Murder on the Blackboard

TCM is going through the Hildegarde Withers mysteries as part of the Saturday matinee programming block. There were six of them and Edna May Oliver played Withers in three of them. I know I hadn't recommended Murder on the Blackboard before, as I had never actually sat down to watch it despite the fact that the Withers mysteries show up on TCM often enough and I enjoy the acting of Edna May Oliver. So the last time it aired I recorded it, and now it's getting the Saturday matinee airing, tomorrow (March 15) at 10:15 AM.

As you can guess from the title, the movie is set at a school. Before we get into the mystery aspect of the film, however, we're introduced to the school's janitor, Otto, who seems to live in the basement of the school, probably because he's an alcoholic. We also meet the school's secretary, Miss Davis (Gertrude Michael), who for some reason brings a gun to school. Principal MacFarland (Tully Marshall) tries to put the moves on Miss Davis before seeing the gun; Miss Davis tells him that it belongs to one of the teachers, Louise Halloran, who is also sharing an apartment with Miss Davis. Louise is scared of something.

Miss Davis is in a relationship with one of the teachers, Addison Stevens (Bruce Cabot), who had a failed relationshp with Louise previously. MacFarland has also been trying to put the moves on Louise. And, Lousie and Otto the janitor get into a dispute over her owing him money and having given him a check that bounced. So it doesn't take much to figure out who is going to get bumped off, as well as the fact that we've got a handful of suspects who all had the motive and opportunity to kill the eventual murder victim.

It's only here that we finally meet Hildegarde Withers. She's at school late because she keeping one of the students for being a gossip. That turns out to be fortuitous in a way, in that she's able to find the body of Louise Halloran, who has obviously been murdered. Since she's already solved one murder case in The Penguin Pool Murder, she sends the student to call police detective Oscar Piper (James Gleason), since the two of them worked together on that previous murder case.

The method of killing is kind of nonsensical, and the reveal is particularly silly, but the point of watching the Hildegarde Withers movies isn't so much for the mystery as it is for the comic banter between Withers and Piper, who could each dish it out and who both have their strengths and weaknesses in trying to solve mysteries. Edna May Oliver is in pretty good form here, as is Gleason, and together they much more than the story make the movie something worth watching. These were only B movies, too, so it's not like you're going to be investing too much time in them.