THE PENGUIN POOL MURDER
US, 1932, 62 minutes, Black-and-white.
Edna May Oliver, Robert Armstrong, James Gleason, Mae Clark, Donald Cook, Edgar Kennedy, Clarence Wilson.
Directed by George Archainbaud.
A small B-budget supporting feature, early talkie, that can be recommended. It has an entertaining murder mystery, some humorous and snappy dialogue, but, most important of all, the presence of Edna May Oliver, as a schoolteacher who is present in an aquarium with her students at the time of the murder.
Strange as it may seem, Edna May Oliver receives top billing and excels herself with a skill in detection, solving the case in a dramatic scene in court. Many admirers of classic Hollywood movies would remember her as Miss Pross in A Tale of Two Cities as well as the nurse in Romeo and Juliet. She made quite an impact, gathering all her strong presence and screen style, her commanding all and sundry, as Lady Catherine De Burgh in the 1941 Pride and Prejudice.
Her performance in this 1932 film is very much as the screen persona she presented over many years, reprising this role of the teacher, Hildegarde Withers, in two sequels, Murder on the Honeymoon, Murder on the Blackboard, co-starring again with James Gleason as Inspector Piper. (There were to be three other Hildegarde Withers stories, one with Helen Brodrrick, two with Zasu Pits, all with James Gleason).
There is a lot of amusement watching the seemingly haughty Hildegarde Withers ordering her students around in the aquarium, to find her lost hat pin, her discovering the body, her taking notes, comparing them with Inspector Piper, to-ing and fro-ing with him, Edna May Oliver excellent with comeuppance repartee as well as double takes.
And some lively fish scenes – and cute penguins!
The audience has seen the victim, the selfish man who slaps his wife, a rich broker, visiting the aquarium, confronting his wife’s former boyfriend from whom she is borrowing money, an attack and his slipping and falling unconscious. There is a range of suspects, especially the boyfriend, even the wife, who don’t seem to look like murderers, the manager of the aquarium who is in financial detriment because of gambling (Clarence Wilson always look sinister in films), a mute pickpocket who has been operating in the aquarium, the concerned barrister.
Lots of good discussions and theories between Piper and Hildegarde, she also being a good cook and inviting him to a meal. The couple are imprisoned on suspicion. The barrister is concerned to defend the wife. The mute pickpocket is also imprisoned – and later found hanged in his cell, the barrister admitting that he bought electric cord into the prison undetected but that it was the young man who had committed the murder.
In court, the barrister creates a scenario where Hildegarde Withers had been slighted years earlier in a love affair with the murdered man. However, in his questioning of her he gives away a clue was known only to four people – which means that he is the murderer. Hildegard expects the couple to finish romantically, but they have been denouncing each other. She emerges from jail, goes to the friend and he slaps her and walks off!!
Not only is Inspector Piper impressed, he makes a more permanent proposal – which she accepts.
This is Hollywood pre-budget at its best.
