Blues in the Night

It's hard to decide which is the most awkward part of this slightly noirish movie...the beginning, the middle or the end. The beginning features five white musicians and a girl singer who decide to form a special kind of band, led by the impassioned piano player. "It's gotta be our kind of music, our kind of band...the blues, the real blues...the kind that comes out of people, real people...their hopes and their dreams...." The middle features these six riding a box car, becoming entangled with a rough gangster who befriends them, a tough- as-nails femme fatale who does not, and a roadhouse success in New Jersey. The end features a nervous breakdown, a dead baby, a shooting, a car ride to death and another box car. You know, the usual blues stuff. Along the way there is some impassioned dialogue. What Blues in the Night has going for it are songs by Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer, including one great song, "This Time the Dreams on Me" and one they knocked out of the ball park, perhaps the best popular blues song ever written, "Blues in the Night." The movie also features another first-rate performance by Lloyd Nolan as the gangster. I wonder if any other actor appeared in so many flawed A movies or just plain B moves but who invariably gave believable, notable performances. There are several musical numbers that stand out. We also have the chance to see Betty Field, a first-rate actress who wasn't as successful in Hollywood as she was on Broadway. She plays the femme fatale, complete with bad grammar and the kind of sexy selfishness that can lead a man to bed at night and leave him alone with an empty wallet the next morning. She's brittle and hard here, but her strong suit as an actress, I think, was the fragile vulnerability and warmth she could project. After her role in this movie, the next year she played the doomed Cassie in Kings Row, two performances as different as a prostitute's embrace is from a tremulous first kiss. The movie also has the curiosity value of featuring Elia Kazan in his last acting role. He plays the band's hyperactive young clarinetist whose mother wants him to be a lawyer. Kazan and the film's screenwriter, Robert Rossen, both were hauled before the House Un-American Activities Committee during the Hollywood witch-hunts. Both named lots of names. While those they named saw their careers crushed, Kazan and Rossen prospered. Would I have done it differently? I don't know. What little reason there is to remember this movie, however, is the great Arlen/Mercer song: My mama done tol' me, when I was in knee-pants, My mama done tol' me, "Son, a woman'll sweet talk And give you the big eye, but when the sweet talking's done, A woman's a two-face, a worrisome thing who'll leave you to sing the blues in the night." Anyone who doesn't believe Mercer's words are true American poetry...well, you should also throw out the works of William Carlos Williams. For Mercer fans, you might be interested in the CD An Evening With Johnny Mercer. Before an audience (which included Harold Arlen) he explains a bit about his writing, takes us through his career and breezes through a number of his songs. It was recorded in 1971, five years before he died. The drawback is that it runs less than an hour. For Mercer fans, it's essential. Mercer usually was his own best interpreter, but Bobby Troupe does a nice job with Bobby Troupe Sings Johnny Mercer. Troupe swings it and keeps it intimate. There's none of the over-orchestrating and lushness that some otherwise great singers brought to Mercer's songs. The CD is hard to find. Easier to locate is The Songs of Johnny Mercer sung by Susannah McCorkle, a fine, low-key stylist. If I've given the impression you should forget this movie and instead spend more time listening to Johnny Mercer...you'd be right.

A jazz/blues band forms out of St. Louis after the members spend a night together in jail. An interesting travelogue by boxcar ensues as they move through the southern half of the US, the progress seen on a map with the names of a lot of small towns and medium sized cities rather than through their individual gigs. While back in the boxcar again, they meet up with a fugitive who takes a liking to them and gets them a job in New Jersey with the New York skyline beckoning in the distance, in a road house known as The Jungle. The story gets quite interesting. This is not a musical, though it has a lot of music in it. Things really start going over the top with the arrival of Betty Field as Kitty, fugitive Lloyd Nolan's ex-girlfriend, a tough exterior over a brittle interior. With Nolan is Howard DaSilva as his assistant who helps run the place and has plans for Kitty if only he can pull off a major double cross. The band, led by future director Richard Whorf and featuring clarinetist (and future director Elia Kazan) is fairly interesting, though the characters are not that believable. But once they start their extended stay at The Jungle, with DaSilve, Nolan, Field, and Wallace Ford as Brad (another lost soul), it becomes totally unique.

