They Drive by Night (1940)

Editor's note: Stone Wallace has a new book on George Raft out now: George Raft: The Man Who Would be Bogart
This week he takes a look at the early noir They Drive By Night. Stone also shares a few stills from his personal collection that we use in the slide show.

By Stone Wallace

One of Warner Brothers most popular films of the early 40s, They Drive by Night is a taut, exciting – if dual-plotted trucker drama showcasing the star quartet of George Raft, Ann Sheridan, Ida Lupino and Humphrey Bogart. Based on the novel “Long Haul” by A.I. Bezzerides and scripted for the screen by Jerry Wald and Richard Macauley, the Raoul Walsh-directed film features Raft and Bogart as wildcat truck drivers Joe and Paul Fabrini. Battling crooked bosses and the hazards of the road as they race to deliver produce to wholesalers and outrun their creditors, the men live by Joe’s credo “We’re tougher than any truck ever come off any assembly line.” Refusing to surrender to fatigue on their long hauls, the brothers drive their rig bleary-eyed through the night. Joe is unmarried and determined to keep up this grueling pace so that he can eventually make enough cash to “be his own man”. Paul, on the other hand, has a lonely wife, Pearl (Gale Page), waiting at home, and it is she who continually urges Paul to give up the danger and uncertainty of the trucking game and settle into more stable employment so that they can start a family. While Paul shares Pearl’s wishes, his loyalty to Joe and his ongoing belief that they can beat the wildcat racket, will not allow him to walk out on his brother. Joe soon falls for sassy waitress Cassie Hartley, whom they meet at a roadside diner and who they later give a lift to after she quits her job because of her boss’s unwanted advances. Joe, a somewhat more honorable guy, puts Cassie up in a boarding house and gives her a few bucks until she can get on her feet. Meanwhile, Joe’s friend Ed Carlsen (Alan Hale), a former hauler who has built up a prosperous trucking business, urges Joe and Paul to work for him so they can enjoy regular hours and guaranteed pay. Joe, however, remains determined to make it on his own. The jovial Ed is married to a much-younger woman, the shrewish Lana (Ida Lupino), who has designs on Joe. When Joe rebuffs her advances when they are alone in Ed’s office, Lana turns on him with venom, insulting his manners and calling him crude. Through a lead from Ed, Joe and Paul negotiate a profitable produce sale with food wholesaler George Rondolos (George Tobias) that earns them enough cash to pay off their doggedly persistent creditor and own their truck outright. Unfortunately, their liberation is short-lived when Paul falls asleep at the wheel and crashes their rig. Joe is unharmed, but Paul ultimately loses an arm and quickly becomes resentful at his inability to find work as a “cripple”. These circumstances force Joe to accept Ed's job offer, though Lana slyly convinces Ed that Joe would be more valuable in the office, a ploy so that she can continue in her attempts to seduce him. Finally, her mind unhinged by Joe’s adamant refusal to mess with his friend’s wife, Lana kills the drunken Ed by leaving him passed out in his still-running automobile and triggering the outdoor electric beam that automatically closes the garage door. The death is ruled “accidental” and Lana inherits Ed’s business, convincing Joe to come in with her as her partner. When Joe continues to avoid her persistent romantic overtures and finally announces his upcoming marriage to Cassie, Lana admits to killing Ed. Stunned, a disgusted Joe tells Lana that he is leaving both her and the trucking company. In revenge, Lana confesses to the district attorney and implicates Joe in Ed’s murder. Joe is arrested and during the trial it looks as if his fate is sealed. Not even a prison visit from Cassie can get Lana to change her story. Finally, while testifying on the stand, Lana’s mind snaps, her insanity and sole guilt are revealed, and Joe is acquitted. Although Joe is firm about not returning to the trucking firm and instead expresses his intention of going back on the road, Cassie corrals the company’s employees, including Paul, who convince Joe to stay on.

They Drive by Night, released in 1940, was George Raft’s first film upon signing a long-term contract with Warners, after appearing in the studio’s Each Dawn I Die (with Cagney) and Invisible Stripes (1939). The success of both films convinced Jack L. Warner that Raft was a major asset to the studio, which was the only lot in Hollywood to boast a “Murderer’s Row” (Cagney, Edward G. Robinson and Bogart). After all, Raft had come to Warners as a bonafide star after Scarface (1932) and seven years under contract to Paramount, where he had appeared in such hits as The Glass Key (1935), Souls at Sea (1937) and Spawn of the North (1938). They Drive by Night is generally regarded as Raft’s best Warner Brothers film, and Raft was delighted to be cast against type as a “hardworking man of the people”, to which he aspired both on- and off-camera. But the truth is that Raft probably comes off the least effective among his co-stars. The beautiful Ann Sheridan was allowed the most memorable, snappy dialogue, which she delivered as only Sheridan could; Ida Lupino was finally given the chance to display her acting range as the murderess; and Bogart got the opportunity to shed his patented B-picture tough guy in a brief yet compelling scene where he expresses his bitterness both at his injury and having to be accept what he perceives as his brother’s charity. Raft, on the other hand, maintains his tough yet cool composure throughout and is not afforded a single scene to match the dramatic intensity of Lupino or Bogart. Perhaps his shining moment comes when he trades punches with a pugnacious fellow trucker.

