Night Waitress

Minor effort with Edward Hopper-like waterfront setting. Margot Grahame and Gordon Jones (did I get the names right?) are interesting leads. Routine crime story has nice touches, its heroine is lower-class and depicted without condescension (quite a rarity for Hollywood). Low budget, interesting art direction, short and sharp action scenes, above average for its type. Anthony Quinn (unbilled) has a few scenes as a gangster.

... But the movie is pure Lew Landers.

Margot Graham is exotic as the title character. Her acting, at least here, isn't very interesting. But she has a tough yet intelligent look.

Graham is a woman on parole. She is working as -- yes: a waitress. And in a waterfront dive.

The rest is stock criminals. We have a stock romance. We have a boat and an Asian helper. None of the actors in these roles made much impression on me.

It isn't really bad. (And some Landers films reality ARE bad.) It's just routine. We've seen essentially the same movie many, many times. But Graham makes this one stand out.

Passable crime movie from RKO featuring two actors who didn't quite make the grade. At least in her home country Margot Grahame was known as Britain's answer to Jean Harlow and dubbed the "Aluminium Blonde" as well as being their highest paid star but Hollywood didn't really want to know, even after her sterling performance in "The Informer". Besides her looks had more in common with Lucille Ball or Barbara Pepper. And Gordon Jones, even though he worked solidly from 1932 until 1963 (the year he died), was destined to have a very familiar face even if you couldn't remember his name.

Helen Roberts (Grahame) is back at her waitressing job after a brush with the law and with the full support of Papa Torres (Billy Gilbert) who just wants to see her make good. How anyone could have cast Grahame as a probation girl is amazing - her posh tones seemed more at home in Buckingham Palace than Tony's Fish Palace!!! When not brushing off unwanted suitors she also has to put up with the whispered innuendos about her past which makes her particularly hardened to breezy sea Captain Marty Rhodes (Jones) who wants to get to know her better. He seems to be mixed up with some pretty shady characters who feel he can lead them to a gold shipment but, like Helen, he is really just an innocent bystander who doesn't know what the mysterious shipment he has been hired to deliver, is!!!

The most interesting thing about this movie is the number of familiar faces in smaller roles, forget about the two leads. Don "Red" Barry of later "Red Ryder" fame is Rigo who is organising the gold cargo, Marc Lawrence (here billed as Laurence) is Dorne, a thug (what else!!), another thug is played by Anthony Quinn who happened to get a couple of good close-ups. There was also Willie Best as a bystander and the always good Frank Faylen, he of the thousand bit parts and Dobie Gillis's always exasperated father, playing a policeman in the crowd.

Margot Grahame has just been put on probation. She goes back to work at Billy Gilbert's waterfront fish restaurant. She wants to work and avoid trouble. Sailor Gordon Jones wants to date her. When gangsters kill a criminal in the restaurant, she's the only witness. The gang starts looking for her.

It's a nice, atmospheric B movie that doesn't bother with gloss. Director Lee Landers, just breaking out of B westerns the year this was made, shoots quickly and efficiently, with San Pedro standing in for San Francisco in the shipside shots.

Margot Grahame was Britain's highest-paid screen actress in this period. Dubbed 'the Aluminum Blonde', she was a skilled performer, trying to break into the much more prosperous American industry.

With a fine cast of then-minor players - the IMDb claims this is Anthony Quinn's first feature; it's really his fifth - it's a good example of what could be done on a small budget.

Night Waitress (1936)

** (out of 4)

Decent crime picture from Lew Landers has Helen Roberts (Margot Grahame) getting a waitress job after being put on probation for a crime the police think she knew about but couldn't really prove. Once working the woman gets involved with a young man (Gordon Jones) but what she doesn't know is that this location is a hot spot for gangster crime and soon she's threatened with going back to jail. There's romance, crime and drama here but none of the three things are exactly done good. For the most part this is just a 57-minute "B" picture that was obviously made to play second tier to something much bigger and as long as you don't take it too serious or expect too much you should at least be slightly entertained. I think Landers does a nice job with what he has to work with as he at least keeps the picture moving at a fast pace and for the most part the seedy locations feel real. Both Grahame and Jones do a nice job in the leads and help carry the picture and we also get to see Billy Gilbert in the role of the restaurant owner. If you look quick you can even spot a very young Anthony Quinn in a few spots. The biggest problem with the picture is that nothing ever really works well enough to make the film a good one. Still, fans who enjoy these forgotten, low-budget pictures will still want to check it out.