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Night Waitress
Helen Roberts, who's on probation, goes back to work as a waitress at Torre's Fish Palace, a San Francisco waterfront dive. The customers are low characters trying to make time with Helen and ex-rum runners trying to make a dishonest dollar. Some of the latter, including Helen's unwelcome suitor Martin Rhodes, are after a mysterious, valuable hidden "cargo"; when violence erupts, Helen finds herself innocently involved, and is soon on the run from both cops and crooks.
Release : | 1936 |
Rating : | 5.7 |
Studio : | RKO Radio Pictures, |
Crew : | Director, Screenplay, |
Cast : | Margot Grahame Gordon Jones Vinton Hayworth Marc Lawrence Billy Gilbert |
Genre : | Drama Crime Romance |
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Reviews
I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.
Highly Overrated But Still Good
It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.
This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.
Decent little programmer. The plot's nothing special, about stolen gold being smuggled out on Martin's schooner, while rival gangsters try to hijack it. Meanwhile, over at the waterfront dive, the brash Martin's joining all the other guys hitting on comely night waitress Helen who refuses to be part of the menu. Too bad she's also on probation, which doesn't make connecting any easier. So how will this all sort out.The visuals really help carry the show, plus the brisk pacing. Suspense is not played up even though the components are there (Helen held captive). Then too, actor Jones in the key role is more jovial than the usual gritty crime fighter. Credit ace photographer Metty for the engaging b&w, and even pedestrian director Landers shows some imagination (shooting artfully through a fish bowl). But the story unfolds more than it builds. Boy, judging form the supporting cast, I was hoping three first-rate thugs would get to tangle —Tony Quinn, Marc Lawrence, and Don (Red) Barry. But unfortunately, their screen time is limited. Anyway, the Bay Area location shots really help make this programmer a watchable time- passer.
A couple of innocent people, Gordon Jones and Margot Grahame get caught up in an effort to move some stolen gold out of the country in Night Waitress. Jones is a schooner captain who is hired to move the stuff, cargo unknown to him. Grahame is a waitress working at Billy Gilbert's waterfront dive establishment who just gets caught up in it. She also gets caught up in Jones. Had she not been on probation the cops would never even been interested.This B picture from RKO boasts the presence of one movie legend, Anthony Quinn as one of the gangsters involved in the heist. Quite an ingenious place to hide the gold, almost in plain sight.Nothing particularly special about this one, but it's fast moving and exciting entertainment.
Passable crime movie from RKO featuring two actors who didn't quite make the grade. At least in her home country Margot Grahame was known as Britain's answer to Jean Harlow and dubbed the "Aluminium Blonde" as well as being their highest paid star but Hollywood didn't really want to know, even after her sterling performance in "The Informer". Besides her looks had more in common with Lucille Ball or Barbara Pepper. And Gordon Jones, even though he worked solidly from 1932 until 1963 (the year he died), was destined to have a very familiar face even if you couldn't remember his name.Helen Roberts (Grahame) is back at her waitressing job after a brush with the law and with the full support of Papa Torres (Billy Gilbert) who just wants to see her make good. How anyone could have cast Grahame as a probation girl is amazing - her posh tones seemed more at home in Buckingham Palace than Tony's Fish Palace!!! When not brushing off unwanted suitors she also has to put up with the whispered innuendos about her past which makes her particularly hardened to breezy sea Captain Marty Rhodes (Jones) who wants to get to know her better. He seems to be mixed up with some pretty shady characters who feel he can lead them to a gold shipment but, like Helen, he is really just an innocent bystander who doesn't know what the mysterious shipment he has been hired to deliver, is!!!The most interesting thing about this movie is the number of familiar faces in smaller roles, forget about the two leads. Don "Red" Barry of later "Red Ryder" fame is Rigo who is organising the gold cargo, Marc Lawrence (here billed as Laurence) is Dorne, a thug (what else!!), another thug is played by Anthony Quinn who happened to get a couple of good close-ups. There was also Willie Best as a bystander and the always good Frank Faylen, he of the thousand bit parts and Dobie Gillis's always exasperated father, playing a policeman in the crowd.
Well done B-movie about a gal on probation who works as a waitress at the dockside "Torre's Fish Palace", run by Papa Torre (Billy Gilbert, unfortunately seen oh so briefly in this film) who makes sure his wait staff aren't over-perfumed or wearing too much makeup. Just trying to keep out of trouble, our waitress unfortunately is of the attractive blonde variety, and every jerk man in the restaurant keeps trying to hit on her. Soon she, for some reason (I guess it's the guy's big, dopey grin that got her), is mixed up with this really aggressive, but handsome lug who is a racketeer on the watch each night to meet some mug named Rigo, and waits in his regular booth at midnight for the guy to show. Meanwhile, a gang of detectives/gangsters are out to meet up with this Rigo as well.A fast-paced little crime drama, this film is not too bad for a low budget movie. This is another one of those movies (and there sure are a lot of them) where the woman thinks a guy is a creep at first (or as she calls him "a gorilla") but he is just SO assertive, pressing her into going out with him, grabbing her aggressively to kiss her, etc., that she actually starts to like the guy. And, well, he does seem to have his charms, which are not visible in the earlier parts of the film - but I wonder at her easy change of mind. The acting by the two leads (Margot Grahame and Gordon Jones) is quite well done and there is a good deal of chemistry between them as well - and watch for a young Anthony Quinn in this as one of the "detectives". Worth seeing.