As with most of Warners films during the 30s and 40s, They Drive by Night benefited from a strong supporting cast culled from the studio’s stock company. Alan Hale plays the amiable – if somewhat crude and naïve – trucking firm owner in his usual jovial style (which makes his murder by Lupino all the more shocking), and, even though he appears in only one brief scene, George Tobias delivers his usual humorous ethnic characterization: this time playing a Greek. Roscoe Karns as the pinball addicted Irish McGurn and an uncredited Joyce Compton as the addle-brained “Miss” Sue Carter provided further comedy relief while Warners veteran John Litel played fellow trucker Harry McNamara, whose exhaustion causes him to fall asleep at the wheel and burn to death with his partner when their rig crashes.

Raoul Walsh decided to film the movie in sequence, an unusual technique that nevertheless benefited all of the performances. While the shooting went smoothly (which was not always the case on a Raft picture), there was one near-tragic moment when the brakes of the truck containing Raft, Bogart and Sheridan gave out and began to pick up speed while highballing down a long hill. Raft utilized the superior driving skills he had learned from his days as a Prohibition driver and managed to avoid an accident by pulling up on an embankment.

Some critics and fans have noted that the film succeeds best as a straight trucker drama and loses momentum once its focus shifts to Lupino’s determined and unbalanced infatuation with Raft, a plot device borrowed from the 1935 Bordertown, starring Paul Muni and Bette Davis. At that point the wisecracking Sheridan becomes less visible while Bogart disappears almost completely from the film (except for his embittered scene at the dinner table), only to pop up briefly in the courtroom and in the final scene, almost as an afterthought, to announce that he and Pearl are going to have a baby. An almost painfully trite addendum to the obligatory happy ending.

Ida Lupino’s bravura performance aside, the Joe-Lana-Ed triangle does burden the movie with a slower-paced second half, which Lupino clearly dominates. It divides the film into two distinct parts with the blend never satisfactorily jelling into a whole. The situation was used much less intrusively with Raft, Marlene Dietrich and Edward G. Robinson in the following year’s Manpower (1941). Raft’s character also loses some of its strength as the secondary plot develops. With Joe no longer battling the perils of the road, the character merely becomes the foil for Lupino’s dramatics. He continues to rebuff if not outright ignore Lana’s less-than-subtle romantic intentions while maintaining his friendship and loyalty to Ed and his romantic attraction to Cassie. When confronted with Lana’s guilt, Joe barely reverts from being an observer, leaving Lupino to dominate the scene. George Raft frequently neglected to use his star power to best advantage. This is further made evident in the final scene when Joe and Cassie embrace and it is Cassie’s face that is camera-center in closeup, while Joe’s back is to the audience.

They Drive by Night is an atypical film noir. About the only thing that would even remotely place it into that category would be the presence of Ida Lupino as the femme fatale. While murder figures significantly into the plot, one remembers the picture primarily for the tough road drama it starts out to be. The struggles of two determined men to beat the odds and make it on their own. While of course this proves to be their eventual destiny, it happens in a way neither could expect.

Despite its flaws, They Drive by Night endures as an entertaining Warner Brothers time capsule.



POSTSCRIPT: It can be argued that George Raft’s career reached its peak with They Drive by Night. Following the movie’s success he would appear in two more “good guy” roles for Warners before severing ties with the studio and charting his own career destiny – unfortunately too soon aligning himself with formulaic “B” and even “C” pictures featuring him as the consistent hero that quickly and inevitably lessened his box office appeal. In contrast, the careers of both Ida Lupino and Humphrey Bogart were off and running. Miss Lupino would appear in many more popular films for the studio before turning her talents toward directing. Bogart, of course, would follow They Drive by Night with his third great screen role (following The Petrified Forest, 1935 and Dead End, 1937) with the famous Raft reject High Sierra (1941). Another Raft refusal led to Bogart’s starring in The Maltese Falcon (1941), which in turn led to his being cast as casino owner Rick in the classic Casablanca (1942). Now recognizing Bogart as the studio’s most valuable asset, Jack Warner put up little resistance when Raft demanded termination of his contract.



Stone Wallace is the author of George Raft: The Man Who Would be Bogart,published by BearManor Media. The book can be ordered through Amazon.comor by emailing www.bearmanormedia.com.