Murder with Music (1941) User Reviews

Noble Sissle makes it all worth while

[kidboots · 3/10 · 5 April 2009]

Nellie Hill was a popular nightclub performer who appeared in this film and "Killer Diller" (1948) - it is not hard to see why she only made two films, she was an extremely bad actress.

Editor (Bob Howard) needs a reporter to gather information on a nightclub singer, Lola (Nellie Hill), who is mixed up with some pretty shady types, including Mike (Bill Dillard) an escaped convict. Lola has one of those "new fangled TV sets" - pretty amazing for a grade D film of 1941!!! She and Mike view a musical number "Geeshee", set in the jungle and featuring a witch doctor and lots of dancing girls.It has a very confusing story as it is mostly told in flashback by the editor to an eager young reporter who desperately wants a job.

Bill Smith (Ken Kenard) was once a policeman but is now a nightclub owner. He is trailed to his house by a reporter, who hides behind a chair. Smith and his date drunkenly exit via a window and the next minute Lola and Mike go to Bill's with a policeman claiming it is their flat and they have been burgled. Before too long the policeman is playing the piano and Lola is singing songs from her new show - "It Ain't Right"!!! If that is true why, in the next scene, is she auditioning for a spot in Bill's club??? Just when you are wondering - is there going to be a murder??? - there is - and then!!!

The thing that makes this watchable are the musical numbers. The wonderful Noble Sissle (who has more charisma and talent in his little finger than all the actors in this film put together!!!) and his Band perform at a masquerade party in which only 2 people wear masks!!! They perform some very catchy songs - "Too Late Baby", "Hello Happiness", and "Running Around". A pity Sissle wasn't given the lead, he would have been the best actor in the film. There were also some pretty good variety acts, including another band "Skippy Williams Band", who were great. Marjorie Oliver was also memorable as Bill's sassy secretary.

These films may have been crudely made but at least they were a realistic interpretation of the Afro-American way of life at a time when white America was still laughing at Stepin' Fechit.

Recommended only for Noble Sissle.

Good Music, Not Much Murder

[boblipton · 5/10 · 4 September 2021]

The story is told with the wraparound gimmick of newspaper editor Bob Howard on the phone, trying to get the story of the murder in time for his edition. He appears occasionally to remind the audience that, yes, this is a murder, and not just the story of Nellie Hill, trying to break into show business, with men anxious to hellp her make connections/ The actual murder takes place a couple of minutes before the end credits, and is promptly solved.

It's an excuse for the second part of the title, with good performances by Noble Sissle and his band, ad a couple of good, energetic dancing acts. Like many race movies of the era, it's not much as cinema, but is a lot of fun showing off contemporary musical acts.

I think I liked the music more than the plot.

[planktonrules · 3/10 · 17 May 2019]

Back in the 1920s into the 50s, America's movie theaters were often segregated...with black audience members either forced to sit in designated 'blacks only' sections or they were outright banned from theaters. Not surprisingly, this racism resulted in entrepreneurs in the black community opening their own theaters and producing their own movies. Some are rather entertaining but most are pretty poor when you watch them today...mostly because the budgets for the films were paltry. "Murder with Music" is one of those films designed for black movie theaters... if you are curious to watch it.

The story begins with a pushy and cocky guy barging into the editor's office looking for a job with the newspaper. Instead of telling him to get lost or hiring him, the patient editor tells the guy a story about another reporter...one whose cockiness got him in a heap of trouble. Interestingly, soon within this story the cocky reporter watches television*....so it becomes a story within a story within a story for some time! The lady in the editor's story, Nellie, is very pretty and very popular. When one of her old boyfriends is killed, the question is who did it and why. Confusing...huh?

So is it any good? Well, some of the acting is suspect--with quite a few scenes where the actors' delivery was poor. In more expensive productions, the directors probably would have re-shot the scenes...but most of the black films of the era simply didn't have the budget for re-shoots. I should point out that the editor, in contrast, was a pretty good actor and it's a shame Bob Howard didn't do more acting....with less than a half dozen credits to his name. There is also a lot of music and dancing in the film. Most of it looks VERY cramped as they pushed the performers into minuscule sets...possibly to save money. Despite this, some of the music was exceptional--particularly the band about 15 minutes into the film. At times, however, the music and dancing acts seemed like distractions from the plot...though a few were enjoyable distractions. My overall verdict is that compared to similar productions, this one is about average....though compared to the average cheap B-film of the era it comes up a bit short. Entertaining...provided you cut the film some slack.



