Roadhouse Nights
- February 23, 1930 (1930-02-23)
Roadhouse Nights is a 1930 American pre-Code gangster film. A number of sources including Sally Cline in her book Dashiell Hammett Man of Mystery claim it is based on the novel Red Harvest written by Dashiell Hammett (author of The Maltese Falcon, The Thin Man, and The Glass Key). However the credits of the film itself say only "An Original Screenplay by Ben Hecht." Hammett receives no mention at all (and the plots are not similar).
The movie, an amalgam of musical comedy and gangster melodrama, was directed by Hobart Henley, stars Helen Morgan, Charles Ruggles, and Fred Kohler, and features a rare screen musical comedy performance by Jimmy Durante, in his screen debut, with his vaudeville partners Lou Clayton and Eddie Jackson ("Clayton, Jackson, and Durante"). Helen Morgan also sings It Can't Go On Like This.
Plot
Lola is a nitery chanteuse's whose gangster bosses head a murderous bootleg operation. Willie is a news reporter pretending to be an inveterate drinker. He frequents Lola's club, his phony drunkenness a cover for his investigation of the bootleg ring.
Cast
- Helen Morgan as Lola Fagan
- Charles Ruggles as Willie Bindbugel
- Fred Kohler as Sam Horner
- Jimmy Durante as Daffy
- Leo Donnelly as City Editor
- Tammany Young as Jerry
- Joe King as Hanson
- Lou Clayton as Joe
- Eddie Jackson as Moe
- Fuller Mellish Jr. as Hogan
Production
Filmed at Paramount's Astoria Studios in Astoria, Long Island, Roadhouse Nights is typical pre-Code Prohibition-era entertainment, with a reasonably "straight" performance from comic actor Ruggles and a few songs from Helen Morgan.
External links
- Roadhouse Nights at IMDb
- Mystery File review by Walter Albert
- New York Times 1930 review
- v
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- e
- Red Harvest
- The Dain Curse
- The Maltese Falcon
- The Glass Key
- The Thin Man
adaptations
- Roadhouse Nights (1930)
- City Streets (1931)
- The Maltese Falcon (1931)
- The Thin Man (1934)
- Woman in the Dark (1934)
- The Glass Key (1935)
- Satan Met a Lady (1936)
- After the Thin Man (1936)
- Secret Agent X-9 (1937)
- Another Thin Man (1939)
- The Maltese Falcon (1941)
- Shadow of the Thin Man (1941)
- The Glass Key (1942)
- The Thin Man Goes Home (1945)
- Secret Agent X-9 (1945)
- Song of the Thin Man (1947)
- No Good Deed (2002)
- Lillian Hellman (partner)
- Julia (1977 film)
- Hammett (1982 film)
- Dash and Lilly (1999 film)
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