplay is just a boring mess with one suspect entering the picture every few minutes but the problem is that there's nothing here to make you care who the killer is. I'll admit that something would happen, I'd grow bored and then ten minutes later I couldn't remember what had just happened. Another problem is the performance of Pitts. There's no question she was a talented actress but her talents weren't going to be needed in every type of film and it's clear the producers didn't know how to use her here. As Withers she's not playing a character but instead she's pretty much playing that dumb moron she played in various comedies including her work with Hal Roach. There wasn't a single second where I actually believed she could come up with any clue let alone solve any type of murder. The humor is so forced that you have to wonder why the director or producer didn't cast someone else or at least change the story to better fit her. Gleason is obviously tired of the role as he sleepwalks through the film. The one saving grace is Lord who is good in her few scenes. It's easy to see why this marked the end of the series as there certainly wasn't much room to get worse.

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.

Most of the earlier reviewers obviously did not like this one much, but I think it was actually a rather enjoyable movie, which mixed three very popular genres of that era: murder mystery, musical theater story and screwball comedy. No, of course it is far from being great, but it is an entertaining little whodunit.

The murder mystery part of the plot is nothing special, but it is fine, definitely better than the earlier Hildegarde Withers outing, Murder on the Blackboard, which, during the book-to-screenplay transfer lost all that made it originally good. The musical numbers never get center stage (and honestly, aren't very good either), but the comedy works fine and the fast moving plot easily holds it all together.

As always, James Gleason is great as the grumpy detective and I actually like ZaSu Pitts' Hildegarde quite a bit. While Edna May Oliver seems to be everyone's favorite Hildegarde Withers she was always too much for me and I like both Helen Broderick and Ms. Pitts a lot more in the role. As for the rest of the cast: they are doing OK, but they are nothing noteworthy, except maybe Tom Kennedy, who plays a bumbling police officer that hauntingly similar to his role in all those Torchy Blane movies. Obviously it wasn't much of a success in its time either as it was the last of the series, which is too bad as I would definitely love to watch a few more films with witty ZaSu as the elderly hobby detective who solves the crimes instead of the grumpy inspector.

Edited: One of the reviewers stated that this is a remake of the "German language film named Premiere". Since writing my original review I managed to track down and watch that movie and the reviewer is clearly wrong. Besides both being about murders happening during a musical show there aren't many similarities with the script, the culprit, the motives and pretty much everything being totally different. Not to mention this movie is based on a 1934 short story while Premiere was released in 1937.

However it turns out that Premiere (which is a truly excellent film by the way) is clearly a remake of 1934's Hollywood movie, Murder At The Vanities.

Inspector Oscar Piper (James Gleason) and Hildegarde Withers (Zasu Pitts) attend a Broadway show. First, there is a murder backstage. Then, a fake murder on stage turns into a real one with a real bullet.

This is the sixth and the last of the original Hildegarde series. It's the second Zasu Pitts - Hildegarde movie. They are making Oscar and Hildegarde into a broad comedic duo. The earlier movies let the humor develop more naturally. They didn't have to force it and Hildegarde was just different. Despite the questionable characterization, I still want more of Oscar and Hildegarde on screen. They don't come on at the start and they aren't always center stage. The duo needs to stay together and they need to be the focus of the movie. This has some fun moment but the fun always comes with awkwardness. The franchise probably ran of steam and this movie didn't help either.