The Wagons Roll at Night

A Lion escapes from Humphrey Bogart's circus during a performance in a small town. It wanders into a grocery store where Eddie Albert is clerking. He manages to trap the lion behind a counter and gets a lot of plaudits and an offer from Bogart to work in his circus.

But jealousy rears its ugly head as Bogart's sister Joan Leslie and his girl friend Sylvia Sidney both fall for who Bogart considers a nice kid, but a hick.

The Wagons Roll at Night was a transitional film between two acclaimed Bogart productions High Sierra and The Maltese Falcon. It was NOT the first time Bogart received number one billing. He did in a few other films like Black Legion for example. But with the acclaim he got from High Sierra, Jack Warner put him in this before the highly touted Dashiell Hammett adaption, I guess as a trial run.

The plot is based on Kid Galahad where oddly enough Bogart had a supporting role. Eddie Albert shows only a bit of his incredible talent. Joan Leslie as the nice sister basically repeats the part she had from High Sierra. Sylvia Sidney does well as the love lost carnival fortune teller with eyes for both Bogart and Albert.

Personally though I've always liked what Sig Ruman did in this film as the drunken lion tamer whose place Albert took. The film is at its best when he's on screen.

In 1941 Humphrey Bogart was near to stardom, he starred also in ''High Sierra'' and his first classic, ''The Maltese Falcon''. I consider this a bit of a remake of ''Kid Galahad'', but instead of boxing it's set in the circus world. His co-stars here are Eddie Albert, Sylvia Sidney, Joan Leslie and Sig Ruman. The direction is by Ray Enright, the same who directed in 1936 ''China Clipper'' with Bogart

It begins when Matt Varney (a grocery store's clerk) saves a baby from an escaped lion and suddenly Nick Coaster, the circus manager makes him a star although Matt had never experienced lion-taming, and this because the other lion tamer, Hoffman the Great, is always drunk. One night Hoffman has a brawl with Varney and ends up mauled by a lion, and Flo (Coaster's girlfriend), tries to help Matt sending him to Nick's farmhouse. But trouble follows because Matt falls in love with Nick's sister, and Nick don't want her sibling mixed with circus people because they are the scum of the Earth! It ends with Coaster killed by Caesar, the fiercest of all the circus lions, after he wanted to punish Varney for his bad behavior.

Although Humphrey Bogart received top- billing Albert is the real star of the movie, as the grocery clerk- turned-lion tamer who suddenly becomes the circus star. The leading lady is Sylvia Sidney, as Bogart's girlfriend, torn between repulsion and love, and Joan Leslie in a supporting role, as Bogart's sister who falls in love with Albert's character. The always great Sig Ruman as Hoffman the Great, in a brief but interesting supporting role!

This movie is recommended to: (1) Humphrey Bogart fans (2) fans of movies set in carnivals.

I would wager that given the choice, Humphrey Bogart wouldn't have bothered making "The Wagons Roll at Night." I daresay he hadn't any option, since he had only just become a star when the film went out on general release and hadn't signed a new contract when he could have more of a say in his choice of films. The film is merely a remake of the masterpiece, "Kid Galahad." That is everything the above film isn't. The story is as about as dull and predictable as could be. Fans of Bogart might want to see this but only to see him. Joan Leslie was worthy of being in better films as well. The setting is that of a circus, where Humphrey Bogart as the owner, is struggling to make his circus successful. Then by accident, a young fellow proves he has what it takes to be a lion tamer (Eddie Albert). I'm grateful that the running time is quite short.

A variation of Kid Galahad but without the Bogart character and the boxing. Humphrey Bogart plays the owner of a circus and Sylvia Sidney is his girl. The circus isn't very big and their lion tamer is always drunk. When a lion escapes and goes into a town, Eddie Albert winds up holding the lion back until Bogart shows up to get it. Bogart hires Albert as an assistant to the lion tamer but when the lion tamer gets really drunk, Albert has to go on by himself. He's a success and the other lion tamer is fired. The lion that escapes is very vicious and winds up killing a guy and when Albert goes to stay with Bogart's family after he is injured, Bogart gets an idea in his dead. The first part of the movie is pretty good but the ending is pretty obvious and also pretty bad.

The film was nothing more than a remake of "Kid Galahad," with the hero (Eddie Albert) as a lion tamer instead of a boxer… Bogart walked indifferently through his role as the owner of a traveling carnival whose plot was borrowed from Howard Hawks' "Tiger Shark."

Sylvia Sidney appeared in the Bette Davis as Bogart's troubled girlfriend, a fortuneteller with the carnival… The film was a very disappointing follow-up to Bogart's triumph in "High Sierra," but better things lay immediately ahead as Bogart was now ready for a new image, an image which was to dominate the screen for the next years, an image which found its basic construction in John Huston's "The Maltese Falcon."