*Televisions were nearly unheard of back in 1941 and were definitely in the early stages. Only a couple American cities had broadcasts and what they did broadcast was extremely limited. And, the early TVs were often the weird glass projected units like the one in this film. Also, the show on TV featured a mostly black cast...along with an actor in black-face! Such racism, surprisingly, did creep into some of these productions and I've seen black-face actors or Stepin Fetchit-type characters in these pictures. I also suspect the black-face actor actually might have been a black man posing as a white man posing as a black man!

Like a David Lynch film but with good music and without the naked people

[rooprect · 2 February 2010]

This is a strange movie. The breaks in continuity, leaps of logic, robotic lines and random editing make it a surreal experience. Half a century later, bizarro director David Lynch would make a moderately successful career of it. Other aspiring filmmakers--like my 9- year-old nephew--would not be as lucky.

I genuinely found it engaging. All sarcasm aside, I had fun trying to piece together what was happening while at the same time counting the continuity missteps. It was a bit like that game in the Sunday funnies where you're supposed to find 10 things that are wrong with the picture. There's a shirt on a hanger... Now it's gone... Now there's a glass of milk... Now it has mutated into two empty glasses... At a certain point I became convinced that these "goofs" were deliberate, which is how Lynch fans defend such things. Maybe so. I also got a sense of a very "Airplane"-ish style of deadpan humour, as in the hilariously bizarre scene where a policeman is having a jolly time playing the piano whilst behind his back an escaped convict is pistolwhipping random strangers and forcing a few dozen people into a broom closet. The climactic scene (the titular "murder") is so fantastically contrived (and no less fantastically explained in one sentence) that you're left feeling like you just inhaled a mentholyptus cough drop ...up your nose and directly into your brain. What a trip!!

This film defies all ratings. You'll have to make up your own mind if it's a Lynchian masterpiece or a colossal turd (or both?). But I will say that the music is a real treat.

Worth watching only for the historical context, for Nellie Hill's vocals, for Noble Sissle and for two first-rate songs

[Terrell-4 · 2/10 · 28 January 2008]

So is a movie worth watching when the direction is even clunkier than the acting, when the acting with only one or two exceptions is embarrassingly amateurish, when the plot is chopped up and dull, when the jokes and comedy relief aren't just flat they're concave, and when the murder in the title is barely squeezed in 55 minutes into the 58 minute run time? Yes, but just barely.

Murder with Music is one of the movies featuring black actors and entertainers that Hollywood cranked out to fill America's segregated (officially or de factor) movie theaters in the Thirties, Forties and early Fifties. The name of this game was minimal budgets and production values, but with lots of musical numbers. The plots are almost irrelevant. This one features Lola (Nellie Hill), a singer in the nightclub owned by Bill Smith (Ken Renard). Lola has suitors, including an escaped convict, a piano player and a reporter. With off-and-on flashbacks we see the comedy mix-ups and mistaken motives that are played mostly for laughs. As time passes, this plot becomes really tiresome. The acting doesn't help much. Nellie Hill evidently only made two movies. She was a fine-looking young woman with a bright and warming smile, a first-class vocalist and an awful actress. Ken Renard, who had a long career mainly in secondary roles, especially in television, carries the acting load. He's assured and competent. The movie's value is that in 58 minutes nine major musical numbers are squeezed in. We have songs by Hill, tap-dancing duos, a comedy song well sung by a large man I couldn't find a credit for, plus Noble Sissle and his orchestra in some fine swing numbers. There's a production number supposedly being shown on a primitive television set that is gobstopping: Chorus girls dressed mainly in bandanas and bananas dance and stomp about telling us to "flip your lip, I'm a bangie from Ubangy." There are, however, two first class (and totally forgotten) songs. "Too Late, Baby" by Sidney Easton and Gus Smith is a clever swing number and "Can't Help It" by Skippy Williams is a bluesy torch song with a fine melody...

It ain't right to love someone the way I love you like I do. It ain't right to love someone that don't love you.

I can't help it if I love you and you're cheatin' on me, too. It ain't right but I can't help it 'cause I do.

I'll wash and dry your dishes. I'll clean and make your bed. I'll work and slave around you 'Til my face turns cherry red.

I can't help it if I want to work and slave to be with you. It ain't right but I can't help it 'cause I do.

