The film was budgeted at $600,000, which meant, according to director Vincent Sherman, "that it was an A film and that I was now definitely an A full-fledged A director. My salary, however, remained the same, three hundred dollars a week, while several A directors were being paid thousands a week. I was not happy about it, but I was not disgruntled. The fun and excitement of working on screenplays, directing actors, and learning about the technique of film made up for any resentment I felt for being underpaid."
Interestingly, Humphrey Bogart was not the first (or second) choice for the lead. Bogart had scored with audiences in The Maltese Falcon (1941) and High Sierra (1941), but he was not yet the star he would become later that year, when Casablanca (1942) would be released. Hal Wallis originally wanted the gossip columnist Walter Winchell to play the lead. The idea seems bizarre, but Wallis reckoned that the publicity of casting Winchell "would more than make up for any defects in Winchell's acting." In any event, Winchell couldn't take eight weeks off to make the picture, and so Wallis offered the part to George Raft. Raft turned it down and so Bogart stepped in.
On loan from MGM, the great Conrad Veidt (The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari , 1920) plays the master spy Franz Ebbing, while Judith Anderson, who had just played Mrs. Danvers in Hitchcock's Rebecca (1940), plays Madame. Anderson was making Kings Row (1941) for Wallis at the same time and so she had to scuttle between sound stages, changing back and forth from period to modern costume. Peter Lorre turns in a wonderful performance as Pepi, and William Demarest, whose comic skills had been so ably showcased by Preston Sturges, almost steals the picture with his pidgin German. The wonderful Jane Darwell, who won wide acclaim for her portrayal of Ma Joad in John Ford's The Grapes of Wrath (1940), played Bogart's mother. Leda Hamilton is played by Kaaren Verne, who played the lead in Underground and was also working simultaneously on Kings Row. Off-screen, it seems as if love brought the onscreen enemies together, as Lorre and Verne fell in love and were married soon after Lorre divorced his wife, the actress Celia Lovsky.
And speaking of Lorre, Sherman relates how the actor "had given up hope of ever doing serious and meaningful work in Hollywood." For Lorre, who had worked in Europe with Bertolt Brecht, Fritz Lang, Alfred Hitchcock and G.W. Pabst, film acting had become simply a way to earn some cash. When Sherman told Lorre he wanted to do another take of a particular scene, Lorre shot back: "That's all brother Vince. I can only do this crap once a day." "Just a minute, Peter," I replied, pretending to be angry. "Don't talk to me about crap - how did you do all those Mr. Motos at Fox?" "I took dope." Sherman thought Lorre was joking, but a later conversation with Rudi Fehr, the film's editor, who, like Lorre, was a German refugee, convinced him that Lorre had been speaking in earnest.
The cast is rounded out by two Warner brothers veterans: Barton MacLane, who appeared in seven films with Bogart, but is perhaps best remembered as General Martin Peterson in TV's I Dream of Jeannie; and Ed Brophy, the perennial cigar-chewing lunkhead, whose immortality is assured thanks to Disney's Dumbo (1941); he provides the voice of Timothy Mouse. And don't forget to watch closely for a couple of interesting cameos. According to Sherman, Jack Warner personally telephoned and directed Sherman to put two young comics in the picture. Their names? Jackie Gleason and Phil Silvers. Sherman told Warner he had no parts left, but Warner simply replied: "Well, make some parts." According to Sherman, "it occurred to me that Silvers could play a waiter, and Gleason could be another of Bogie's henchmen. I asked them to bring me in some pages and I'd try to fit them in. Gleason brought in a page of funny lines and Silvers, nine pages of jokes. Silvers can be seen briefly in the opening of the film, and Gleason now and then throughout."
The crazy scene in which Bogart and Demarest confuse the Fifth columnists with German-sounding gobbledygook, was not in the original screenplay. Sherman thought the idea up himself and presented it to producer Hal Wallis. Wallis hated the idea but Sherman was so convinced that the film needed it, that he shot it anyway. When Wallis saw the scene in the rough cut, he angrily told Sherman to take it out. Sherman, however, left a bit of it in and when the film had a sneak preview, the audience "exploded with laughter" at the double-talk. Wallis told Sherman to put it all back in.
The film also features the Johnny Mercer-Arthur Schwartz standard, "All Through the Night."
Producer: Jerry Wald
Director: Vincent Sherman
Screenplay: Edwin Gilbert, Leonard Spigelgass
Production Design: Max Parker Cinematography: Sidney Hickox
Costume Design: Howard Shoup Film Editing: Rudi Fehr
Original Music: Adolph Deutsch
Principal Cast: Humphrey Bogart (Gloves Donahue), Conrad Veidt (Franz Ebbing), Kaaren Verne (Leda Hamilton), Peter Lorre (Pepi), Judith Anderson (Madame), William Demarest (Sunshine), Jane Darwell ('Ma' Donahue), Frank McHugh (Barney), Jackie Gleason (Starchy), Phil Silvers (Louie), Wallace Ford (Spats Hunter), Barton MacLane (Marty Callahan), Edward Brophy (Joe Denning), Martin Kosleck (Steindorff).
BW-108m. Closed captioning.
by Mark Frankel
