In 1940’s They Drive by Night, George Raft and Humphrey Bogart play independent long-haul truckers just trying to finish paying off their rig. They are heckled by company driver Roscoe Karns, saying he is comfortable making a steady paycheck as a company driver, while guys like Raft and Bogart “can’t make no dough drinking coffee.” I know if I could be a truck driver but, given how much of the of the liquid brown gold I put away, I just might be qualified. Apparently, the stuff at the diner where all the characters keep congregating is lousy. At least, so says Karns. A server played by Ann Sheridan points out he’s on his seventh cup, and he says it’s only because he likes the sugar.
It is odd all the men in this scene drive long distances, and the independent ones are not bound to any set routes, yet so much of the film takes place in this one diner. If these wondering travelers happen to have the luck to cross paths this often, I think they should all buy lottery tickets.
Everybody likely keeps coming back so we and they can see more of Sheridan. As one leering trucker says of her, she has a nice chassis and he’d like to make payments it. This gets yet another sharp-tongued retort from her: “You couldn’t even afford the headlights”. She’s also getting the eye from Bogey, and she says, “Alright, enough of the X-ray treatment.” He tells her it is only because she reminds him of his wife back home, played by Gale Page. Spoiler alert: Page definitely doesn’t resemble Sheridan.
Alas, the film will have to leave this diner for good eventually, and then what we’re left with a melodrama somehow both languid and overwrought. Worst of all, little of the material here plays to the strong suits of the cast.
Basically, Page has the typical thankless role of the put-upon wife. As for Bogie, there are barely any glimmers of the tough guy persona that was still in his future. Ida Lupino gets to chew some scenery as the hot-tempered wife of buffoon Alan Hale, a wealthy owner of a trucking firm. Instead, she has a thing for Raft. As for Hale’s performance, this jovial imbecile seems to foretell the role of The Skipper his son would play on Gilligan’s Island. Raft is just Raft, and the allure of this top box office draw of the time is still lost on me.
Lupino has a scheme in mind to keep Raft closer by encouraging Hale to bring him into his trucking company. This is after an accident has lost Bogie his arm. I knew they owed some amount of money on their truck, but they apparently only owed an arm and not also the proverbial leg. Come to think of it, Bogie does have one decently thuggish moment when Charles Halton had arrived earlier to try to repossess the vehicle. Halton: “If you hit me, I’ll call the police.” Bogie: “I hit you, they’ll call an ambulance.”
Raft joins Hale’s organization, obviously more because he likes the man than he does his wife. After all, Hale is the kind of guy who is perpetually pickled, but still able to make quips about it such as “Live or let liver.” Lupino, on the other hand, feels her husband is standing between her and Raft and it is no surprise she will find a way to dispatch Hale. Part of her plan involves technology I wasn’t aware existed at the time, and our first glimpse of an electric eye sensor used for opening and closing a garage door tells us this is Chekhov’s electric eye.
Of the actors, the one which most disappointed me was Lupino, as I have a great respect for her both as a performer and as the sole female director for a major Hollywood studio at the time. Her performance here was hugely popular, especially a concluding courtroom scene where her hysterics cross the boundary into the highly mockable.
Really, the actor who fares best in They Drive By Night is Sheridan. Consider her tale of woe to Raft and Bogart when they pick her up from the side of the road, having freshly left her diner gig: “Barney had about 12 hands and I didn’t like wrestling with any of them.” This is elaborated upon in this back-and-forth: “He was always trying to tie my aprons.” “That’s not so bad.” “Not when you’re not wearing any apron.” But there proves to more than venom in her clever asides, such as this exchange between Raft and herself: “Do you believe in love at first sight?” “Well, it saves a lot of time.”
Dir: Raoul Walsh
Starring George Raft, Ann Sheridan, Ida Lupino, Humphrey Bogart (Fourth billed! Only two years before Casablanca and he’s fourth billed.)
Watched on Warner Archive blu-ray