Blues in the Night

This is a very offbeat kind of film that is not well known. You'll either really love it - I do - or you'll not care for it at all. Anatole Litvak, who directed so many womens' pictures, directs this odd little film that starts out as a kind of "small town band does good" picture, takes a turn into gangster territory, and then gets really dark with a venture into film noir and mental illness. Nobody in this film was a big name at the time, and I get the feeling it was one of those films that Warner's liked to grind out like sausages in the 30's and 40's that just happened to turn out to be rather special. Great performances are turned in from everyone involved, which includes Priscilla Lane as a good girl with depth, Lloyd Nolan as a gangster with a touch of the entrepreneurial and even a bit of a mentor, Jack Carson as a heel with a large bag of excuses for his behavior, Betty Field as the gangster's moll who aspires to be a singer and also ruins men as a hobby, and Richard Whorf as the musician and bandleader who falls for the moll and also into temporary insanity. Also note that future great director Elia Kazan shows up playing a small part as one of the bandmembers.

Released just three weeks before the beginning of World War II, it provides a snapshot of how the Depression and the era of the gangster were receding into memory just as an age of optimism was beginning that would go on hiatus during the war effort, and restart and peak after the war was over. Great atmosphere and great acting - highly recommended.

This film took me by surprise because it is a musical black and white film with fast movement of the camera and goes from Jazz and Blues music smack into a drama and murder. The film starts out with a piano player named Jugger, (Richard Whorf) who wants to organize a band and he has as his female singer, Ginger Powell, (Priscilla Lane) and her husband, Leo Powell, (Jack Carson) his trumpet player. Kay Grant, (Betty Field) plays the role of a gal who meets men and leaves them as quick as she meets them. Del Davis, (Lloyd Nolan) is an escaped convict who runs into this jazz band in a box car and decides to hold them up for all their money. There are many old time actors in this film and it really is a gem of a 1941 Classic. You could also call this film, riding the railroad through out the United States.

"Blues in the Night" from 1941 is an intense noir directed by Anatole Litvak. The stars are Richard Whorf, Lloyd Nolan, Howard da Silva, Priscilla Lane, Betty Field, Jack Carson, Elia Kazan, and Wallace Ford.

"Jigger' Lane (Whorf), an excellent pianist, puts a band together consisting of Leo (Carson) who plays the trumpet, his wife "Character" (Lane), a singer, and two other musicians, Nickie, and Peppi. These are all musicians dedicated to performing the real New Orleans blues.

They travel by sneaking into boxcars. On one of their trips they meet Del Davis, (Nolan) a gangster. Del has a job for him in New Jersey at a club he owns.

That's where the trouble begins. Powell falls for a good-time girl, Kay Grant (Field), though he drops her when he finds out Character is pregnant.

"Jigger" decides to make Kay the replacement singer since Character is told she can't work. They wind up taking off together. By the time the rest of the band locates him, Jigger's in rough shape and has to enter a mental hospital.

"Blues in the Night" is a turgid drama with a highly dramatic ending. The performances are all good. Field pulls out all the stops as Kay, and Lloyd Nolan is an effective tough guy. Howard da Silva and Wallace Ford are on hand giving sympathetic performances.

The brilliant director and controversial figure Elia Kazan only has seven acting credits listed. Here he's an enthusiastic band member .

The music, with the exception of an awful number at a club where Jigger plays the piano, is fantastic, with some great trumpet playing, though the musician is uncredited.

The song "The Man That Got Away" was written for this film. Harold Arlen didn't like the Johnny Mercer lyrics; some time later, he gave the song to Ira Gershwin to add the lyrics.

Everybody's heard of this movie because of the famous title song, but almost nobody's ever seen it. It defies genre classification -- both a musical drama and a sort of missing link between the Warners gangster movies of the 1930s (mugs, molls, and rat-a-tat dialogue) and 1940s film noir (femme fatale, dark shadows, smoky atmosphere, seamy underside of life). It's a genuine one-of-a-kind movie that deserves to be much better remembered than it is.

However, one commenter here needs to refresh his memory; BLUES IN THE NIGHT has nothing whatever to do with the career of Jimmy Lunceford or any other famous musician of the period. It's about a small jazz combo, not a big band, and they begin and end the movie as obscure journeymen living from hand to mouth between gigs.

This film stars mostly second and third-tier actors from Warner Brothers. Familiar actors like Jack Carson, Priscilla Lane, Lloyd Nolan and Wallace Ford are here, but there is also a starring role by the relatively unknown Richard Whorf as well as a supporting role by Elia Kazan--before he made a REAL name for himself as a director. And while none of these folks are huge stars, they do a fine job and the film has the usual high quality and polish you'd expect from the studio.

This film is sort of like a fairy tale about a group of musicians who love Blues, though it's NOT exactly the same style you'd find in Black America--it's more like a big-band/Hollywood idea of the Blues! It's filled with various clichés (such as the BAD girl who might break up the band) but because it's made so well and the music quite enjoyable, it's still worth seeing. Just be sure you aren't looking for THE Blues! Not great but for old movie fans (like myself), it's worth seeing.