Roadhouse Nights (1930)

Directed by

Hobart Henley

Genre

crime film

Country

United States

Runtime

1h 08m

Rating

6.0 of 10 from 3 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

A gangster film set in a roadhouse where a singer and her colleagues get entangled with criminals. The story mixes musical performances with a crime plot involving bootleggers and a murder investigation.

livelymusicalmelodramaticpre-codefast-pacedcomedicgrittytonally mixed

What happens

Roadhouse Nights is a 1930 American pre-Code gangster film. A number of sources including Sally Cline in her book Dashiell Hammett Man of Mystery claim it is based on the novel Red Harvest written by Dashiell Hammett (author of The Maltese Falcon, The Thin Man, and The Glass Key). However the credits of the film itself say only "An Original Screenplay by Ben Hecht." Hammett receives no mention at all (and the plots are not similar). The movie, an amalgam of musical comedy and gangster melodrama, was directed by Hobart Henley, stars Helen Morgan, Charles Ruggles, and Fred Kohler, and features a rare screen musical comedy performance by Jimmy Durante, in his screen debut, with his vaudeville partners Lou Clayton and Eddie Jackson ("Clayton, Jackson, and Durante"). Helen Morgan also sings It Can't Go On Like This, by Jay Gorney and Yip Harburg. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

Trailer

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