I wouldn’t be surprised if Sara Gruen, who wrote the novel “Water for Elephants” — recently turned into a not-great movie — has at least a nodding acquaintaince with “The Wagons Roll at Night” (1941), one of a pair of lesser-known Humphrey Bogart vehicles that recently turned up in beautifully restored DVD editions at the Warner Archive Collection manufacture-on-demand program.
There are no pachyderms on hand and this particular threadbare, Depression-era circus travels not by rail but by road — the title was part of a successful attempt to replicate the box office of “They Drive by Night,” a trucking melodrama Bogart made the previous year with George Raft.
There’s more than a little in common between Bogie’s pathologically jealous circus manager, perpetually staying one step ahead of the sheriff, and the even meaner one played by Christophe Waltz in “Water for Elephants. Robert Pattinson’s naive circus newcomer in the new movie also bears a resemblance to his decades-ago counterpart, portrayed by none other than Eddie Albert of future “Green Acres” fame.
Snappily directed by action-movie specialist Ray Enright, “The Wagons Roll At Night” interestingly comes chronologically between the two movies that finally made Bogie a star after a decade in Hollywood, “High Sierra” and “The Maltese Falcon.” Bogart appeared in several remakes, but this is the only one based on a film whose earlier version he had appeared in — 1937’s Michael Curtiz-directed “Kid Galahad” (retitled “Battling Bellhop” for decades on TV because of a second remake, with music, starring Elvis Presley).
The two Galahads are set in the boxing world, but the same basic story was rather easily transposed to a traveling circus. Bogart, stepping into Edward G. Robinson’s old role, hires store clerk Albert (who succeeds his “Brother Rat” co-star Wayne Morris) to replace his alcoholic, nasty lion tamer (Sig Rumann in approximately Bogie’s old role) after Albert helps recapture an escaped big cat. Albert quickly becomes the circus’ top attraction, but when there’s some trouble Bogie’s fortune-teller girlfriend hides Albert out on Bogart’s parents’ farm, where Albert quickly falls in love with Bogie’s younger sister.
Buffs will find the casting here intriguing down the line — the world-weary fortune teller (Bette Davis had the corresponding role in “Galahad”) is played by second-billed Sylvia Sidney, a formerly big star on the way down who Bogie had supported in “Dead End” (younger viewers may recognize her from Tim Burton’s “Beetlejuice” and “Mars Attacks!”). Both “Dead End” and “Wagons” were intended as reunions with Sidney’s frequent co-star at Paramount, George Raft, who turned the roles down (as he did “High Sierra,” “The Maltese Falcon” and a flick Bogie made the following year, “All Through the Night”).
Bogie’s fresh-faced sister, Jane Bryan in the original, is portrayed here by the up-and-comer Joan Leslie — the same teenage actress that Bogie had a crush on in “High Sierra.” (Her other 1941 release was “Sergeant York”). Bogie’s mom is played by Auntie Em herself, character actress Clara Blandick, who even smiles here (though she is, once again, not billed in the credits).
Enright is no Curtiz, but “Wagons” makes for a snappy 84 minutes and is far more entertaining than the lumbering “Water for Elephants.”
Contemporary reviewers singled out Eddie Albert for one of his better early screen roles. Albert was arguably even more badly misused by Warners than Bogie — Enright’s “On Your Toes” (1939), the studio’s worst musical of the ’30s, was probably Albert’s career nadir. He, Rumann, and in the exciting climax, even Bogart are seen in a cage with actual lions borrowed from MGM’s Tarzan unit. This may not be Bogie’s finest hour, but it’s no “Swing Your Lady” (1938), a musical wrestling comedy I’d rate as his low point at Warners (also directed, as it happens, by the same Mr. Enright).
If Bogie seems a tad unlikely to be playing a rough draft for Charlton Heston in “The Greatest Show on Earth,” he’s way out there as a psychotic, wife-murdering artist in the wildly improbable gothic thriller “The Two Mrs. Carrolls.” He shot this one after his other wife-murderer role in Curtis Bernhardt’s superior “Conflict” (1945) but “Carrolls” was not released until two years later. It’s significant principally as Bogie’s only teaming with Barbara Stanwyck, who had the biggest success of her career in 1946 with the monster hit “My Reputation,” which she made after “Carolls” but before its actual release.
