Al Westerfield I recorded this film on spec because I was interested to see Richard Whorf in a starring role. I thought he did an excellent job but wasn't quite special enough in looks or personality to become a star. Top billed was Pricilla Lane who, by the importance of her role should have been billed about sixth. That's only the beginning of what I thought was one of the famous write it as you go WB films, like when They Drive by Night (1940) takes an unexpected turn into Bordertown (1935). It starts out as a few friends trying to form a band. Billy Hallop has a coughing fit in jail and we just know he's going to be their inspiration when he dies. Nope, he never coughs again. A brash Jack Carson shows up with his overwhelmed wife Lane. He treats here like dirt and chases after every skirt. We just know she and Whorf will get together. Nope, he falls for the dame Carson should have gotten, a no-good twist, play brilliantly by Betty Field. The band is bumming a ride in a box car when Lloyd Nolan, obviously a gangster on the run, hops aboard. The band shares their food with him. He's obviously going to do them a good turn. Nope. He robs them. But eventually Nolan sets up a nightclub and hires them. Field was his girl but Nolan is smart enough to have done with her. Here weak husband (?), Wallace Ford, fawns on her, totally dependent. He's a drunk and a gambler. We know Nolan will eventually kill him. Nope, he turns out to be quite a philosopher, taking matters into his own hands. One of his best roles. Whorf falls for Fields, becoming another Ford. He has a nervous breakdown. We know when he gets well, he'll rejoin the band, they'll become stars and it will end happily ever after. Nope, he falls for Field again. All during this the film gets darker and darker until peaking on a dark and stormy night. Finally, the band goes back to being just another band. Other reviewers claim the plot is routine but I think it deliberately sets up the plot turns to break them. Or maybe the writers just lost control. In any event, the film surprises at every turn. The acting of one and all is excellent and the dark cinematography is superb. The music is great with Whorf (or someone dubbing his playing)is really brilliant on the piano. It's a really good ensemble piece that deserves more recognition.

Lechuguilla The final minute is what I would have expected from the entire film: dark, slow, some blues music, and moody. Regrettably, that last minute is an aberration in a script wherein the intended blues theme is overwhelmed by way too much dialogue. And the story lacks focus.A troupe of blues musicians never quite gets around to playing much blues music. Instead, lots of contrived situations keep the film plot bound, with assorted conflicts swirling around the various characters. Jigger Pine (Richard Whorf) is a piano player and the troupe leader, with lots of problems. But as soon as the angry, brittle Kay (Betty Field) appears, about a third of the way through the film, the story's emphasis seems to switch to her. Kay is nothing if not embittered, and she hisses her way through the remainder of the film, as she crosses paths with Jigger.All that angry talk drains away a blues atmosphere, which could have made the film sultry and moody.Casting and acting are acceptable. But characters talk ninety miles an hour. It's as if the director is timing actors' lines of dialogue with a stopwatch. The music is generally disappointing. One of the production numbers in the second half, "Says Who? Says You, Says I" is just awful.The B&W cinematography is okay, but there are too many dissolves. And a montage that details a psychiatric problem is so visually juvenile that it looks like something from a high school drama class experiment.Production design is drab, bleak, and cheap looking. But at least it gives what is probably a fairly accurate representation of film sets used during the Great Depression.Overall, "Blues In The Night" is disappointing, mostly because of a script that is too talky and so rigidly plot bound that the intended musical blues theme gets smothered.

Terrell-4 It's hard to decide which is the most awkward part of this slightly noirish movie...the beginning, the middle or the end. The beginning features five white musicians and a girl singer who decide to form a special kind of band, led by the impassioned piano player. "It's gotta be our kind of music, our kind of band...the blues, the real blues...the kind that comes out of people, real people...their hopes and their dreams...." The middle features these six riding a box car, becoming entangled with a rough gangster who befriends them, a tough- as-nails femme fatale who does not, and a roadhouse success in New Jersey. The end features a nervous breakdown, a dead baby, a shooting, a car ride to death and another box car. You know, the usual blues stuff. Along the way there is some impassioned dialogue. What Blues in the Night has going for it are songs by Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer, including one great song, "This Time the Dreams on Me" and one they knocked out of the ball park, perhaps the best popular blues song ever written, "Blues in the Night." The movie also features another first-rate performance by Lloyd Nolan as the gangster. I wonder if any other actor appeared in so many flawed A movies or just plain B moves but who invariably gave believable, notable performances. There are several musical numbers that stand out. We also have the chance to see Betty Field, a first-rate actress who wasn't as successful in Hollywood as she was on Broadway. She plays the femme fatale, complete with bad grammar and the kind of sexy selfishness that can lead a man to bed at night and leave him alone with an empty wallet the next morning. She's brittle and hard here, but her strong suit as an actress, I think, was the fragile vulnerability and warmth she could project. After her role in this movie, the next year she played the doomed Cassie in Kings Row, two performances as different as a prostitute's embrace is from a tremulous first kiss. The movie also has the curiosity value of featuring Elia Kazan in his last acting role. He plays the band's hyperactive young clarinetist whose mother wants him to be a lawyer. Kazan and the film's screenwriter, Robert Rossen, both were hauled before the House Un-American Activities Committee during the Hollywood witch-hunts. Both named lots of names. While those they named saw their careers crushed, Kazan and Rossen prospered. Would I have done it differently? I don't know. What little reason there is to remember this movie, however, is the great Arlen/Mercer song: My mama done tol' me, when I was in knee-pants, My mama done tol' me, "Son, a woman'll sweet talk And give you the big eye, but when the sweet talking's done, A woman's a two-face, a worrisome thing who'll leave you to sing the blues in the night." Anyone who doesn't believe Mercer's words are true American poetry...well, you should also throw out the works of William Carlos Williams. For Mercer fans, you might be interested in the CD An Evening With Johnny Mercer. Before an audience (which included Harold Arlen) he explains a bit about his writing, takes us through his career and breezes through a number of his songs. It was recorded in 1971, five years before he died. The drawback is that it runs less than an hour. For Mercer fans, it's essential. Mercer usually was his own best interpreter, but Bobby Troupe does a nice job with Bobby Troupe Sings Johnny Mercer. Troupe swings it and keeps it intimate. There's none of the over-orchestrating and lushness that some otherwise great singers brought to Mercer's songs. The CD is hard to find. Easier to locate is The Songs of Johnny Mercer sung by Susannah McCorkle, a fine, low-key stylist. If I've given the impression you should forget this movie and instead spend more time listening to Johnny Mercer...you'd be right.

arbygodwin While I'd love to see the 1941 b&w movie (is it even available?), I saw the more recent musical adaptation at the Seattle Center some years back, and have listened to the CD recording of the Sheldon Epps 1987 production (Carol Woods, Debby Bishop, Maria Friedman, Clarke Peters) innumerable times since then.While the band may have been Jimmy Lunceford's, the vocalists were meant to portray Bessie Smith, Ida Cox, and perhaps Ma Rainey, blues stars of the 20s and 30s "race records" and industry standards.As a strong supporter of the performing arts in high school, I would love to see this as a musical production (with some word replacements in the script), but don't think it is available for high schools - more's the pity.