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.
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.