Roadhouse Nights

After I watched this film, I read the IMDB page for it. I was shocked to see that Helen Morgan was only 30 when she made the movie, as I thought she was about 50! This is likely because Morgan was an alcoholic and ultimately died when she was 41...a very sad loss.

In the film, the heavy drinker is Willie (Charlie Ruggles). He's a newspaper reporter who spends most of his time frequenting various speakeasies. Despite this, he's an honest guy and excellent reporter.

In this story, Willie meets up with an old sweetie, Lola (Morgan) and she's working in a place owned by a mobster, Sam Horner. Willie spends much of the movie trying to get Lola to leave this job as she doesn't realize just how evil Sam is. But she does know enough to be afraid of the man...and what he'll do if she skidaddles.

In addition to Morgan and Ruggles, Jimmy Durante appears in this, his first film. He's fun...as you'd expect for Durante...but the interesting story seems to be what I remember most from the movie. An interesting and tough film.

His editor is trying to track down Joe King, out investigating a big shipment of booze coming in over Lake Michigan. He doesn't know that King has been killed by Fred Kohler, who runs a local road house, has killed the local chief of police and taken over the town, so he sends Charles Ruggles to find out what's going on. What Ruggles discovers is that his old girlfriend from Kenosha, Helen Morgan, is singing at Kohler's roadhouse, and they get on together like a house on fire, while Kohler grows steadily more suspicious.

If you're looking for a movie based on Dashiell Hammett's Red Harvest, this isn't it, despite the credits. Screenwriter and former Chicago newsman Ben Hecht has crafted an entirely new story, and it's a pretty good one at that, even if the pacing is a tad slow. Besides hearing Miss Morgan sing a blues number, you also get to see Clayton, Jackson & Durante doing a couple of their chaotic numbers.

How did Helen Morgan, who gave a remarkable, searing performance as Kitty Darling in the 1929 film Applause, a film most consider to be one of the great early talkies, follow that masterpiece up. It would be hard to top Applause to be sure, but Roadhouse Nights, which is at best only an average B movie, makes it seem even worse than it really is if you area fan of Helen Morgan as I am.

The bad news for Helen fans is that there is so little of Helen on film that we will even take a mediocre vehicle such as Roadhouse Nights rather than have nothing at all. Personally, I wish she had chosen her material a little better.

Roadhouse not a total waste of time. Helen sings one dynamite song and she briefly displays a rare potential as a comedienne. She does rise above the material. Perhaps comedy was something she should have looked into a bit more.

What's really interesting is that it feels as though a lot of the scenes were filmed in one or two takes as the actors, including Helen, flub lines more than once. It's like you're watching a rehearsal for a play.

Also on hand are Charlie Ruggles who I had never seen before and he does the comic drunk bit pretty well. Jimmy Durante is rather annoying and hadn't learned to act for film yet. He's way way over the top as if he were still on a vaudeville stage.

Overall, the film gets better as it races to its 68 minute conclusion so don't give up in the first half hour. But unless you are a die-hard Morgan, Durante or Ruggles fan, there is little reason to tune in. That is painful for me to say. I want more people to know who Helen Morgan is. If you have never seen her before, please don't start here. Start with Applause... and then there is Showboat. Her first and last... perfect bookends to an all too short acting career on film... and life.

Ever watched a film where when the credits rolled you still didn't fully understand what you'd just watched. You understood the story, you knew what was going on but you simply didn't "Get it". That was my problem here with Roadhouse Nights.

Based on Dashiell Hammett's book Red Harvest this story has been seen before in film form more famously as Yojimbo (1961), A Fistful of Dollars (1964) and Miller's Crossing (1990).

This version however is very different from what I've seen of the others and I don't mean that in a good way, not even remotely.

The plot is messy, the cinematography is bad even for the 1930's and it's outstandingly dull. It springs to life several times with musical numbers but that cannot save Roadhouse Nights from oceans of mediocrity.

One for fans of..............................I don't actually know.

The Good:

Musical moments are enjoyable enough

The Bad:

Utterly lifeless

Very poor editing

Things I Learnt From This Movie:

How can I learn anything if I don't know what in the blue hell is going on?

... in fact it was his first film role. After this film he got a contract with MGM and stayed there for a good long while. But that's another story.

This is a 1930 Paramount featuring Charlie Ruggles as a newspaper reporter (who spends a lot of time posing as a tippler) investigating a small nightclub run by a notorious bootlegger ready to bump off anyone threatening his operations.

Fred Kohler, he of the gruff "Oh, yehhh?" school of tough guy acting, plays the bootlegger boss who carries a gun and does much of his own dispatching, while singer Helen Morgan gets top billing as a singer (what else?) in Kohler's roadhouse who was sweeties once upon a time with Ruggles years before they took up their current occupations.

Morgan sings a song or two in this one, though, nothing, unfortunately, of great note. Her memorable warbling and performance in Show Boat were still six years away.

One of the film's most pleasant surprises is the presence of Jimmy Durante, only this time he's part of a three man act called Clayton, Jackson and Durante. Durante is clearly the star of the act and, for those who enjoy the Great Schnozzola, he scores well in this film. "It's the gallows, the gallows," he keeps saying, in reference to the cutthroats that run the rough roadhouse in which he and Morgan both work.

Durante vaudeville partner Lou Clayton would die in 1950 but Eddie Jackson would later appear with Durante on television in The Jimmy Durante Show in 1954. This is the only film made in which the three vaudeville partners can be seen together.

The film has a certain primitive power, though it is, at times, a crudely filmed early talkie. (The tops of heads of actors are frequently cut off in the camera shot). The legendary Ben Hecht is credited as scenarist, and the film does have some of the hard bitten style that you would associate with him.