Blackie is a strong leading man with a mysterious past, not sad like the Lone Ranger's origin story, but filled with human mistakes and thus more relatable. I like how Blackie gets into fights for the seeming joy of it, a twinkle in his eye, and bulldozes the bad guys into submission with balsa wood furniture bludgeons or whatever else works in the scene. This entry also shows Harriet Hilliard being coy, which was her specialty, and also sweet, another character point. As someone who hustles herself into a laundry chute to escape arrest all the while clinging to her hat, coat, and purse, she has my admiration. Runt and Arthur are also fun characters and the whole hour, more or less, works well as entertainment.

***SPOILERS***"Confessions of Boston Blackie" is the 2nd of the "Boston Blackie" series sandwiched between "Meet Boston Blackie" and "Alies Boston Blackie" with of course the smooth talking and quick thinking Chester Morris in the lead role. It's here that Blackie while attending an art auction-just to pass the time of day-gets involved in a murder. That he in trying to prevent the person selling the statue of Augustus Caesar the intended victim Diane Parrish, Harriet Nelson, from getting gunned down is accused of shooting the man who's to buy the piece of junk Eric Allison, Walter Soderling. As it turned out Allison was in fact shot and killed by his partner Buchanan, Ralph Theodore, by accident when he in fact tried to shoot Diane who could prove that the statue that was going for a cool $3,000.00 was a total fake. What Diane wanted to do with the cash that she got for the statue to pay for her kid brother Jimmy's , Martin Spellman, who's suffering for TB medical expenses.The rub in all this is the victim Eric Allison's body disappeared hidden inside the statue by Buchanan making it impossible the charge Blackie in his murder!It's now up to Blackie to prove himself innocent in finding Allison's body and thus proving that the bullet that killed him didn't come from his gun but from the gun of his partner in crime Buchanan. On top of all that in pops the gold digging Mona, Joan Woodbury, claiming without a shred of evidence that she's Blackie's estranged wife and want's to take him to the cleaners for every cent he's got! With the help of his friends "The Runt", George E. Stone, and Arthur Manleder, Lloyd Carrigan, Blackie is able to avoid the police lead by the bumbling Inspector Farraday,Richard Lane, until he not only tracks down Allison's body and the man Buchanan who framed him for his murder.****SPOILERS**** In a wild shootout at Buchanan's secret hideout with Blackie and everyone is the cast trapped with no way out, due to an electrical blackout, that Blackie burns the place down to get the attention of the police and fire department to come to his as well as their rescue before they all end up dying from smoke inhalation! Blackie had a great time here in his impersonation of not only a doctor who was looking after Diane in the hospital but also of the friendly "Good Humor Man" in being able to wolf down all the "Tudie Frutie" ice cream bars that he could stuff his mouth with without paying for them!

"Confessions Of Boston Blackie" is listed as 65 minutes long but seems much longer. I think that is because it continually breaks the Law of Outlandish Improbabilities too often, resulting in a movie that is lame and tedious. The main flaw is that it tries (unsuccessfully) to combine mystery with humor, a trait common to pre-war mystery movies, but here the attempt is an absolute flop. Compounding the problem is the fact that the murderer is known as soon as the murder is committed, which eliminates any mystery the picture could claim.The result is a potboiler which will keep you looking at your watch, waiting for the 65 minutes to expire. Not worth rehashing the plot, and the law mentioned above is invoked often and stretches the viewers patience and credibility boundaries.In truth, much of the subject matter, as well as the styles and customs - not to mention much of the dialogue - is embedded in the 1940's. This is ordinarily not a problem, but a great deal of the humor is also from the 40's, much of which falls flat and slows the proceedings down. The result is an unsatisfactory mystery/comedy which may not have been considered good when it first came out.

After a period of amazing experimentation in the 30s, the detective genre settled into a few tracks. One of these consisted of series films with previously well known characters, usually from radio. Some actually pretended to have a mystery, while others like this did not. The main appeal was supposed to be in the characters and their traits. Boston Blackie's character is one of the more endearing, which allowed the extremely low budget production room to continue.Blackie is a successful thief, one of those charming, superclever types that appeared in the 20s and early 30s. Blackie stole because the rich deserved it, pure and simple, not out of selfish greed, and in fact his story always mentions how he gave the proceeds to the starving. He was one of the inventions we created during the last period where the difference in the wealthy and poor was immense.By this time (1941) he had been reinvented. Now he was a retired thief, with his cleverness turned to solving crimes the police were too dumb to understand. Along the way, the police (always the same guy) would suspect Blackie of the crime. So in addition to outwitting the criminals — which was ordinary in such movies — he had to more severely and embarrassingly outwit the police. That's the added piece here.His two sidekicks are runt, a Runyon-esquire character, and Arthur, a rich but clueless playboy. Arthur is important because he anchors the political reinvention handily. He always has enough money which is freely available for Blackie's escapades.I've only seen a couple of these, but this has something a bit extraordinary. Quite independent of any story element or need, we have a thread inserted. One of Blackie's affairs has resurfaced, a tall tough redheaded moll, who claims to be married to him and wants money... "or else."Its a strange episode, obviously inserted to tell us something about Blackie that is expected to build his appeal and thus the franchise. He's a wisecracking guy clever guy who (almost) never resorts to violence. He's slick and chatty. But we get the idea here that in the bedroom he can master this wild amazon. Because in the US, we were deep in the stupid prurient code, there had to be this amazingly indirect way of telling us this.I suppose its important, and that it worked. Blackie lasted for 15 films.Ted's Evaluation -- 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.