Steve Strangles and Chester Corks Up
Offbeat Attractions Of Boston Blackie's Rendezvous (1945)
By this point in the series, Inspector Farrady
(Richard Lane) should know well that Boston Blackie could not possibly be a strangle
murderer at large, but formula being strictly observed at Columbia, here they'd
go again at BB drawing suspicion and thick-head police jumping to wrong
conclusions. This series needed every ounce of Chester Morris' likeability;
beyond him, most are fairly dim. Comedy's a byword, confusion with a Columbia two-reeler a
risk if you enter partway through a Blackie. Speaking of that, Morris and
sidekick George E. Stone cork up as hotel chambermaids to "Yowsah,
Boss!" dumb cops and a looking mortified Clarence Muse. So how many series
detectives donned skirts and did minstrel acts as part of investigation?
Unbalanced killer Steve Cochran links charm with bug-eye menace, a perf helped
by low light and sections allowing him to dominate (did Steve have a friend on
the BB unit? --- he did a couple of them, including his screen debut).
Rendezvous might be a best of the Boston
group for Cochran and blackface antics alone; minus these it would be a slog
most of the rest were.
I got hooked on those Boston Blackies when TCM ran them every Saturday. They're no Sherlock Holmes, that's for sure. And to see a blackface routine that outrageous (as if it isn't outrageous to begin with) as late as 1945 is just strange. (I know it's too much to ask, but where did Blackie and the Shrimp find those dresses?)
ReplyDeleteOne Boston Blackie movie, "One Mysterious Night," stands out from the rest, probably because it was directed by Oscar (later Budd) Boetticher. It's the only one in the series where anybody put some real thought into it.
I've read one of the original Boston Blackie novels, and he's nothing like his movie version. In fact, I kept seeing William Powell in my mind.