In his recent auto biography, Tony Curtis can’t remember peoples names, he can’t remember dates but he remembers what car (model and color) he was driving at any given moment of his life and he clearly remembers the American Nazi Party marching up Second Avenue in the mid – late 1930’s. In New York yet, hard for me to believe but it was true. There were Nazi’s in New York and not in an outer borough but Manhattan of all places. The picture All Through The Night deals with this very subject – Nazi’s in New York and they are a dangerous bunch.

Humphrey Bogart plays Mr. Alfred ‘Gloves’ Donahue, a benevolent small time gangster / gambler who accidentally stumbles across a Nazi sabotage plot. All though he does not know what their goal is he is relentlessly trying to figure out what these jokers are up to. Gloves becomes involved when his mother calls him as her friend Herman Miller, has disappeared. Mr. Miller is also the purveyor of the only cheesecake that Gloves will eat in the Lindy’s - esque restaurant in which he hangs his hat for a good portion of the day. His crew grudgingly joins Gloves on his quest to find Miller, who is of course found dead (after a visit from Peter Lorre) and unravel what had been unbeknownst to Gloves and most everybody else; there is danger all around and there are reasons to be afraid. This picture, by the way, is a comedy.� And Tony Curtis is not in the picture.

The dialogue is a tribute to Damon Runyon. Maybe a little to much a tribute but none the less the characters all speak with a Runyonesque flair that is so indigenous to New York. When you cast the picture the way it was cast how could it not be New Yorky? Gloves’ right hand (no pun intended) is Sunshine played by the always great and very New Yorky William Demarest. A much more slender than we are used to Jackie Gleason plays Starchy, another of Gloves’ sidekicks. And who is not more New York than Jackie Gleason (besides me).

The bad guys are your typical Warner Brother bad guys. Peter Lorre as the oily Pepi, a piano player in a night club kind of Nazi. Judith Anderson who could bring sexless ness to new levels is as always creepy. And what would a respectable Warner Brothers picture be with out Conrad Veidt playing the boss Nazi, a role he would recreate so well a year later as Major Strasser in Casablanca. When I said “typical” I do not mean it in a negative way. These were the best actors for these kind of roles. Ironically, both Peter Lorre and Conrad Veidt (who I always thought of as a much butcher Clifton Webb) had escaped Nazi Germany only to come to Hollywood and play the people they fled from.

For Humphrey Bogart, this picture came after his career making (and defining) roles in High Sierra and The Maltese Falcon. It also came after one of the dumbest movies he was forced to make – Wagons Role At Night. It is a circus movie with Mr. Bogart as the ringmaster. That’s all you need to hear. Great moments of glorious miscasting and Mr. Bogart fought the Warner Brothers to the point of breach of contract. This was also another role that George Raft turned down (he still had that kind of power). Raft would have been good but as most of you know, I am prejudiced. His comic turn was as effortless as his work was playing those noir heroes he became famous for. For a character who says he doesn’t speak German, he does a great job of faking it.

Ironically, this picture was released just a few days before the day of infamy. The jingoistic aspects of the picture (and other lesser pictures) became justified in peoples minds once war was declared and we saw how vulnerable to attack we were; that it could happen here in New York. Maybe the world needs a new Humphrey Bogart.

This gem will be on Turner Classic Movies October 18th at 4:00 PM

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