They Drive by Night
Brief Synopsis
Cast & Crew
Raoul Walsh
George Raft
Ann Sheridan
Ida Lupino
Humphrey Bogart
Gale Page
Film Details
Technical Specs
Synopsis
Brothers Joe and Paul Fabrini eke out their living as wildcat truckers, barely keeping ahead of their creditors. Joe is stubbornly independent, determined to save enough money to establish his own trucking business, while Paul is disenchanted with life on the road and wants to settle down with his wife Pearl. Consequently, when Ed Carlsen, the big-hearted owner of the Carlsen trucking company, offers Joe a job, Joe refuses, and Paul, out of loyalty to his brother, continues his life on the road. On the night that the brothers make their final payment on the truck, an exhausted Paul falls asleep at the wheel, sending the vehicle careening over a cliff. In the accident, the truck is demolished and Paul loses his arm. Hearing the news, Ed's sarcastic, shrewish wife Lana, who is in love with Joe, convinces her husband to offer him a managerial job in the office and Joe, now the sole support of his disabled and embittered brother, accepts. Lana continues her obsessive her pursuit of Joe, but he is in love with Cassie Hartley. When he refuses Lana's brazen advances at a party, using the excuse that he will not betray his good friend Ed, Lana drives her drunken husband home, and when he is too drunk to get out of the car, she decides to leave him with the motor running. Ed is asphixiated, but his death is ruled accidental. With her husband dead, Lana offers Joe a partnership in the business, but when she discovers that Joe is planning to marry Cassie, she accuses him of driving her to commit murder. The district attorney believes Lana's story and charges Joe as an accomplice in Ed's murder. Lana is soon haunted by her crime and begins to lose control of herself. When she is called to testify at Joe's trial, she breaks down on the witness stand and rants insanely about Ed's death. Joe is then freed and returns to Cassie and the trucking company.
Director
Raoul Walsh
Cast
George Raft
Ann Sheridan
Ida Lupino
Humphrey Bogart
Gale Page
Alan Hale
Roscoe Karns
John Litel
George Tobias
Henry O'neil
Paul Hurst
Charles Halton
John Ridgely
George Lloyd
Dorothea Kent
Charles Wilson
Pedro Regas
Norman Willis
Joe Devlin
Joyce Compton
Lillian Yarbo
Eddy Chandler
Sol Gorss
Eddie Fetherston
Dick Wessel
Al Hill
Charles Sullivan
Eddie Acuff
Pat Flaherty
William Haade
Vera Lewis
Mack Gray
Max Wagner
Wilfred Lucas
John Hamilton
Howard Hickman
Crew
Milo Anderson
Elmer Decker
Adolph Deutsch
Arthur Edeson
Leo F. Forbstein
Oliver S. Garretson
Byron Haskins
Mark Hellinger
John Hughes
H. F. Koenekamp
Richard Macaulay
Hugh Macmullen
Thomas Richards
Jerry Wald
Jack L. Warner
Perc Westmore
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They Drive By Night
George Raft was instrumental in recommending Lupino for the part of Lana and her brilliant rendition of the jealousy-deranged, glamorous wife decked in a king's ransom of jewels and furs turned out to be her first important film role. Raft also had a hand in helping Bogart's career take off. Though Bogart played a secondary role in They Drive By Night (1940) as the hangdog married brother to Raft's savvy lady killer, that understated role would soon lead to higher profile work. Raft, who didn't want to die in another picture, passed on the starring role in Walsh's next picture, High Sierra (1941), and instead, recommended Bogart for the film -- a part that made Bogie into a major star.
As memorable for its fast-paced, realist introduction to life on the trucking circuit as it is for its later descent into murder-thriller mode, Walsh's road movie manages to combine hairpin action, crackling hardboiled dialogue and charismatic performances from Lupino, Bogart and Raft.
Raft "trained" for his career playing gangster and petty criminal roles in films like Scarface (1932) as a kid growing up on the mean streets of New York's Hell's Kitchen and then as a crime-connected hoodlum. His background as a rum-runner came in especially handy when an accident on the set of They Drive By Night required the actor to use his bootlegger driving skills to deal with failed brakes on one of the trucks being used to shoot a driving scene with Raft's on-screen love interest Ann Sheridan and Bogart on board.
