Forty Naughty Girls (1937)

The German language film is set during a performance of a musical revue. The production numbers of the musical review are staged as a musical. The murder mystery, in the theater while the performance progresses, is played as a standard detective story. This concept,of two independent stories played side by side, during a short time interval in the same theater in just over an hour, carries into the American remake. What is added to the American remake is that the inspector and the amateur sleuth are stock characters of a detective series. Neither the quality of the musical production numbers nor the plot line of the murder mystery live up to the German language original. The value of this film is more a valuable memory of films of this important era of the past than a film of high quality on its own right.

The least you can say about the 6 Hildegarde Withers films is that they tried to give us a different setting for murder in each episode; the New York Aquarium, The Continental Museum, Catalina Island, etc. In "Forty Naughty Girls", there are two extra elements: there is just one setting, a Broadway theater where the sold-out title show is being presented, and the story plays out in "real time". This is the most comedy-oriented entry in the series, with Hildegarde doing arguably more pratfalling than detecting; nonetheless, she does at least manage to solve the case herself (and it's a tough one), unlike the previous Zasu Pitts outing ("The Plot Thickens"), where Inspector Oscar Piper should take about 90% of the credit. Tom Kennedy, a "Torchy Blane" series regular at the time as dumb cop Gahagan, makes a guest appearance as....dumb cop Casey, and as usual he guarantees some good laughs ("There is the killer, and he brought his horse!"). For a B production, "Forty Naughty Girls" does a good job of "faking" a higher budget than it probably had. **1/2 out of 4.

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.

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.