Damon Runyon meets Alfred Hitchcock Meets Michael Curtiz? Really?

In Casablanca, the most quotable movie of all time (due respect to the GodFather), there's a famous line, after Major Strasser asks if he could not stand to see the NAZIs in New York, Rick replies, "Well, there are certain sections of New York, Major, that I wouldn't advise you to try to invade." It's always been a good laugh line, and it stirs a lot of patriotic pride. But in 1942, it was also a reference joke, and an inside joke for Humphry Bogart an Conrad Veit. If I ask you to name an anti-NAZI movie from 1942 staring Humphrey Bogart, Conrad Veidt, and Peter Lorre, you'd of course say Casablanca. It's one of the best known movies of all time.

But in January 1942, Warner Brothers released a movie called All Through The Night, directed by Vincent Sherman, staring Humphrey Bogart as a wrongly accused murderer who thwarts a plot to blow up a new American battleship by a bunch of NAZIs led by Conrad Veidt and his henchman, played by Peter Lorre. In other words, Conrad Veidt as a NAZI had tried to invade New York ten months earlier, and Bogart had kicked his ass. (and if you notice a few plot elements that the movie shares with Hitchcock's 1942 spy movie Saboteur, you are paying attention).

Now, while a great romp, All Through The Night will never be considered in the same league as Casablanca, but they do have a lot in common besides three stars. Both have a strong anti-NAZI theme. Both, although released in 1942 (and All Through The Night, obviously, was shot before Pearl Harbor), are set before America's entry into the war. Both make an argument about why America needs to be involved. Both make reference to concentration camps. Both have a lot of corn-ball hokum in them, including windy speeches about the nobility of man and the evil of the NAZIs. And (spoiler alert) both end with Bogie killing Veidt.

But it's the similarities it has with another 1942 hit movie that make All Through The Night fantastic: The Big Street by Damon Runyon (which includes Eugene Pallette in what is probably the first screen appearance of Nicely Nicely Johnson). Bogart's Gloves Donahue and his gang are, in every sense of the word, Runyonesque. Donahue is a high betting gambler, a wise cracking tough guy with a heart of gold, in the mold of Sky Masterson His crew are a  bunch of fast talking slicks with wry humor and a lot of slapstick. They include the great William Demarest, Wallace Ford, Frank McHugh and a very young Jackie Gleason -- so young that the whole time I was looking at him going "who does he remind me of?" (me, who's seen The Hustler a dozen times, and who rubs the belly of Ralph Cramden's statue, for luck, every time I go to Port Authority). Look close and you'll find Phil Silvers in a rival gang (Silvers has the premier comic bit of the big fight scene). Then throw in that towering Goddess of golden age cinema Jane Darwell in one of her best comic rolls. This movie acts as if you took Casablanca, Saboteur, and Guys and Dolls, and just mashed them all together. It's plot is silly, the fight scenes are mostly awful, and it's patriotism is corny as hell: but if you love golden age cinema, Bogie, Peter Lorre, Conrad Veidt, Jane Darwell, Gleason, Silvers, Demarest, slapstick, and especially if you love Damon Runyon-like fast talking gamblers, this movies is a must see. I'd like to do a film festival with all four 1942 releases and watch them all together.

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