An entertaining fruit cocktail, All Through the Night was one of a raft of propaganda movies Hollywood made to try and turn isolationist American public opinion in favour of entering the Second World War. In the end it didn’t matter. By the time the film came out in early 1942, Japan had bombed Pearl Harbor, Hitler had declared war on the United States and President Roosevelt had decisively taken his fellow Americans into the fray.
It’s a Warner Bros movie, full of Warner players, with Humphrey Bogart leading the pack as Gloves Donahue, a wiseguy gambler with a heart of gold, the sort of guy who makes a lot of money but is generous with it.
Gloves is also a folksy sort of guy who loves his cheesecake, and it’s when Mr Miller, who makes his favourite sort, winds up dead that Gloves is propelled into action and becomes an amateur detective. Miller, his accent had already told us, was from Europe, a German, in fact, who was being forced to collaborate with a cell of fifth columnists but had balked at their latest plan and had paid the price.
As said, fruity, bit of this, bit of that, lots of comedy alongside the murder, with Bogart’s Gloves a version of his Maltese Falcon character while, as his sidekicks Sunshine and Barney, William Demarest and Frank McHugh attempt to put a Three Stooges spin on Bogart’s side-of-the-mouth turn. Bogart meets them halfway, spitting out the few funny lines he has, though Gloves largely takes seriously what Sunshine and Barney respond to with quips, double takes and cowardy-custard reaction shots.
Jane Darwell plays Gloves’s dear old ma, proof that he’s a decent chap beneath the hard-bitten exterior. Other familiar faces include Peter Lorre as the despicable hoodlum Pepi, while Conrad Veidt plays the leader of the fifth columnists and is properly chilling.
A larky Guys and Dolls minus the songs, plus undercover Nazis, if you like. With Karen Verne as love interest, playing another German national forced into going along with the fifth columnists’ plans. Leda’s dad is in Dachau (which is spelled out twice, so it’s clear this was new information at the time) and Veidt’s Herr Ebbing is using the death camp as leverage.
Marlene Dietrich was mooted for the role of Leda, Verne’s role, but it didn’t happen in the end. Pity – Verne is a weak link. But strong enough to keep the story bobbing along.
Casablanca was still a year away, but this can be seen as a warm-up for it, both in terms of Bogart’s character and the presence of Veidt and Lorre, plus Ludwig Stössel, who plays the hapless Mr Miller, and Wolfgang Zilzer, in blink-and-miss-him moments in both films.
The Bund, aka the German American Bund, a Nazi-adjacent organisation, is mentioned at one point, and there is the sense that efforts are being taken to keep both feet on the ground, in spite of the comedy-shenanigans atmosphere generated by the knockabout screenplay.
It does its job well while darting nervously between high politics, criminality and low humour. The cinematography also knows why it’s here, and what a sharp and punchy image DP Sid Hickox has wrangled onto celluloid. Money has been spent. Producer Hal Wallis, the son of Polish Jews, knew what Hitler had in mind for people like him and was singing from the heart rather than the head with this movie, as he had with its earlier (also not particularly successful) companion piece, Underground, and would later with Casablanca.
Maybe that’s the best way to look at it: as a more comedic Casablanca, as if music-hall acts had invaded Rick’s Bar and started entertaining the customers.
All Through the Night – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2025