The characteristic Warner Brothers realism is apparent in the early truck driving scenes which establish the Fabrini brothers' world of long distance wild-catting with its trucker camaraderie, crowded truck stop diners, grueling schedules and corrupt bosses. A loose remake of another thriller, Bordertown (1935), starring Bette Davis as the murderous wife, They Drive By Night is considered one of the best films in director Raoul Walsh's canon. Its two-fisted action and snappy dialogue is a wonderful combination of the gritty Warner Brothers "working man" film style and Walsh's own talent for crafting instinctive, suspenseful thrillers, while still demonstrating a rare sympathy for the difficulties of his working class characters.
Director: Raoul Walsh
Producer: Mark Hellinger, Hal B. Wallis (executive)
Screenplay: Jerry Wald, Richard Macauley, based on the novel 'Long Haul' by A.I. Bezzerides
Cinematography: Arthur Edeson
Editor: Thomas Richards
Art Direction: John Hughes
Music: Adolph Deutsch
Cast: George Raft (Joe Fabrini), Ann Sheridan (Cassie Hartley), Ida Lupino (Lana Carlsen), Humphrey Bogart (Paul Fabrini), Gale Page (Pearl Fabrini)
BW-96m. Close captioning.
by Felicia Feaster
They Drive By Night
They Drive By Night on DVD
George Raft was instrumental in recommending Lupino for the part of Lana and her brilliant rendition of the jealousy-deranged, glamorous wife decked in a king's ransom of jewels and furs turned out to be her first important film role. Raft also had a hand in helping Bogart's career take off. Though Bogart played a secondary role in They Drive By Night (1940) as the hangdog married brother to Raft's savvy lady killer, that understated role would soon lead to higher profile work. Raft, who didn't want to die in another picture, passed on the starring role in Walsh's next picture, High Sierra (1941), and instead, recommended Bogart for the film -- a part that made Bogie into a major star.
As memorable for its fast-paced, realist introduction to life on the trucking circuit as it is for its later descent into murder-thriller mode, Walsh's road movie - now on DVD from Warner Video - manages to combine hairpin action, crackling hardboiled dialogue and charismatic performances from Lupino, Bogart and Raft.
Raft "trained" for his career playing gangster and petty criminal roles in films like Scarface (1932) as a kid growing up on the mean streets of New York's Hell's Kitchen and then as a crime-connected hoodlum. His background as a rum-runner came in especially handy when an accident on the set of They Drive By Night required the actor to use his bootlegger driving skills to deal with failed brakes on one of the trucks being used to shoot a driving scene with Raft's on-screen love interest Ann Sheridan and Bogart on board.
The characteristic Warner Brothers realism is apparent in the early truck driving scenes which establish the Fabrini brothers' world of long distance wild-catting with its trucker camaraderie, crowded truck stop diners, grueling schedules and corrupt bosses. A loose remake of another thriller, Bordertown (1935), starring Bette Davis as the murderous wife, They Drive By Night is considered one of the best films in director Raoul Walsh's canon. Its two-fisted action and snappy dialogue is a wonderful combination of the gritty Warner Brothers "working man" film style and Walsh's own talent for crafting instinctive, suspenseful thrillers, while still demonstrating a rare sympathy for the difficulties of his working class characters.
The Warner Video DVD release of They Drive By Night boasts a sharp, relatively clean transfer (there's some very minor film speckling at times) with nicely balanced levels of black and white. It certainly beats any previous television airing or theatrical showing of this familiar title. And it comes with a few extras that are worth your time: "Swingtime in the Movies," a Technicolor musical short with cameos by Bogart, John Garfield, Priscilla Lane, George Brent, Pat O'Brien and other Warner stars, and "Divided Highway: The Story of They Drive By Night," an original featurette created especially for this DVD.
For more information about They Drive By Night, visit Warner Video. To order They Drive By Night, go to TCM Shopping.
by Felicia Feaster
They Drive By Night on DVD
Quotes
Trivia
Notes
Although this picture was written by different writers, portions of the film, especially the courtroom confession and events leading up to it, closely resemble aspects of the 1935 Warner Bros. film Bordertown. In 1941, George Raft, Lana Turner, and Lucille Ball starred in a Lux Radio Theatre version of this story.
Miscellaneous Notes
Released in United States 1940
Released in United States 1940