Completed two months before December 7, All Through the Night is a genre-bending thriller that pits New York City gangsters against the Nazis. Once again, George Raft’s loss was Humphrey Bogart’s gain.

I’m not sure at which point I set up YouTube TV to record the film but it must have been a case of it airing on TCM more than nine months ago. It was likely because of Humphrey Bogart being in the cast than anything else at the time. While reading Michael Benson’s Gangsters vs. Nazis: How Jewish Mobsters Battled Nazis in Wartime America, my interest was piqued once again. If not for Nazi Town, USA, I’d have probably never read the book. In any event, it’s all rectified now that I’ve watched the film. It’s the rare feature film that combines the gangster and fighting Nazis genres, too. While it wasn’t uncommon for Warner Bros. to make films prepping American audiences for war with the Nazis, they usually didn’t use their gangster films to drive the point. Strangely though, this film is both a comedy and crime/spy thriller.

Mobster turned gambler Alfred “Gloves” Donahue (Humphrey Bogart) arrives at a restaurant and everyone there knows he likes the cheesecake that Herman Miller (Ludwig Stössel) makes. He very quickly realizes something as soon as they hand him the cheesecake. When his mother (Jane Darwell) alerts him that the baker is missing, she has a feeling that something sinister has happened. Gloves starts investigating and finds the man dead. If this isn’t enough, singer Leda Hamilton (Karen Verne) leaves rather quickly to where Gloves thinks she might be involved. Leda makes a lot of noise about Mr. Miller’s death. It’s enough that club owner Marty Callahan (Barton MacLane) calls Gloves. Not long after that, Marty’s partner, Joe Denning (Edward Brophy), is fatally wounded and has enough strength in him to raise five fingers, singling that the enemies are fifth columnists.

Gloves follows them to an auction house run by Hall Ebbing (Conrad Veidt) and an assistant, Madame (Judith Anderson). He is unable to get away by posing as a bidder because Pepi (Peter Lorre) recognizes him. Both Gloves and Sunshine (William Demarest) escape with the help of Leda. But before they do, they grab as much evidence as possible. Unfortunately, Ebbing and company chase them into Central Park. Gloves decides to go to the police with Leda and of course, they don’t believe him. He later escapes and makes it to his lawyer’s apartment. It’s just his luck that Marty and his gang arrives shortly thereafter. Their two gangs end up joining together in taking on the Nazis.

What makes this film play true to real-life events is gangsters infiltrating a meeting of American Nazis and busting them up in the process. Gangster infiltrations played out regularly across the country in which they would bust up the Nazis. We have Judge Nathan Perlman, the American Jewish Congress chairman at the time, to thank for this. How there are so few films about this, either narrative or documentary, is just astounding. This is something that I think more people would want to know about! But anyway, Gloves and Sunshine take a card out of the Sid Caesar playbook–a decade prior to Caesar’s Your Show of Shows and Caesar’s Hours, too! What happens is they stall for time while speaking in German-sounding double-talk. Not surprisingly, producer Hal Wallis didn’t like the scene. Test screenings proved otherwise.

The casting of both Jackie Gleason and Phil Silvers certainly stand out from the rest of the cast. Jack L. Warner is responsible for their casting, having called Vincent Sherman directly. Both actors were being paid by the studio but weren’t actively working. Cameras already started rolling on All Through the Night so we don’t see much of them. Silvers shows up during the opening as a waiter. Gleason portrays one of the gangsters, Starchy, throughout the film.

The film blends a number of genres, especially comedy and thriller. When it comes to Nazis hiding in plain sight, it begs the question of where law enforcement is. If anyone’s read Gangsters vs. Nazis or Hitler in Los Angeles, they would not that law enforcement in New York and New Jersey acted very differently than Los Angeles, where Nazi sympathizers were on the police force. But at the same time, what is this to say of the FBI? We don’t see them in the film at all. One would think that they would not be ignoring the Bund or whichever group is represented here. An interesting side note about Conrad Veidt: he was a German refugee who fled the Nazis alongside his Jewish wife. When the Nazi race laws went into effect, Veidt filled out that he was a Jew on questionnaires to show solidarity.

All Through the Night opts for more comedy than one might be comfortable with in the film but it’s a very rare example of a Hollywood film pitting gangsters against Nazis.

DIRECTOR: Vincent Sherman
SCREENWRITERS: Leonard Spigelgass and Edwin Gilbert
CAST: Humphrey Bogart, Conrad Veidt, Karen Verne, with Jane Darwell, Frank McHugh, Peter Lorre, Judith Anderson, and William Demarest, Jackie Gleason, Phil Silvers, Wallace Ford, Barton MacLane, Edward Brophy

Warner Bros. released All Through the Night in theaters on January 10, 1942. Grade: 4/5

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