Noir Double Feature: ‘They Drive By Night’ And ‘His Kind Of Woman’ Reviewed

Warner Archive provided me with free copies of the Blu-rays I reviewed in this article. The opinions I share are my own.

Raoul Walsh‘s They Drive By Night (1940)

Everyone benefits from truckers who ship goods long distances so we can find what we’re looking for at the grocery store. Until I started watching movies about truckers, though, it’s a profession I completely took for granted and, while a lot of time has passed since They Drive By Night premiered, I wouldn’t count on the hope that the job has gotten better or less exploitative in the interim.

You could almost create a whole subgenre around trucker movies: Thieves’ Highway with Richard Conte. Hell Drivers with Stanley Baker. In They Drive By Night, Joe (George Raft) and Paul (Humphrey Bogart) are brothers, fighting to stay awake and pay off their truck so they can stay independent and not have to work for a boss at a larger outfit like Alan Hale’s. Paul is less passionate about this than Joe but is going along with the plan so far, but it’s not easy and the whole business seems set up for them to fail or worse, given the dangers of the job.

Ida Lupino plays Alan Hale’s snobby, gold digger wife who likes the lifestyle her marriage provides her but can’t stand her husband’s lack of gentlemanly ways. She’d much rather be married to Joe but he’s got his eye on Ann Sheridan’s waitress and doesn’t realise the threat Lupino’s affections pose.

When it comes to the film’s female stars, I’ve always seen Lupino heralded the most (and sure enough, according to the back cover of the Blu-ray it was her acting during the film’s trial sequence that earned her a contract at Warner Brothers) but this feels like recency bias, as Lupino doesn’t appear until the film is well underway whereas Sheridan gets her best scenes at the beginning.

Sheridan’s ability to deliver Jerry Wald and Richard Macaulay‘s snap crackle dialogue is unparalleled and the difference is night and day when you listen to the Lux Radio Theater broadcast from 1941 that Warner Archive have included as a bonus feature. In it Raft reprises his role as Joe while an almost unrecognizable Lucille Ball (she’s not doing Lucy Ricardo) is fantastic in the Lupino role, but Lana Turner school girls up and completely changes the characterisation of the role played by Sheridan and it’s not for the better. It’s also interesting to notice the rewrites. In the film a big plot point is made out of a newfangled piece of technology and that’s absent from the radio version.

Additional bonus features include an archival featurette on the film with talking heads by film historians Leonard Maltin and Robert Osbourne. “Swingtime in the Movies” is a fictional short about the making of a musical western, where the director is a European stereotype, there are waitresses singing in unison, and all it takes to achieve the American dream is being in the right place at the right time. There’s also a kissing demonstration by the director that would be an HR nightmare today (and rightfully so).

John Farrow‘s His Kind of Woman (1951)

Sometimes movies are better than you remember them. His Kind of Woman is kind of worse but with enough saving graces that it’s not hard to understand why my brain conveniently forgot how confusing the plot is and only remembered how fun Robert Mitchum, Jane Russell, and (especially) Vincent Price are in their respective parts. Basically, Mitchum’s Dan is in need of cash when he gets an offer so obviously bad that no one (let alone someone as smart as Dan) could mistake it for being above board and honest. He agrees, though, which is how he ends up in Mexico at a resort populated by shady characters. Will Dan be able to unearth the real reason he’s been sent there?

Luckily, the plot’s not what’s important here. What’s important is watching Dan use his gambling skills to chasten some bullies. What’s important is getting to hear Jane Russell’s actual singing voice instead of a dubbed version.  And [more than anything] what’s important to getting to see Vincent Price ham it up as an Errol Flynn-type actor who loves to quote Shakespeare and watch other people react to his films. As a Howard Hughes production, it sounds like it wasn’t a smooth shoot but according to the commentary by film historian Vivian Sobchack, it’s because of Hughes that Price’s part was expanded. There’s a scene involving a boat that evidently took so many takes to get right yet is one of the funniest scenes in any movie.

Warner Archive’s disc also includes a Bugs Bunny cartoon, “Bunny Hugged” that has no apparent connection to this release (Bugs gets involved in a wrestling match) but was one of the cartoons on my brother’s favorite Looney Tunes VHS  so, on a personal note, it was fun to see it restored.

They Drive by Night and His Kind of Woman are available on Blu-ray now from Warner Archive and to purchase from Movie Zyng.