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.

Little Women (1933)

I seem to have copies of a surprising number of movies in Summer Under the Stars this year that I haven't blogged about before. Another one coming up, for Katharine Hepburn's day, is the 1933 version of Little Women, tomorrow (August 18) at 9:30 AM.

Now, I have to admit that before doing this post, I had not read the novel by Louisa May Alcott on which this and the other movie versions is based. Nor had I watched any of the movie versions all the way through, although I had seen parts of at least the 1949 version that has Elizabeth Taylor and Peter Lawford in the cast. But I did know vaguely of the plot, namely that it deals with the struggles of the four March sisters in Massachusetts during the Civil War while their father is off serving the Union Army.

The sisters are Jo (short for Josephine, played by Katharine Hepburn), Meg (Frances Dee), Beth (Jean Parker) and Amy (Joan Bennett). Meg, the eldest, is making some extra money for the family by working as a seamstress. Jo is a bit of a tomboy and dreams of becoming a professional writer. Amy is the youngest and just finishing her education, while Beth is musically inclined. They live with their mother (Spring Byington), while also having an Aunt (Edna May Oliver) who is better off and exerts a bit of control on the family although she's not the villain of the piece by any means. There's really no villain here.

The Marches live next door to Mr. Laurence (Henry Stephenson) but aren't all that close to him. The relationship is about to change, however, when his grandson Laurie (Douglass Montgomery) arrives from Europe and spends some time with grandfather. All the girls are taken by this handsome young man, but obviously, no more than one of the girls can have him. Laurie also has a tutor, John Brooke, which gives another man for the girls to go gaga over.

The war hits home for the family when news reaches them that Dad has been injured and is at an army hospital in Washington; eventually he comes home although he's never a major character. Beth has gotten sick by this time and there's some fear that she's going to die. Jo eventually goes off to New York to try to make it as a writer, where she meets German professor Baer (Paul Lukas), and those two may or may not wind up becoming romantically involved if Jo can't have Laurie.

Little Women is more episodic than having an overriding plot, and this telling of the tale really puts the emphasis on Jo since it's Katharine Hepburn in that part. Hepburn is, unsurprisingly, a force of nature here, and to me that force is not always appropriate. At times it works quite well, but sometimes it's just too much.

The movie has production values that are quite good for 1933, although this sort of period material is stuff that modern productions can do without making it look quite so backlot-bound. Still, for a 1930s literary adaptation, this version of Little Women does quite well.

A Tale of Two Cities (1935)

I've suggested before that MGM was at its best when it was doing things like literary adaptations of classic works. Recently, I got the chance to see their 1935 adaptation of Charles Dickens' novel A Tale of Two Cities, which is a good example of what MGM could do.

I have to admit that I haven't actually read the book; I was in the section of English classes in my high school that did Great Expecctations instead, so I can't talk about how well the movie hews to the plot of the novel. After a title card with the famous "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times" opening, the action shifts to England in the 1770s. A man who works for a bank that has offices in both London and Paris is looking for Lucy Mannette (Elizabeth Allan). She was born in France, but was taken to England and raised by lady's companion Miss Pross (Edna May Oliver) when her father died. Except that Dad (Henry Walthall) didn't actually die, but was imprisoned for years in the Bastille, and has only recently gotten out of prison. So Lucy and Pross travel to Paris to fetch Dad, which is where they meet Madam DeFarge (Blanche Yurka) and her husband.

Since it's early in the reign of Louis XIV, who would of course be executed in the French Revolution a dozen-plus years later, there's a lot of social unrest bubbling under the surface that's going to come out in the later stages of the movie, with the peasants absolutely hating the nobility. Some nobles, however, understand that what the rest of their estate is doing is counterproductive; one such man is Charles Darnay (Donald Woods), who is fleeing for England. That's because he's got an uncle, the Marquis St. Evremonde (Basil Rathbone) who's so nasty that he'd frame his own nephew for treason. He also went after one of Mme. Defarge's relatives as well as Dr. Mannette.

