All Through the Night (1941)

“You're like a bad penny.”

            All Through the Night is a war time propaganda piece from the 1940s. It has the usual spies, a pretty foreign girl that an American has to try to save and he also has to save America from the Nazis. All Through the Night has a perfect mix of comedy and drama and it is one of my favorite Humphrey Bogart films I have seen so far.

            Gloves Donahue (Bogart) is a boxing promoter. He gets whatever he wants when he wants it. Every day Gloves goes to a restaurant to get a slice of cheesecake that is delivered there from a bakery in his old neighborhood. He will only eat that kind of cheesecake and nothing else and walks out the server brings him the wrong slice.

            The baker Mr. Miller is mixed up with a man named Pepi (Peter Lorre). Pepi has Mr. Miller talk to someone. Mr. Miller refuses to go speak to the person he does not want to be mixed up with Pepi’s business anymore. Pepi pushes Mr. Miller down the stairs and holds a gun to him.

            Gloves gets a call from his mother about something urgent. When he gets to the bakery she her son that Mr. Miller has gone missing no one knows where he could be. Gloves looks in the basement. He finds Mr. Miller’s body in a freezer. A young woman walks into the bakery as Gloves is telling his mother what he found in the basement. The young woman, Leda Hamilton, is looking for Mr. Miller. The police lieutenant comes, he speaks to Gloves, and when they turn to speak to the woman she is gone.

            Mrs. Donahue tracks Leda down to a nightclub. Leda is a singer there. Gloves goes down to the nightclub and finds that his mother is making a big fuss and accusing Leda of murdering Mr. Miller. Gloves sends his mother home and stays to speak to Leda. They talk for a few minutes until Pepi comes by. Leda leaves Gloves and goes to her dressing room. When she closes the door a gunshot is heard. Gloves did not hear the shot but he goes back to speak to Leda again. When he walks in he sees the proprietor Joe lying on the floor with a bullet wound in the stomach. Joe unfortunately dies before he can tell Gloves who shot him. Gloves accidentally leaves one of his leather gloves near the body. He is now wanted by the police as the murderer.

            Gloves manages to find where Leda lives. He sneaks into the building with one of his guys Sunshine. The place is not an apartment it is a warehouse full of toys. Sunshine and Gloves split up to look around. They hear a freight elevator comes down. Another man is in the warehouse. Gloves has a shoot out with the guy and then they get into a fist fight. Gloves manages to knock the guy out. When he goes to look for Sunshine the guy is nowhere to be found. He figures there is a third floor and that is where Sunshine could be. The elevator goes up but there is no third floor. He is convinced the building connects with another building on the other side. He tracks down the building to an auction house. Gloves wants to get to the backroom there. Pepi is in the back. He tells a woman simply known as Madame (Judith Anderson) who Gloves is then she goes an tells the auctioneer Ebbing (Conrad Veidt). He manages to get into the backroom. He asks if they have old toys anywhere. Madame gives Ebbing surprised look. There is a sound coming from behind Ebbing. Gloves asks what it is and Ebbing responds that the noise is the ventilating system. All the sudden Leda comes out from behind a door. As Gloves goes to move towards Leda he is knocked out. When Gloves comes to he finds he has been put into a storage room. He also sees that Sunshine is there with him too. Leda comes in and gets the two men out. Leda goes back to Ebbing and Madame. Madame does not trust Leda at all.

            Gloves and Sunshine check out the building. There is a painting of Hitler on the wall and maps of new York City and the Brooklyn Navy Yard. They find out that Ebbing and Madame are Nazis. In a notebook is written down names and information. One of the names is belongs to Leda’s father and he is being held in the Dachau prison camp.

            Leda and Gloves get away from the auction house. She tells him about her father and why she was working with Ebbing and Madame. She was working for them to get her father out of the camp. Gloves gets into a fight with a crony. During the fight the piece of paper with Leda’s father’s name falls out. Leda picks up the paper and finds that her father has died.

            Ebbing eventually finds Gloves and Leda in a hotel. Gloves had called the police to have Ebbing arrested but they do not believe his story since he is wanted for murder. Gloves has them all go to the auction house to look around. Everything he had seen with Sunshine is gone. Gloves manages to get away so that he can clear his name. He gets all his gangster friends together to find Ebbing and to stop whatever is going on. Gloves and Sunshine track Ebbing down to a meeting. They beat up two Germans and take their IDs. They find out the Germans are all over America and plan to attack and weaken the country starting with the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

            Gloves follows Ebbing to the Navy Yard and stops Ebbing from blowing up a destroyer.

            Humphrey Bogart was hilarious in this film. He had great comedic timing. I was laughing when he was in the meeting he was just making stuff up off the top of his head to make it like he knew what he was talking about. Bogart did have range he could play tough and mean or he could be sarcastic and funny.

            I enjoyed All through the Night. The story was really good but it got out of hand at some points. It was silly that a group of gangsters stopped the Nazis from taking over New York City (maybe what he said in Casablanca about invading some sections of New York City was true). All Through the Night was a good propaganda film it did not get out of hand screaming American values.