Gangway for Tomorrow is one such movie, following in flashback the back stories of five defense plant workers. As they travel to their jobs in a single car, each tells what brought them to their present positions: a race car driver rendered ineligible for service after a bad crash, a former Miss America whose quest for fame came to naught, a prison warden who quit his job after having to execute his own brother for murder, an erudite hobo shamed by a judge into supporting the war effort, and a French cabaret singer who fled her homeland after her arrest for resistance activities against the Nazis.
The working title of the film was "An American Story," rather more appealing than the final release title, which sounds almost like a parody of an old Hollywood film and perhaps betrays the intentions of its studio, RKO, to give this no more than B picture treatment.
Mexican-born Margo was given top billing as the most recognizable name in the cast, having appeared previously in the prestige screen production of Maxwell Anderson's stage hit Winterset (1936), the Shangri-La fantasy drama Lost Horizon (1937), and The Leopard Man (1943), one of Val Lewton's evocative horror pictures for the studio. This was her last picture for five years after marrying actor Eddie Albert (later of TV's Green Acres). When she returned to the screen in the late 40s, she worked sporadically over the following 15 years or so, mostly in television, before living out the last 20 years of her life in retirement.
Most of the cast is either relative unknowns or popular character actors like Harry Davenport and second-billed John Carradine, doing a Barrymore-like turn as the "heaubeau" (as his character posits), one of many memorable supporting roles he performed in his roughly 60-year career.
As the race car driver longing for action on the front lines, Robert Ryan was not yet the name he would become in his long run as one of Hollywood's most respected actors, despite being cast mostly in heavy roles. His star was beginning to rise at RKO with six pictures released by the studio in 1943, including the war-themed Bombardier and Behind the Rising Sun, which also starred Margo. Just a couple of months after Gangway for Tomorrow was released, Ryan enlisted in the Marines for the duration of World War II. When he returned to Hollywood in 1947, he became a key figure in the film noir genre that took hold after the war, with starring roles in such films as The Woman on the Beach (1947), Crossfire (1947), Born to Be Bad (1950), and On Dangerous Ground (1951). Ryan continued to create memorable roles right up to his death, making his final appearance in a film adaptation of Eugene O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh (1973).
The screenplay was only the second credit for Arch Oboler, who was critically praised for the dramatic techniques he brought from his stint as a radio writer, director, producer, and host.
An item in the Hollywood Reporter during production of this film noted that the studio was able to cut costs considerably by having the studio gate and machine shop stand in for the defense factory in the story.
Director: John H. Auer
Producer: John H. Auer
Screenplay: Arch Oboler, from an original story by Aladar Laszlo
Cinematography: Nicholas Musuraca
Editing: George Crone
Art Direction: Albert S. D'Agostino, Alfred Herman
Original Music: Roy Webb
Cast: Margo (Lisette Rene), John Carradine (Wellington), Robert Ryan (Joe Dunham), Amelita Ward (Mary Jones), James Bell (Tom Burke), Harry Davenport (Fred Taylor)
By Rob Nixon
