Roadhouse Nights (1930) DVD-R

Starring Helen Morgan, Charles Ruggles, Fred Kohler, Jimmy Durante, Leon Donnelly
Directed by Hobart Henley

Print: black/white
Runtime: 68 min.
Genre: drama
Print Quality: B

Jimmy Durante made his movie debut in Roadhouse Nights, a strange amalgam of musical
comedy and gangster melodrama. In truth, Durante is a special added attraction, together
with his nightclub partners Lou Clayton and Eddie Jackson. The film's nominal star is Helen
Morgan, a nitery chanteuse whose gangster bosses head a murderous bootleg operation.
Charlie Ruggles portrays an ineveterate drinker who frequents Morgan's club; actually,
Ruggles is a news reporter whose phony drunkenness is a cover for his investigation of the
bootleg ring. Filmed at Paramount's East Coast studios in Astoria, Long Island, Roadhouse
Nights is typically brash and brassy Prohibition-era entertainment, with a reasonably
'straight' performance from comic actor Ruggles and a few hauntingly rendered songs from
Helen Morgan. The most succinct review for this film came from a 'non-professional:' When
asked what he thought of Jimmy Durante's first talking picture, his father Bartolomeo
grumbled 'Talk, talk, talk.'