It’s no secret that the Hollywood Comet loves musicals.
In 2010, I revealed I had seen 400 movie musicals over the course of eight years. Now that number is over 600. To celebrate and share this musical love, here is my weekly feature about musicals.

This week’s musical:
Murder at the Windmill(1949) – Musical #753

Studio:
Grand National Pictures

Director:
Val Guest

Starring:
Garry Marsh, Jack Livesey, Jon Pertwee, Eliot Makeham, Diana Decker, Donald Clive, Jill Antsey, Pamela Deeming, Johnnie Gale
Themselves: Jimmy Edwards, The Windmill Theater Trope, Robin Richmond

Plot:
When a man is found dead in the front row of the Windmill Theater, police inspectors (Pertwee, Marsh) ask for the cast to re-perform the whole show so they can evaluate how the man was shot and determine who killed him.

Trivia:
• Originally released as “Murder at the Windmill” in the United Kingdom, but it was retitled “Mystery at the Burlesque” in the United States. While the film was released in the UK in May 1949, it was not released in the United States until a year later in April 1950.
• The “Windmill” in the title refers to a theater that opened in 1931 and closed in 1964. It was known for nude shows, and later several comedians got their start there, including Peter Sellers.
• Featured interior of the Windmill Theater in London. The owner of the theater, Vivian Van Damm, previously refused anyone to make a film in the theater, but director Val Guest thought if they gave him the right story, he would agree, and he did, Guest said in an interview with Anthony Slide.
• Val Guest directed the film, wrote the screenplay, and also wrote the songs for the film.
• The film featured real-life Windmill performers, according to the book “Soho on Screen.”
• When Vivian Van Damm stipulated that someone who got their career start at the Windmill Theater had to be in the film, so the roles went to Diana Decker and Jill Anstey, according to an article in “Film and Art Reel,” No. 1, Vol. 6.
• Only film of Jill Antsey
• The theater in the film TONIGHT AND EVERY NIGHT (1945) is based on the Windmill Theater.

Highlights:
• Ridiculous impressions of Jimmy Stewart, Veronica Lake, Gary Cooper, Dorothy Lamour and Hedy Lamarr during the “I’ll Settle For You” number

Notable Songs:
• “Two Little Dogs”
• “I’ll Settle For You” performed by Donald Clive and Diana Decker
• “King’s Night Out” danced by the Windmill Theater Trope
• “Mexico” performed by Pamela Deeming and danced by the Windmill Theater Trope
• “Life Should Go With a Swing” performed by the Windmill Theater Trope
• “A Modern Romeo” performed by Diana Decker

My review:
During World War II, the Windmill Theater of London never closed their show during the Blitz. And in the film, “Murder at the Windmill,” even a murder doesn’t shut down the theater.

In the film, after the show closes one night and the staff is cleaning a theater, they find a dead man on the front row. When the police are summoned, it is determined from the angle that the man was shot from the stage. The performers are asked to re-do the night’s performance so they can figure out from where and how the dead man was killed.

Knowing nothing about the Windmill Theater going into this film, I enjoyed learning more about this legendary theater while researching. However, the theater was known for their nude performances, and you won’t see that replicated in this film (sorry to disappoint)! As an aside, if you look this film up, you may see another name for it (and it get a bit confusing). It was released a year later in the United States as “Mystery at the Burlesque.”

However, this 58-minute film was a lot of fun. I love this mix of mystery, murder, music and laughs. MURDER AT THE WINDMILL (1949) has legitimate laughs and the songs are lots of fun. I enjoyed “Two Little Dogs,” “Life Should Go on with a Swing” and “I’ll Settle for You.” “I’ll Settle for You” had some fun, though terrible, impressions of famous stars, including Danny Kaye (which was especially bad), Hedy Lamarr, Gary Cooper and Jimmy Stewart.

The music is a great contrast than the crisis at hand and has that “show must go on” feeling— especially since the Windmill Theater never closed during the World War II Blitz. So they don’t close during a murder either.

The detectives played by Garry Marsh and Jon Pertwee are really the stars of the film, with the most distinguishable roles. They were an excellent comedic pair, playing off of each other with Marsh as the more serious detective and Pertwee as a goofball. They provided some laugh out loud moments.

The stage performers were a bit more difficult to distinguish as stand out performers, especially when they sang songs. However, on an interesting note, many of the performers worked at the Windmill Theater at the time it was released.

Of the actors, Diana Decker is a main player, and if she sounds like an American in this all-British cast, you’re correct. Decker was born in the United States but moved to the United Kingdom as a child. I thought her comedic style and voice sounded like Martha Raye.

Donald Clive is another main player in the film, as the suspected killer.

All in all, MURDER AT THE WINDMILL wildly exceeded my expectations. It was so much fun with an intriguing mystery, lots of humor and fun songs.

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