We never see Mrs. Carroll No. 1 except in Bogie’s portrait of her as “the angel of death,” which their rather creepy daughter (Ann Carter from “Curse of the Cat People”) doesn’t seem to find disturbing either before or after her mom’s death by poisoning. Eventually it’s prominently displayed in the living room of the stereotypically English mansion of Stanwyck, who by this point has become Mrs. Carroll No 2.
Unfortunately for Stanwyck, two years into their marriage Bogie feels he’s exhausted the possibilities of his latest muse. He starts offering Stanwyck poison-laced milk at bedtime so he can replace her with flirtacious neighbor Alexis Smith (the actress also played his choice for a new spouse in “Conflict”). But the daughter begins innocently (?) arousing the ailing Stanwyck’s suspicions, which are confirmed when the wife sees Bogie’s latest “angel of death” portrait.
It’s hard to believe that director Peter Godfrey (a Brit who has a cameo as a racetrack tout) intended what often plays awfully close to a genre parody entirely seriously. At one point Bogie is permitted to spoof the famous curtain line of “Casablanca” and he performs the patented Bogie wince whenever church bells chime (which is frequently).
There’s an especially hilarious scene when Bogart asks Stanwyck’s bumbling, tippling doctor (Nigel Bruce) about the advisability of a “second opinion.” (The Internet Broadway Database actually categorizes the source play by Martin Vale, which starred Elisabeth Bergner and Victor Jory in New York, as a comedy).
Beautifully photographed on elaborate (possibly recycled) Anton Grot sets by J. Peverell Marley and atmospherically scored by Franz Waxman, the whole shebang builds to an effective if scenery-chewing climax set during an over-the-top rainstorm. Stanwyck secretly discards her latest glass of milk, Bogie discovers he’s been found out, and he proceeds to impersonate “The Yorkshire Strangler” before the arrival of the movie’s very nominal hero, an ex-beau of Stanwyck nicknamed “Penny.” This character is limply impersonated by obscure if prolific character actor Pat O’Moore.
Anita Bolster is appropriately forbidding as the Carroll housekeeper, and Barry Bernard is scary as a scar-faced druggist who’s apparently supplying Bogie with poison and blackmailing him at the same time.
Bogart’s role in “The Two Mrs. Carrolls” would probably have been more appropriate for the star that Bogart had supplanted as Warners’ top attraction, Errol Flynn.
In fact, Flynn had his only teaming with Stanwyck the same year that “Carrolls” came out — 1947 — in “Cry Wolf,” another second-tier WB star vehicle that also become available recently from the Warner Archive Collection. This English-set gothic thriller was also directed by Godfrey and features a Waxman score, as well as Barry Bernard. It’s also great fun if you don’t take it too seriously.
Today’s new releases from WAC include new fewer than five service comedies: Richard Thorpe’s “The Honeymoon Machine” (Steve McQueen, Jim Hutton, Paula Prentiss), Thorpe’s “The Horizontal Lieutenant,’ (Hutton, Prentiss), Charles Walters’ “Don’t Go Near the Water” (Glenn Ford) and George Marshall’s “Advance to the Rear” (Ford, Stella Stevens) as well as the World War II era “See Here, Private Hargrove” starring Robert Walker.
There are also four more serious service pictures bowing today at WAC: Frank Borzage’s flag-waving “Flight Command” (1940) with Robert Taylor, Richard Wallace’s “Bombadier” (1943) with Pat O’Brien and Randolph Scott, Mervyn LeRoy’s “Towards the Unknown” (1957) starring William Holden as a test pilot and Leslie Martinson’s “P.T. 109” with Cliff Robertson as the future John F. Kennedy in the Pacific during World War II.
WAC has also added a brace of titles, mostly recent documentaries, from its sister company HBO.
In other studios’ manufacture-on-demand programs, Sony’s Screen Classics By Request (available through WAC as well as Sony’s own classics website) has added John Cromwell’s “The Goddess” (1958) starring Kim Stanley as a thinly disguised Marilyn Monroe in a Paddy Chayefsky script, “Because They’re Young” (1960) with Dick Clark and a pair of ’40s oaters, “The Return of Daniel Boone” with Bill Elliott and “Laramie” with Charles Starrett.
The Universal Vault Collection (selling through Amazon, and not to be confused with the TCM Vault Collection with Universal-owned titles) has added Gregory LaCava’s “Lady in a Jam” (1942) starring Irene Dunne, Stuart Gilmore’s 1946 Techicolor remake of “The Virginian” with Joel McCrea and Jack Arnold’s 1957 western “Man in the Shadow” starring Jeff Chandler and Orson Welles.