Film is NOT from 1941

[marvy42 · 3/10 · 16 June 2020]

To get it out of the way at the beginning, the film was made in either late 1946 or early 1947, not 1941. We know this for two reasons: (1) In the scene in the secretary's office, there's a poster on the wall for Stepin Fetchit's movie "Big Timers", which was a 1945 film, and (2) there was no "Nellie Hill" in 1941; Nellie Harrell didn't marry Charles Wesley Hill until 1942. The acting is horrendous; fortunately, the music is really good. Not a spoiler, but ask yourself this: "how, exactly, do you know the piano player is dead?"

Film is NOT from 1941

[marvy42 · 3/10 · 16 June 2020]

To get it out of the way at the beginning, the film was made in either late 1946 or early 1947, not 1941. We know this for two reasons: (1) In the scene in the secretary's office, there's a poster on the wall for Stepin Fetchit's movie "Big Timers", which was a 1945 film, and (2) there was no "Nellie Hill" (or "Nelle" as it's misspelled in the credits) in 1941; Nellie Harrell didn't marry Charles Wesley Hill until 1942. The acting is horrendous; fortunately, the music is really good. Not a spoiler, but ask yourself this: "how, exactly, do you know the piano player is dead?"

This movie was originally shot as "Mistaken Identity", although it's unclear if it was ever released at the time. It was then cut up, some new scenes filmed, and reassembled as "Murder With Music" (the scenes from "Mistaken Identity" were intercut as flashbacks).

Music plus. Murder...Eh.

[mark.waltz · 3/10 · 11 February 2014]

A Carmen Jones like femme fatal (Nellie Hill) leads on three men of varying characters and one of them ends up dead. That part of the film takes up barely 25 percent of the hour long running time, the remainder being some truly enjoyable nightclub sequences. While the vixen is stunningly beautiful, she is also totally one dimensional and how she turns the good guys into saps is at times too painfully unbelievable to watch. A hangar on cop sticks around in one lengthy scene only so he can play the piano for the vamp. The film finally wakes up when the specialty acts (including Nobel Sissel and his Orchestra) begin to perform, but an extremely sudden ending jars what could have been barely passable and turns the over-all effect into near disaster.

So bad it's good?

[DoctorThotcer · 5/10 · 5 September 2021]

The script makes no sense, the direction is just strange, the editing very poor, there's some terrible acting and poor miming, yet it's oddly watchable.

Highlights: spot the band members who have never played an instrument before, the moment a tap dancer keeps being shown off-screen in sound only, a lady pretending to take phone calls who says all her lines but leaves no spaces to hear the other half of the conversation she's supposedly reacting to, and strange moments of selective deafness by some of the cast as others share lines right in front of them that they apparently can't hear.

There's some great music, and that's about it's only real saving grace.

terrible movie, but amusing and has good music and dancing

[FieCrier · 6/10 · 1 May 2009]

The movie is pretty ineptly shot and edited, and a lot of the acting is really bad. The musical numbers however are quite enjoyable. The absurdity of the story is actually pretty amusing. The framing device for the movie is a reporter applying for a job. The editor isn't going to hire him, but spends the movie telling a story about a prior reporter on the nightclub beat. Occasionally the foreign reporter breaks in, speaks French or German, and leaves. In the end of the movie, they don't return to the editor's office, the movie ends in the past.

The funniest scene is when a man who's broken out of prison has tricked a policeman into letting him and his girlfriend into the apartment of an ex-policeman who's now a nightclub owner, so he can change out of the (I guess?) prison clothes underneath his trenchcoat. The policeman neither recognizes the prison escapee, not realizes he's not the ex-cop. Instead, he and the girlfriend do a musical number at the piano, while the woman's other boyfriend the reporter bops to the musical from his hiding place, and the escapee threatens partiers showing up at the door with a gun and ushers them into a closet.

The "Bangie from Ubangie" number on the television is also remarkable, as others have noted. The one black man in the number is wearing blackface! Why?

Three stars is generous.

[michaeldbirt · 3/10 · 4 September 2021]

Interesting to see a movie made for a black audience with an all-black cast at a time of segretion in the U. S. Some very good singing and dancing, especially Skippy Williams and his Orchestra. Clunky editing and acting and a not-good script, but interesting to see an early television which, at the time would have cost arond $395 (nearly one-third of the all male annual income - black men earned 0.6 of the white wage in 1940), and well out of the range of most Americans, let alone the target audience. The singer was clearly doing VERY well. Overall, best missed except for the historical context.

