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Night After Night
Directed by Archie Mayo
Mae West
George Raft
Constance Cummings
Wynne Gibson
Louis Calhern
Alison Skipworth
Roscoe Karns
Directed by Archie Mayo
Screen greats George Raft (Spawn of the North) and Mae West (She Done Him Wrong) star in the Pre-Code drama Night After Night, about a speakeasy owner with a colorful past. Joe Anton (Raft), an ex-thug intent on losing his street-smart manner, hires a proper spinster named Mabel (Alison Skipworth, The Song of Songs) to accompany him and Miss Healy (Constance Cummings, The Battle of the Sexes) to dinner at his swanky establishment. Complicating matters, his flamboyant ex-girlfriend, Maudie Triplett (West), breezes over to their table and innocently begins to expose Joe’s past. Making her screen debut, Mae West delighted audiences with her wit, beauty and charm, thus launching her career as one of the most unforgettable Hollywood icons of all time. Co-starring Louis Calhern (The Magnificent Yankee) and wonderfully directed by Archie Mayo (The Petrified Forest).
I like to try at least three times myself.
Mae West ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mae_West ) had pushed the boundaries as far as they could be pushed when she boarded the train for Hollywood in 1932.
How far had she pushed them? Farther than anyone else before or since. She was the first white actress to kiss a Black actor on stage. This she did in Washington, D. C. where it mattered, when it mattered. She put a jazz band and drag queens on stage. The cops had a heart attack. She went to jail. Anyone who goes to jail for their art is a revolutionary. She was proud of it. Everyone who goes to jail should be proud of it.
The secret to mass manipulation as governments and religions know is guilt, shame and the offer of redemption. Mae West never knew shame. We shouldn’t either. She did not seek redemption. We should not either.
She knew she had one shot at the movies. Born in 1893 she was near 40 when she got there. The movies like them young and pliable. Mae West was neither.
When she stepped off the train she said, “I’m not a small girl from a small town coming to a big town. I’m a BIG girl from a BIG town coming to a small town.”
These are not the words people use when they hope to ingratiate themselves.
Mae West knew that she owed everything she had achieved to her single-minded determination to succeed.
Her school was the working class arena of vaudeville. She started at 6. When she did not get a spotlight she threw a tantrum. She got one. She learned early the value of throwing tantrums. The audience loved her. She loved them back. Her tours had taken her to one horse towns where the horse had died and the wagon had burnt. She was white trash from the Bronx. Her father was a boxer. She had the child’s insatiable curiosity. She was fearless.
She created her own material. She did not smoke. Nor did she drink. The characters she created did. She didn’t. This meant she had a lot of time to explore and the energy to do it. Born trash she had no fear of going everywhere.
Mae West was going to Hollywood because George Raft had hit big in SCARFACE. Paramount was launching him as a star. Paramount paid George just under $200 a week to star in NIGHT AFTER NIGHT based on a short story called SINGLE NIGHT by Louis Bromfield. The story was set in a speak easy. It had lesbians, queers and gangsters.
George knew speakeasies. He had begin his career as a runner for New York gangster Owney Madden ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owney_Madden ) who had backed Mae West’s hit play SEX. Nobody messed with Owney Madden. If they did they vanished. He was as tough as they come. He had to be. We all do but most ain’t. George went to pick up the money. He looked at Mae. Mae looked at George. Sparks flew. Mae never did anything by halves. They made love everywhere every chance they got. They were real people.
Mae’s play SEX had scandalized all the folks who thought themselves good. Scandal, then and now, is the lifeblood of the arts. In Europe artists launch their careers with scandals. Over here most go home crying to mama and papa at the faintest breath of scandal.
A part in NIGHT AFTER NIGHT called for a character based on Texas Guinan ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Guinan ) . Guinan was something. Lots of something. She had had a big influence on Mae West. George suggested Mae West. Paramount waved $5,000 a week in her direction. That would be close to $100,000.00 a week today. George got $190.69 a week.
Paramount plunked Mae West down in the Ravenswood Apartments. She never left. One day she bought the building.
The character she had created on stage was a slow moving eye of the hurricane around which everything swirled. When she read the script (which arrived after weeks of delay) she realized if she moved slower than everyone else she would not be moving. Paramount threw a birthday party for her. She threw the money she had been paid back. She said, “You folks don’t know what you’re doin’. I’m goin’ home.”
Paramount producer William Le Baron ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_LeBaron ) had known Mae in New York from when she started. He said, “Mae, write your own part.”
Paramount wanted to launch George Raft. Mae West was not the only thing Owney Madden had money in. We see George buck naked down to his pubes when he steps into a bath. Clearly the folks who liked that sort of thing were going to get what they liked. Raft’s buddy gives him affectionate taps. In the story the movie is based on we learn he’s gay about George. This was Hollywood in the days before the Catholic Church and Joseph Breen forced the movies to lie.
In the original story Mae’s character, Maudie, had been a pimp. George’s character had been one of the boys she sent out to serve her clients who, of course, would have included women and men.
“Mae stole everything but the cameras,” said George Raft.
Yes, she did. That was her job. She was good at it.
“Goodness, what lovely diamonds,” says the girl to whom Mae West gives her furs in NIGHT AFTER NIGHT.
Mae West fires back, “Goodness had nothing to do with it.”
No, it hadn’t.
A breath of fresh air blew through world cinemas.
Mae West arrived with the full force of a nuclear bomb.
People flocked to see the picture in legions.
“It is good taste not bad taste which is the enemy,” said Salvador Dali who painted Mae West. Pablo Picasso said it too. I’m with them. Thankfully good folks said everything Mae West did was in bad taste. Her last movie, SEXTET, made when she was 80, was in the worst taste of all.
See NIGHT AFTER NIGHT.–Reg Hartt
Poster and photo gallery:
I have shown this film publicly many times since 1970. This is the first time I caught this moment in a montage where two women share a marijuana cigarette and an obvious sexual interest in each other. This is a pre-code film.
https://www.kinolorber.com/film/night-after-night
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