something VERY unusual about Bogart in this movie? (This is not one of those "help me with my term paper" questions.) Just a silly little thing I noticed and thought you guys might have noticed, too.
Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?
I KNOW this isn't YOUR answer.... BUT... he played the part of a loving hubby, who wasn't a cynic, at least NOT contemptuous of the female gender--even after losing his arm]
shareAll good points! And more legitimate than my observation… it's true Bogie rarely played a family man.
But what I noticed is that his character DOESN'T SMOKE!
Actually the current pictures of him on this Imdb page show him with a cigarette...
shareYeah, he does light up in that scene. But only once.
shareThat's a very peculiar observation since there's nothing true about it. You should watch the movie again. Bogart definitely does smoke in this film and not only once. He's puffing one in the restaurant and later on we see him in his home sitting on a couch with a cigarette.
shareoh and also... who really cares?
shareThe cigarette smoking by both Bogie and Anne Sheridan contributed fulsomely to their premature demises via lung cancer. James Cagney was cognizant of Sheridan's chain-smoking and in his autobio mentioned his dropping a word of caution to her (she was too addicted to heed). Yul Brynner elsewhere rued his addiction to the weed.
The depiction of smoking in films from Bogie, who made an art of machismo inhalations onto Nouvelle Vague's Jean-Paul Belmondo admiring Bogie in "À bout de Souffle" is ironic. He murmurs "Bogie..." while aping his smoking style, admiring the poster of "The Harder They Fall".
Forgive me for nit-picking, but IMDb lists the cause of Ann Sheridan's premature death as "cancer of the esophagus and liver," not lung cancer. Now I am not saying smoking had nothing to do with it, but cancer of the esophagus and liver suggests alcohol as the causative factor rather than cigarettes.
Never mess with a middle-aged, Bipolar queen with AIDS and an attitude problem!
roflol ><
O, mebbe I'm wrong about esophygeal cancer being primarily nicotinal causative. The alcohol usage combining with nicotine inhalation never occurred to me since I thought that alcohol primarily affected the liver adversely. Anyhoo, emphysema plue throat cancer did in Bogie and Robert Mitchum and they both enjoyed the bottle. I read where Mitchum would tilt a fifth and glug it down like the Hash House Harriers would glug-glug a quart of malt (I did so once and almost choked to death when I clogged my epiglottis-:) said epiglottis I'm sure would have been salvaged after my autopsy to demonstrate the folly of chug-a-lugging beer...an acting teacher in my high school showed one preserved in alcohol to our fledgling histrionics class. That gave me a turn and I never dreamt I would ever become an imbiber-:).
shareAn entirely different thing you may or may not have noticed is that the Ida Lupino-George Raft-Alan Hale plot string is borrowed directly from the 1935 Warner Brothers film "Bordertown", in which a young platinum blonde Bette Davis pursues Paul Muni while married to boorish Eugene Pallette. The murder is committed in the same manner and it is Bette who goes mad on the witness stand in the earlier film. Bette may be sexier, but Ida outshines her in the mad scenes.
shareBette Davis may be sexier than Ida Lupino?
Not on my planet!
I heard on a biopic on TCM that Ida Lupino and Bette Davis vied for many parts in the 40's. Bette was already an established star and many times Ida would take parts that Bette had passed on, and she always played them to the hilt. I personally like Ida at least equal to Bette and many times better. Also, Ida went on to become a succesful director and actually preferred that to acting.
shareYeah Bette was a star long before that. Fortunately many fans have come to recognise Ida's talent which was great to see. Perhaps her living a long life helped in that regard.
shareActually, "They Drive By Night" was a purposeful remake of "Bordertown". They combined a remake of "Bordertown" with an adaptation of the novel "Long Haul" into one film. So in reality, it's two films in one.
shareYes it's a curious mish-mash of a film. The first half-hour has the feel of a typical WB gangsters' movie with hard-pressed wisecracking guys fighting their way up but it morphs into something else entirely.
shareWith the smoking issue off the table, another trivial thing I took note of, was how similar Bogie´s and George Raft´s voices sounded. Maybe that´s why they´re cast as brothers.
"facts are stupid things" - Ronald Reagan