Penguin Pool Murder (1932)
Directed by George Archainbaud

Film Review

Unlikely as it may seem, Margaret Rutherford's Miss Marple is not the most deliriously eccentric amateur sleuth to have invaded the movies.  Oh, no.  Thirty years before, Edna May Oliver revelled in the role of the definitive spinster 'tec, in a series of comedy-mysteries for RKO that began with The Penguin Pool Murder.   Oliver brings Stuart Palmer's fictional creation to life with just as much fun and vigour as Rutherford later did with her famous Agatha Christie portrayal, her only on-screen rival being a seriously cute little penguin who (alas) had nothing whatever to do with the murder.

The Penguin Pool Murder is hardly the most challenging of murder mysteries.  If you haven't correctly identified the killer by the end of the second reel you've probably been asleep or else suffering the effects of a full frontal lobotomy.  The film may not tax the brain cells but it provides plenty of exercise for the laughter muscles, the main point of interest being the bizarre relationship that develops between Edna May Oliver's Miss Withers (an anarchist in petticoats) and James Gleason's dim-witted police inspector.  These two characters provide most of the entertainment value, lobbing withering putdowns at each other like hand grenades as they go about crazily complicating the easiest murder investigation in history.

For a film that is for the most part formulaic and predictable there are some nice subversive touches, such as the twist at the end where the juvenile leads fail to deliver the expected happy ending.  Partnered by James Gleason, Edna May Oliver would return as the indefatigable Miss Withers in Murder on the Blackboard (1934) and Murder on a Honeymoon (1935), after which she surrendered the role to lesser comedy performers Helen Broderick ZaSu Pitts. Oliver lent her talents to over a dozen films subsequently, including The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle (1939) and Pride and Prejudice (1940), before her premature death in 1942.

Film Synopsis

Gwen Parker meets Philip Seymour, an old flame of hers, at a New York aquarium to ask for money so that she can leave her tyrannical husband, stockbroker Gerald Parker.  The aquarium's director, Bertrand Hemingway, has recently been swindled by Parker and so makes an anonymous phone call, informing him of his wife's secret assignation.  Parker naturally mistakes Seymour for his wife's present lover and threatens him.  Seymour reacts by punching him, rendering him unconscious.  A short while later, Parker's lifeless body is found floating in a penguin pool.  Seymour confesses to prevent Gwen, the obvious murder suspect, from being arrested but one person, an interfering schoolteacher named Hildegarde Withers, is certain that neither of these can be the killer.  Determined to resolve the mystery, and thereby prove her own innocence (since her hatpin was used as the murder weapon), Miss Withers gatecrashes the police investigation, and proves to be an invaluable ally to Inspector Oscar Piper...