Almost Every Professional Critic, for Some Unknown Reason, is Reluctant to Label This "Film-Noir". They Hedge by Using Hyphens Like Musical-Noir, and While the Film is Surely About Musicians and there are a Number of Musical Numbers, None are Filler or Unwanted. The Music is True to its Black Roots and in One Sequence Eviscerates White-Bread Sell-Out Fluff in No Uncertain Terms. This is the Real Deal. This is Film-Noir. In Fact, it is One of the First True Film-Noir, Made in the Era of "Stanger on the Third Floor" (1940) and "The Maltese Falcon" (1941). This is Pure Left-Wing, Down and Dirty Stuff. Hard Boiled and Hard Hitting, Electric and Eccentric. The Surreal Dream Montages are Some of the Best in Noir (done by Don Siegel). It's a B-Picture to be Sure. The Dialog Comes Fast and Furious, the Melodrama is Ripe, and the Characters are Straight Out of the Pulps. The Film Touches on Heavy Themes and Hardly Ever Pulls Back. A Cripple that is Bullied, Death of a Newborn, Alcoholism, Gambling, Gangsters, Gunplay, Fisticuffs, Double Crosses, and an Evil Femme Fatale as Gut-Wrenching as Ann Savage in "Detour" (1945). This Short Review Only Scratches the Surface of this Seminal Work and Even More Great Stuff can be Found if One Approaches this Mini-Masterpiece with an Open Mind. This is an Underrated Film-Noir Gem and the Fact that You don't Find it Listed in Some of the Noir Encyclopedias is an Oversight and is Unforgivable. One Hopes that Later Editions will Make the Necessary Inclusion.

This film could have been a lot better than it is. A strange melodrama where everyone gets their "due". In the old days, everyone pays for their sins and crimes. Part film noir, part musical, part thriller...doesn't really know what it wants to be. The main title BLUES IN THE NIGHT is not heard straight through even once, as noted in Maltin's book. Richard Whorf reminded me of Jerry Orbach, but not as talented. Jack Carson played Jack Carson. His performances never varied. Elia Kazan is fine as the one of the boys in the band. One writer noted that Betty Field and Lloyd Nolan were both in PEYTON PLACE years after this, but they had no scenes together. Wrong. They had a short scene outside Nolan's Hospital office. Field does just fine as the tart. Quite a contrast to her roles in PEYTON PLACE and especially PICNIC. Some interesting scenes and special effect montages, but really quite a dreary film filled with contrivances and plot holes. Looks like a lot was left "on the cutting room floor". Also the time element is confusing as is why these band players making money all live in a barn together in a barn yet. Like I said before, a strange film.

Great first twenty minutes: the hip dialogue, the jazzy atmosphere, the lively camera action, and especially the jailhouse scene where white men's ambitions meet up with black men's soul. I thought this would be something special, but the last half blows it. I'm guessing scripter Robert Rossen didn't know where to go with his novel characters and noirish ambiance. So he ends up with a melodramatic love affair that's neither believable nor well-acted. Ahh, but that first part. It's sort of like the 1930's meeting up with the 40's-- the jive band jumping aboard a freight train like any other footloose hobo. But they don't care; they're making cutting-edge music and it's a special bond. Halop and Kazan make great hipsters, as does Carson's shifty-eyed trumpeter. Whorf hasn't much range, but as a dreamy-eyed composer, he's perfect. Notice how up-tempo are the dialogue delivery and camera moves-- it's a super-charged atmosphere even as the the night hangs heavy over their vibrant little spark. Things go downhill once they hook up with The Jungle and Betty Field. The roadhouse is okay and a good fringes-of-the-law place for them to perform. But Field has all the seductive charm of fingernails across a blackboard, while having Whorf fall for her is totally out of character. Maybe if she had seduced him first, his obsession would make sense. But the way it's handled, his plight is little more than a poorly done contrivance. Maybe the plot jumps overboard, but the visuals remain fascinating They're exotic and artistically composed. And those surreal montages show real flair, especially Whorf's delirious fantasies. All in all, the movie's a genuine oddity, something like a noirish musical. But the only number played to completion is that novelty tune with the buck-toothed singer. So calling it a musical is a stretch. Actually, it's an animal without a pedigree. Nonetheless, there's a really compelling image that stays with me-- the band making with the blues in a boxcar as the train rolls on through the night, going who knows where. Now, there's a final note to ponder.

