Lupino Noir Watch: They Drive By Night (1940)

Watched:  02/06/2025

Format:  DVD

Viewing:  Second

Director:  Raoul Walsh

I watched They Drive By Night (1940) about ten years ago now, and had only vague memories of the film.  My write up of it is so brief, it did not help when it came to trying to remember more than a few snips of it.

But somewhere on the internet I saw someone mention it starred Bogart, Ann Sheridan and Ida Lupino in one movie, and that seemed like a darn good reason to watch it again as I've certainly become more familiar with all of their work in the ensuing years.  The film stars George Raft, and, to be honest, George Raft is not my cup of tea.  I think this movie was, even 10 years ago, when I decided "I just don't think that guy is much of an actor".

The movie is almost two separate movies - the first half being about the dangers of being a truck driver pre-WWII America, driving produce from Northern California to LA.  There's lousy management that will try not to pay you, guys trying to seize your truck because that manager won't pay you, and the less than stellar pre-Eisenhower road system.  And so being married seems like a dumb thing to do, because you're never home.  

By the way, for a movie I actually think about *a lot* that's about the rough world of the trucker, that I need to revisit, I recommend Thieves' Highway.  It happens to star Richard Conte, who, to me, is what Raft wishes he'd been.  Conte is so @#$%ing cool.

Raft and Bogart play brother-truckers, with Bogart with a wife at home.  1940 was a curious year as Bogart was kind of a "that guy" actor at the time, and Raft had enjoyed a decade of fame playing crooks and hoods - and was rumored to hang out with real-life mobsters.  Raft's star was about to descend, and this is literally Bogart's last film as "that guy".  He'd star with Lupino in High Sierra immediately following this (with Walsh directing), and show up in Maltese Falcon in 1941 as well, and have Casablanca done in 1942.  

Raft, Sheridan, Bogart

Ann Sheridan (the "Oomph Girl", which, yikes, Hollywood PR machine), shows up as a plucky waitress who bails on her job because of general harassment by the boss.  She jumps in a truck with the brothers and takes up with Raft.  

After an accident in which Bogey loses his arm, Raft figures out how to skip the middle-man and move freight himself, by going to an old pal who has started his own trucking business.  But that old pal is married to a scheming Ida Lupino.  Lupino, who has married the rich but obnoxious pal, wants to make Raft her side-piece.  Raft refuses, because while this is Ida Lupino, she's wrapped in red flags, like being married for one.

Lupino plots!

If They Drive By Night feels like it's two movies stapled together, this is the second movie.  It shifts into high gear as Raft is promoted to the manager of the guy's fleet, and Lupino - who really hates her husband - does her husband in by leaving him in the garage, black out drunk, with the car running.  

Lupino - realizing Raft is serious about Sheridan - frames him up for her husband's murder.*  

And, thus, we get maybe one of the great "oh, @#$%.  She's nuts." courtroom breakdown scenes that helped turn Ida Lupino into a box office draw (I do think this is one of the few roles where Lupino's native British accent leaks out a little, but comes off as Mid-Atlantic) and - while her whole performance is just patently better than Raft's, kicks things up about five notches.

Just so you know, she's talking about automatic doors to her dead husband's garage, a very new idea in 1940.

Sheridan is probably underutilized in this movie, playing the good girl and just being totally into Raft for no reason.  She's great in other movies I've seen her in, and she was a few years into her career in Hollywood by this point (she's from Denton, TX, by the way, which I didn't know before), and I think she was already ready for meatier parts, not just as the dame who is the alternative to Lupino.

Anyway, yeah, for an assembly-line WB picture, it's got some great stuff, and is a neat snapshot of a pre-WWII America where the line between subsistence living and the swells was wide as the Depression was not really over quite yet.  Mix that in with a 3rd act femme fatale story, and Bogart and Lupino showing the chops that would take them into High Sierra, and it's a good picture.

*That a guy like Raft is caught between the likes of Sheridan and Lupino is truly the magic of the movies.