Darnay escaped conviction, however, thanks in no small part to the work of one of his lawyers, Sydney Carton (Ronald Colman). So it's when Darnay is fleeing to England that he meets Lucie, who later also meets Carton. Both men love Lucie, but Lucie has already decided to marry Darnay. And then the French Revolution comes....

The peasants, of course, hate the nobility, and one of them kills the Marquis. This is used to get Darnay to go back to Paris, even though he as a noble, despite one who's changed his name, is going to be in serious danger from the revolutionary mob. Lucie rather stupidly goes with Pross to Paris to try to get her husband freed; if she had never married him she'd probably have been fine, but as the wife of a condemned man she's in danger. Ironically, the person from whom she's most in danger is Mme. Defarge. Who will still be alive after the final reel is finished? Well, if you've read the book you'll probably know, but I'm not about to reveal that.

A Tale of Two Cities being based on a work by Charles Dickens, the story is suitably complicated and long running. But MGM adapts it well, at least as far as I can tell not having read the book. The movie has fine production values, and some pretty darn good performances. Ronald Colman as Sydney Carton is top here; apparently he's always wanted to essay this role. But Blanche Yurka as Defarge and Edna May Oliver as Pross also do well, although Oliver is decidedly more American.

For those who like the always-glittering style that MGM could bring to movies in the 1930s and 1940s, A Tale of Two Cities is a fine example of that, and definitely one to watch.

Pride and Prejudice (1940)

One of the prestige movies that I had not actually seen before is MGM's 1940 adaption of the Jane Austen novel Pride and Prejudice. So the last time that it showed up on TCM a few months back, I made a point of recording it so that I could finally get around to watching it and doing a full-length post on it.

The first thing to note is that the movie is based on a stage adaptation of the novel and that other changes were made to the novel in part to get it to run in a reasonable amount of time and in part because the Production Code would have had problems in a few places. I haven't read the original book, so I can't judge how much the changes affect what Jane Austen was trying to achieve with her work. But from what I've read, the main basic plot is still there.

Mr. Bennet (Edmund Gwenn) is the father in a family that doesn't quite have the means or the social standing to be truly members of the British upper classes of the Regency era. Not that the family is poor, mind you; it's more that their situation is best described as modest. Worse is that Bennet and his wife (Mary Boland) produced five daughters, and this is an era when property couldn't really be bequeathed to unmarried women like the daughters. So the parents are desperate to find suitably men to marry their daughters off to, starting with eldest daughter Elizabeth (Gree Garson). Otherwise, a cousin they don't like, Collins (Melville Cooper) will inherit the house.

Meanwhile, even without having read the novel I know that it is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. Into the small town where the Bennets live comes Mr. Bingley, a wealthy bachelor renting one of the manor houses in the area, along with his good friend Mr. Darcy (Laurence Olivier). Mrs. Bennett immediately gets the idea of introducing her daughters to these two in the hopes that one or both of them will decide to marry a Bennet daughter.

But there are a bunch of catches along the way. One is Mr. Collins, who wants to marry Elizabeth. There's also the fact that Darcy is not really of the same social stratum as the Bennets. And then there's Lady Catherine (Edna May Oliver), who has been helping out Darcy. She's set up an allowance for Darcy, and can remove it if he marries someone she disapproves of. There are further complications involving the other sisters, one of whom is being pursued by a man named Wickham who has a bit of a past that's all kept mysterious.

It's fairly obvious, however, that Darcy and Elizabeth are going to meet and fall in love, and eventually get married at the end of the story so that audiences can have their happy ending, which was particularly important with war clouds on the horizon.

Will fans of the original novel, especially if they've seen later adaptations that are more faithful to the source material, enjoy this 1940 version? I don't know. But I can say that for people who enjoy the sort of literary adaptation that Hollywood studios made in the pre-war era, they'll probably enjoy it quite a bit. MGM, as I've said, was probably the prestige studio in Hollywood, and their production values are the kind that work exceedingly well for a period piece like this even if it's not quite the same period as in the book. They've also got a lot of stars and character actors; Ann Rutherford and Maureen O'Sullivan play two of Elizabeth's sisters, for example.

So I'd say there's a lot worth recommending in this adaptation of Pride and Prejudice.