The blues and swing music are quite good, what there was of it. Unfortunately the music keeps getting interrupted by the sort of sappy story that Hollywood usually attached to films that were billed as musicals. Down and out musicians, riding the rails like hobos, decide to form a band at Depression's end, but they keep getting involved with gangsters, stupid club owners and a woman of very questionable morals who would break up their happy family. There's a good girl, of course, a blond singer who belongs to a philandering trumpet player. Oh, what's the use--no one would watch this for the story or to see Jack Carson or Lloyd Nolan or the rest of them. If only there had been more of the music and less of what some might call "drama," and what I would call fast talking, poor acting treacle.

The final minute is what I would have expected from the entire film: dark, slow, some blues music, and moody. Regrettably, that last minute is an aberration in a script wherein the intended blues theme is overwhelmed by way too much dialogue. And the story lacks focus. A troupe of blues musicians never quite gets around to playing much blues music. Instead, lots of contrived situations keep the film plot bound, with assorted conflicts swirling around the various characters. Jigger Pine (Richard Whorf) is a piano player and the troupe leader, with lots of problems. But as soon as the angry, brittle Kay (Betty Field) appears, about a third of the way through the film, the story's emphasis seems to switch to her. Kay is nothing if not embittered, and she hisses her way through the remainder of the film, as she crosses paths with Jigger. All that angry talk drains away a blues atmosphere, which could have made the film sultry and moody. Casting and acting are acceptable. But characters talk ninety miles an hour. It's as if the director is timing actors' lines of dialogue with a stopwatch. The music is generally disappointing. One of the production numbers in the second half, "Says Who? Says You, Says I" is just awful. The B&W cinematography is okay, but there are too many dissolves. And a montage that details a psychiatric problem is so visually juvenile that it looks like something from a high school drama class experiment. Production design is drab, bleak, and cheap looking. But at least it gives what is probably a fairly accurate representation of film sets used during the Great Depression. Overall, "Blues In The Night" is disappointing, mostly because of a script that is too talky and so rigidly plot bound that the intended musical blues theme gets smothered.

I'm sure that if the brothers Warner had known that Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer would give this film a score that would include This Time The Dream's On Me and the title song Blues In The Night, they would have found a better film for the score to be in. They also would have used some of their A list stars in the production. Instead this film was attached to a film that was clearly part of their B picture unit. Not that it's bad in fact the music raises it to a level unheard of for B films. It's the story of a jazz combo consisting of Jack Carson, Elia Kazan, Peter Whitney, Billy Halop, girl singer Priscilla Lane and their tempestuous leader Richard Whorf. As is the usual in real life and films these musicians are barely making a subsistence living until they meet up with Lloyd Nolan, a gangster on the run who puts them into a steady gig at a Jersey roadhouse he's got an interest in. They provide the entertainment and Nolan upstairs runs a gambling operation. His help is Howard DaSilva, Wallace Ford, and Betty Field. Field is some piece of work, she transitions nicely from her bad girl role in Of Mice and Men to this film. But the girl that got strangled by Lon Chaney, Jr. in that film is Mary Poppins next to the one she plays her. Nolan's on to her, Ford's a faithful stooge, but for Whorf she sends him for quite a tumble. In fact Blues In The Night becomes something of a prequel for The Lost Weekend. Whorf goes through the same kind of trip Ray Milland went through and the cinematic techniques showing his lost mind are quite similar. Blues In The Night got an Oscar nomination for Best Song, but lost to The Last Time I Saw Paris which was not written specifically for Lady Be Good the film it appeared in. It was 2 years old and quite the timely hit with the Nazis marching into Paris that year. If Blues In The Night had been in an A production it might have stood a better chance for an Oscar. I doubt if the Warner Brothers publicity machine went into any kind of gear for this film. Nevertheless the composer of The Last Time I Saw Paris, one Jerome Kern thought Arlen and Mercer should have won that year. He campaigned himself to get the rules to state clearly the song must be an original one written specifically for a film. It's an average B film, still Blues In The Night has achieved its own immortality through its musical score.

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.

While I'd love to see the 1941 b&w movie (is it even available?), I saw the more recent musical adaptation at the Seattle Center some years back, and have listened to the CD recording of the Sheldon Epps 1987 production (Carol Woods, Debby Bishop, Maria Friedman, Clarke Peters) innumerable times since then. While the band may have been Jimmy Lunceford's, the vocalists were meant to portray Bessie Smith, Ida Cox, and perhaps Ma Rainey, blues stars of the 20s and 30s "race records" and industry standards. As a strong supporter of the performing arts in high school, I would love to see this as a musical production (with some word replacements in the script), but don't think it is available for high schools - more's the pity.