Perry Kate Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

WasAnnon Slow pace in the most part of the movie.

Actuakers One of my all time favorites.

YouHeart I gave it a 7.5 out of 10

utgard14 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.

csteidler Schoolteacher Edna May Oliver brings her class to the aquarium. A dead man tumbles into the penguin tank before their eyes. The kids vanish, and Oliver spends the rest of the picture teaming up with police detective James Gleason to solve the murder. It's a quick and sometimes hilarious case.Gleason locks up about half of the cast over the course of the film; eventually he's positive he's got the right man and vows to turn in his badge if he's wrong, to which Oliver responds: "If you turned in a badge every time you suspected the wrong person in this case, the department would have to have a special trophy room for them." Gleason is not discouraged ("Don't mind the badge situation, I can take care of that") but he has gradually come to value her ideas and ingenuity.It's a lively partnership between two gruffly charming characters—the two stars are excellent, and are both at their best when on the screen together.A fun supporting cast includes Robert Armstrong as a lawyer who appears somewhat mysteriously; Mae Clark and Donald Cook as attractive young suspects who may or may not fall (or be) in love; the wonderful Clarence Wilson, he of the bald head, mustache, and eternal twitch, as aquarium manager Bertram B. Hemingway; and the great Edgar Kennedy as—naturally—a bewildered cop. (Officer Kennedy is completely bald in this one rather than just on the dome. Odd.) The final minute of the picture is priceless, with Oliver and Gleason watching an exonerated pair of suspects emerge from jail into the courtyard below his office window, and then discussing what's next in their careers. A couple of sequels, thank you!

sol ***SPOILERS*** Excellent detective movie involving spinster teacher Hilderard Martha Winters, Edna May Oliver, solving a murder mystery that New York's police top detective Oscar Piper, James Gleason, couldn't even get a handle on.It's when stockbroker Gerald Parker, Guy Usher, is found dead after being dumped in the Battery Park Aquarium's penguin pool that it's the late Gerald Parker's wife's Gwen's, Mea Cark, former boyfriend Philip Seymour, Donald Cook, who's suspected in his murder. Gwen planning to leave Gerald after he slapped her was to secretly meet Seymour at the aquarium to restart their love affair until Gerald, who followed her there, unexpectedly showed up! In a scuffle Seymour knocked Gerald cold and the last thing you know he's in the penguin pool as dead as a doornail!With top cop Oscar Piper showing up at the scene of the crime he doesn't have any trouble getting a confession out of Seymour in Gerald's murder. As it turned out teacher Hildegarde Winters was taking her students on a field trip to the aquarium and being as observant as she is saw things differently. Catching a pickpocket Chicago Lew, James Hermond, in the act with her umbrella Hildegarde also was framed by the killer by using her hat-pin that he stole, during all the confusion, to do poor Mr. Parker in! That's after both Gwen & Seymour left him laying unconscious on the stairs above the penguin pool!It's Hildegard's common sense and brilliant detective work that in the end uncover Gerald Parker's murderer who's own arrogance and hubris ended up doing him in! Something that Hildegard noticed about Gerald's killer that top NY city police department cop Oscar Piper had no clue about was that he in fact had a good reason for doing Gerald in: love & money. The most despicable thing that Gerald Parker's killer did was beside trying to implicate Hildergarde in his crime in make up a cock & bull story in that she was in fact his,Gerald Parker's, secret lover back in her home town in Iowa who took revenge on him, by murdering Gerald, for leaving her.***SPOILERS***Of course the witty and on the ball Hilderguard expected this line of questioning from that low down rat and was more then ready for him with a big surprise of her own. The surprise that the killer unknowingly himself supplied for her by proving that he, not Hildegarde Seymour or Gwen, in fact murdered Mr.Parker! That in a trap that both Hildegarde and Piper set for him that he fell lock stock and barrel for!

mark.waltz Edna May Oliver was one of a kind. Yes, that sniff of disapproval was funny, and her oh-so-uppity voice could stop fools in their tracks. But this was a woman filled with life and the desire to kick it up a notch whenever she felt like it. Being at the wrong place at the right time was par for the course for Miss Withers who, like Jessica Fletcher afterwards, was a heroine Agatha Christie would love. EMO was the first of four actresses to play the role of Hildegard Withers, and the best. Zasu Pitts and Helen Broderick would add their own take to it for single appearances at RKO, and Eve Arden would bring the character back in a TV movie 40 years later, but other than Arden, who had the benefit of years between the character's appearance, Pitts and Broderick were both too different than Oliver to make the character seem to be the same person, especially with James Gleason around as her initial foe and later beau Oscar Piper for all five of the RKO series.In "The Penguin Pool Murder", an aquarium is the spot for murder, and leave it to chance for Hildegard Withers to be there. Manager Clarence Wilson is angry over loosing in the stock market, and his broker is having marital spats with his cheating wife (Mae Clarke). When a penguin's feeding time is disturbed by the sudden fall of a dead body, pandemonium erupts. Miss Withers is suspect too when it is discovered that her previously missing hat pin might be the weapon. The way the murder occurred is horrific, so beware of the cringing feeling you will get once it is revealed. Once Oliver and Gleason start going at it as Withers and Piper, you've got a pre-Nick and Nora team that will be filled with exchanges of barbs you'd never expect such a prim and proper lady as Miss Withers to disclose. These two really are the whole show as they are scene-stealers extraordinaire. Even Edgar Kennedy as a cop can't win with Oliver's nose twitching or Gleason's New York drawl answering Oliver's insults with retorts of his own. And as the affection between Oliver and Gleason grows, you know you're in for a treat.