The most amateurish, disjointed, impossible-to-follow mess ever presented as a movie!

[JohnHowardReid · 3/10 · 27 October 2017]

Bob Howard (editor), Milton J. Williams (Ted), Nelle Hill (Lola), George Oliver (Hal), Bill Dillard (Mike), Marjorie Oliver (secretary), Ruth Cobbs (Mary Smith), Ken Renard (Bill Smith), Andrew Maize (Jerry), Pinky Williams (Lewis), Skippy Williams (Bond), and Noble Sissle and his Orchestra (themselves), Alston & Young, Johnson & Johnson (dance teams).

Director: GEORGE P. QUIGLEY. Screenplay: Victor Vicas, Norman Borisoff, Gus Smith. Story: George Freedland. Photography: George Webber, John Visconti. Songs by Skippy Williams: "Jam Session", "Can't Help It". Songs by Sidney Easton and Gus Smith: "Geeshee", "Too Late Baby", "Hello, Happiness", "Running Around". Sound recording: Robert Rosien. Producer: George P. Quigley.

Century Productions. 59 minutes.

SYNOPSIS: Bill Smith owns a nightclub. He and his wife drink a little too much wine and end up in jail.

COMMENT: I know that Ed Wood is universally famed as the world's worst director, but I disagree. I'd like to nominate George P. Quigley. On the evidence of this movie, Mr. Quigley easily outdistances Mr. Wood. After all, many of Ed's shots match. Not all, mind you, but say around 70%. Mr. Quigley, however, scores no more than 10% (and that's being generous). In other words, at least nine out of ten shots don't match. The film is not so much edited (I notice nobody wants to claim any credit for that assignment), but chopped together with a meat-ax.

Furthermore, some of the acting in an Ed Wood film rates as fairly passable. In this movie, only Ken Renard (as the nightclub owner), Andrew Maize (as the cretinous cop) and the ladies (Nelle Hill, Ruth Cobbs and an uncredited miss) deliver anything at all that might pass for a performance. In fact, these people actually deserve a big cheer. You should see what they have to work with.

The script by Victor Vicas (later to direct "The Wayward Bus") and company is positively the most amateurish, disjointed, impossible- to-follow mess ever presented in the cinema. The murder, for instance, takes place in the last two minutes of the movie. The piano player (an obscure character) is the victim. Why? Who knows? And which of the featured players is the killer? Who knows? And what's even more important: Who cares?

So why bother to see this bungle of a home movie? One reason, but an important one: Noble Sissle. If you dote on Mr. Sissle's band (and I do), you'll gladly sit through this farrago to catch (and hear) the boys in action.

Pleasant movie!

[msladysoul · 8 March 2004]

This movie is very pleasant, it has a story and dialogue filled with wonderful Black entertainment. This movie is about a lady-killer played by the lovely Nellie Hill who has many man in love with her, one a escaped convict, two a piano player, and a newspaper man, one of her lovers get killed, and one of her men committed the crime. who? you have to watch and see, but during it all great singing and dancing speciality numbers. The incomparable Noble Sissle and his orchestra appears playing wonderful numbers, and other hot bands. The wonderful Bob Howard appears, also pretty Ruth Cobbs, very entertaining movie. I think anyone who sees it, will enjoy it.

The Music Makes the Film

[Michael_Elliott · 28 February 2017]

Murder with Music (1941)

** (out of 4)

Nellie Hill plays Lola, a wonderful singer who finds herself caught up with three very different men. Soon one of the men are murdered and we must determine who the guilty party is.

MURDER WITH MUSIC is another low-budget race film that suffers from various technical issues but all of them stems from the fact that the production just didn't have much money. With that said, if you're a fan of these movies then you'll find this one to be mildly entertaining thanks to everything going on except for the plot.

The actual plot dealing with the murder takes up very little of the running time. At just a hour there's not much of a running time to begin with but the majority of it is devoted to various nightclub acts where we see and hear some good musical numbers. There's obviously nothing here that you'd consider a classic but I still found the musical numbers to be entertaining in their own way.

The cinematography is a tad bit rough, the direction is soft and for the most part the performances are a bit rough. All of these things are to be expected but, as I said, the music makes the film somewhat entertaining.