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Terrible acting, screenplay and direction.

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An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Done with her marriage to a broke stockbroker, attractive blonde Mae Clarke (as Gwen Parker) decides to divorce her nasty husband. She arranges to meet younger, handsomer lover Donald Cook (as Philip Seymour) at a New York City aquarium. It's not a great place for secret rendezvous, but the aquarium is a neat place for murder. Also making the scene is fidgeting spinster schoolteacher Edna May Oliver (as Hildegarde Withers), on a field trip with her young students. Penguin enthusiast and lawyer Robert Armstrong (as Barry Costello) is also around. After a dead body is found in the penguin tank, Ms. Oliver teams up with police inspector James Gleason (as Oscar Piper) to solve the murder...This was the first in a series of movies based on characters created by novelist Stuart Palmer. This movie murder is nothing to write home about, but the lead character "Hildegarde Withers" is a delight. Even better, the spinster sleuth is played to perfection by Oliver. The part seems tailor-made for Oliver, who starred in two more entries, before leaving the role in less capable hands. Oliver gets a great sparring partner with Mr. Gleason, who stayed with the series longer. Director George Archainbaud and the RKO crew give it an intriguing setting. The diversity and attention given to Oliver's students is notable. Also, the ending event was reconsidered off screen, in Mr. Palmer's second book.****** The Penguin Pool Murder (1932-12-09) George Archainbaud ~ Edna May Oliver, James Gleason, Robert Armstrong, Mae Clarke

Angry stockbroker confronts his wife (Mae Clarke) and her former boyfriend (Donald Cook) at an aquarium. Also at the aquarium is teacher Hildegarde Withers (Edna May Oliver) with her class on a field trip. As Withers is looking into a penguin pool, the stockbroker's corpse comes floating by. Soon, police Inspector Oscar Piper (James Gleason) is on the case. Throughout the movie Withers helps Piper with his case and the two banter back and forth. Oliver and Gleason are delightful to watch. They have great comedic chemistry. Fun start to a brief detective series featuring the character of Hildegarde Withers and her beau Inspector Piper. There were only six films in the series, with Oliver playing the part of Withers in the first three films. Gleason would play Piper in all six. They were all generally fun films with doses of comedy mixed in with the murder mysteries. But the Oliver ones were the best.

... are the two lessons that this great little precode teaches us. The first lesson I think modern audiences know well, but the second we forget frequently, especially when it comes to romance.The story is not a remarkable one. Socialite Gwen Parker (Mae Clarke) is unhappily married to stockbroker Gerald Parker (Guy Usher), and she has a lover. Both her lover and her stockbroker husband are broke. Only the stockbroker's life insurance remains as an asset. As the film opens, we also see that the curator of a local aquarium is angry with Gerald Parker because he thinks he ruined him and swindled him as well. We then see Gwen talking to her lover on the phone, but we never actually see who he is. Gwen has an altercation with her rightfully jealous husband that ends with him striking her. She then decides to leave him.Later that day Gwen meets Philip Seymour (Donald Cook) at the local aquarium. Gwen's husband suddenly appears and accuses Philip and Gwen of being lovers. A scuffle between the two men breaks out and Philip knocks Gerald Parker unconscious and tells Gwen to wait for him downstairs in the aquarium. Philip then takes Gerald upstairs and the last thing we see of that scene are Philip's hands moving toward the unconscious man's throat. A few minutes later Gerald's dead body falls from above into the aquarium's penguin pool.Seems pretty cut and dried doesn't it? Well it isn't at all.Add to all of this schoolteacher Hildegarde Withers (Edna Mae Oliver) is in the aquarium at the time of the murder with her students conducting a tour of the exhibits, and that she has quite the penchant for solving mysteries as well as agitating the detective on the case, Oscar Piper (James Gleason), and you have a great little precode mystery here.What really makes this film stand out is the chemistry of the leads, Gleason and Oliver. Here are two middle-aged people, of middling income and less than middling looks in the conventional sense, yet I'll watch this film repeatedly just to see the two interact. You can see a respect and even attraction grow between these people despite the caustic remarks that they trade. Then there are those great precode one-liners from Oliver, not the kind of stuff you'd expect from a prim and proper spinster such as Hildegarde.Highly recommended as an excellent start to a good series of mystery films starring Oliver and Gleason.

Edna May Oliver is probably second only to Marie Dressler as the most famous character actress of the 1930's and Miss Dressler was a star whereas Miss Oliver tended to play mostly second leads. THE PENGUIN POOL MURDER is one of about a dozen starring features for Edna May and it an absolute treat, probably the funniest comedy-mystery ever made. The first of three films for Oliver as novelist Stuart Palmer's fiftyish caustic, snoopy schoolteacher Miss Withers, the movie was a major hit in 1932 and one can see why even today, the duologue is hilarious, the setting quite novel, and the cast is fine, especially Oliver and James Gleason who have such a superb team chemistry together is near tragic they only made three films together (Oliver left RKO-Radio Pictures in 1935 and the studio unwisely decided to carry on the series with different actresses much to moviegoers - and author Stuart Palmer's - displeasure.) The plot has been dealt with by other posters so I won't go in to it but even if murder mysteries are not your thing, if you love a good comedy you'll will thoroughly enjoy this picture as Oliver gets off some delicious zingers, mostly at the semi-incompetent Inspector Piper (Gleason)'s expense. As a mystery, it works very fine as well although I think most people might be able to pick out the murderer well before either Withers or Piper. The movie boasts two cultish 1930's leading ladies in support cast quite against character, Mae Clarke in an unusually glamorous role for her as one of the suspects and most surprising, Rochelle Hudson, best known for her ultra-wholesome ingénues, painted up like a back street hooker as a floozy of a telephone operator who has a hilarious run-in with Miss Withers. Every time I watch one of the three Oliver Miss Withers pictures I regret there are not more of them out there. At least there are a dozen or so Miss Withers novels by Stuart Palmer ( many still in print including THE PENGUIN POOL MURDER) for us to cast her again in our minds eye again in the role. I believe Hildegarde Withers is the greatest of all the old lady snoops in mystery novels and films - and that includes Miss Marple and Jessica Fletcher.