Main Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Conrad Veidt, Kaaren Verne, Jane Darwell, Frank McHugh
Release Year: 1941
Country: US
Run Time: 107 minutes
Plot
Humphrey Bogart plays Gloves Donahue, a rough-hewn but essentially decent New York gambler. The Runyonesque plot gets moving when Gloves tries to find out what's holding up his favorite restaurant's daily shipment of cheesecake. Paying a call on the bakery, Gloves stumbles into a Nazi spy ring, masterminded by Conrad Veidt. Mixed up in all this is nightclub singer Kaaren Verne, whose loyalties are in question in her early scenes but who turns out to be as true-blue as the patriotic Gloves. Combining a quick wit with quicker fists, Gloves and his "mob" thwart the Nazis before they're able to skip the country. The cast is a movie buff's dream, ranging from Jane Darwell as Bogart's mom to Peter Lorre as a cynical Nazi flunkey to William Demarest, Frank McHugh, Phil Silvers and Jackie Gleason as Bogie's favorite cohorts. The film's best scene would have us believe that Bogart could confound a gang of erudite Nazis with a steady stream of Manhattan slang. One shudders to think how leaden All Through the Night would have been had George Raft accepted the role of Gloves Donahue. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Review
All Through the Night has such a strong cast that most viewers will be willing to overlook its many flaws and simply relax, sit back and watch the actors go to it. It's not Humphrey Bogart's best performance by far, but it's one of his most entertaining. Even when playing a tough guy, Bogart usually got to inject some levity into the surroundings (at least after he became a legitimate star), but the comedy in Night is much broader. Bogart plays things with a readier smile and a lighter heart -- although he puts on his "I mean business" gloves when things heat up a little too much. Conrad Veidt and Peter Lorre are appropriately slimey, and Judith Anderson, faced again with a part that she could do in her sleep, still makes Madame appropriately menacing. Jane Darwell's a bit over-the-top, due in large part to the way her character is written, and Kaaren Verne is a bit bland, but there's very able support from William Demarest, Frank McHugh and Phil Silvers. There's so much able support, as a matter of fact, that the likes of Jackie Gleason hardly makes an impression. Without this cast, Night would be a pretty pallid affair, as Vincent Sherman's direction is strictly mediocre, and the screenplay even more so. ~ Craig Butler, All Movie Guide
Max Parker - Art Director, William Kissell - First Assistant Director, Vincent Sherman - Director, Rudi Fehr - Editor, Adolph Deutsch - Composer (Music Score), Lillian Goodman - Composer (Music Score), Johnny Mercer - Composer (Music Score), Arthur Schwartz - Composer (Music Score), Lillian Goodman - Songwriter, Johnny Mercer - Songwriter, Arthur Schwartz - Songwriter, Sidney Hickox - Cinematographer, Jerry Wald - Producer, Hal B. Wallis - Producer, Edwin DuPar - Special Effects, Edwin Gilbert - Screenwriter, Leonard Spigelgass - Screenwriter, Leonard Ross - Short Story Author
An elderly baker named Miller (Ludwig Stossel) is murdered by a sinister stranger (Peter Lorre). A trail leads on to a nightclub singer, Leda Hamilton (Kaaren Verne) who reveals that she and Miller have been in thrall to an organisation of Nazi fifth columnists led by Ebbing (Conrad Veidt).She is helped by a well-meaning gangster,Alfred "Gloves" Donahue (Humphrey Bogart), who himself is suspected of murdering a gang rival (Edward Brophy), and has to track down those responsible to prove his innocence.
