What A Character! Frank McHugh, Annabelle’s Husband, & So Much More

Whoop it up, wranglers! Frank and the boys show
Texas visitors action in All Through the Night

This review is part of the What A Character! Blogathon, hosted by Paula of Paula’s Cinema Club, Kellee of Outspoken and Freckled, and Aurora of Once Upon A Screen. The Blogathon runs from September 22nd through 24th, 2012. By all means, please leave comments for one and all! :-)

My husband Vinnie and I first saw character actor Frank McHugh (1889-1981) on TV, when we were watching the 1942 Warner Bros. wartime comedy-thriller All Through the Night (ATtN) on TCM. We of Team Bartilucci loved both Frank and the movie right away!  And why wouldn’t we, with its great high concept: “Damon Runyon Kicks Nazi Heinie in NYC.”  Heck, we could easily devote this entire blogpost to ATtN alone, considering the cast’s many wonderful character actors. In addition to our Frank, ATtN’s cast included Humphrey Bogart (who I’ve always thought had the soul of a character actor along with his star quality); William Demarest; Jackie Gleason; Phil Silvers; Barton MacLaine; Edward Brophy; Wallace Ford; Charles Cane; Conrad Veidt; Judith Anderson; Martin Kosleck; and Peter Lorre.  But for us, Frank stole the show as Barney, the newlywed among the tough but good-natured “sports promoters” (translation: bookies and gamblers) in Bogart’s crew. We’ll always affectionately think of Frank as “Annabelle’s Husband” in honor of Barney’s new bride (Jean Ames), who barely even gets time to kiss her groom before Bogie & Company whisk him away to fight Fifth Columnists in New York City. As Barney, Frank gets some of the best lines in this totally entertaining blend of comedy and action:

Barney: “Annabelle’s waiting for me…after all, I’m a married man. I got obligations.”

Gloves (Bogart): “All right, send her flowers.”
 Barney: “Well…that wasn’t my idea.”

 

Slugger Frank clobbers Fifth Columnists in All Through the Night!

Talking to Madame (Anderson) at the auction house after Gloves and Sunshine (Demarest) are knocked out and tied up:

Barney: “Lookit, lady, when we started out tonight, there were three of us. Twenty minutes later, there was only two. Now there’s only one. One of us isn’t enough to leave here alone!”

Hooch your daddy? Frank and James Cagney in
The Roaring Twenties (1939)

Of course, before Frank became one of our favorite character actors, Francis Curray McHugh was born in Homestead, PA in 1889, the youngest member of a family of character actors. Indeed, the McHugh family had their own stock company, including sister Kitty McHugh and brother Matt McHugh. Sometimes they got screen credit, and sometimes they didn’t, but the McHugh family was always working, whether it was Matt playing uncredited roles like “Third Man on Death Row” in My Favorite Brunette or faux waiter Frisco in The Mad Miss Manton, or Kitty McHugh getting screen credits as Mae in The Grapes of Wrath or Goldie in Blonde Trouble. Fans of the 1947 film noir The Dark Corner may also recognize Matt as the milkman who comes to Lucille Ball’s apartment. At the age of 10, young Frank literally got into the act and began his own acting career with the rest of the clan.

Frank and James Cagney as sea salts in
Here Comes the Navy (1934)

Frank made his Broadway bow in 1925 in The Fall Guy. Five years later, Hollywood came a-knockin’, and he made his film debut in The Dawn Patrol.  Warner Bros. hired him as a contract player, where he usually played the hero’s sidekick and/or comedy relief.  Usually looking and sounding nervous yet likable, Frank appeared in over 90 movies at Warners, as well as Paramount’s Going My Way and My Son John, both of which cast McHugh as priests. (My Son John was Robert Walker’s last film, which you can read about in my Strangers on a Train post, if you’re interested.  But I digress….).  Frank’s regular-joe characters ranged from mechanics to newspapermen to sidekicks to tough guys—or not-so-tough guys, like the aforementioned Barney—with hearts of gold.  Frank often appeared with another in-demand character actor, Allen Jenkins (Ball of Fire; Lady on a Train; the voice of TV’s Officer Dibble on Hanna-Barbera’s Top Cat). Sometimes Frank even got the girl, a la ATtN!

Frank as Father Timothy O'Dowd in Going My Way

During Radio’s heyday, Frank proved to be as versatile a voice actor as he was a film actor, starring in 1935’s in Shell Chateau, and then in 1938 in the Warner Brothers Academy Theater. The next decade saw Frank performing in several Radio dramas. Then, in 1946, Frank got another break: popular Film and Radio comedian Stuart Erwin had been starring on the CBS Radio sitcom Phone Again, Finnegan. Realizing he was spreading himself too thin with commitments, Erwin stepped down, and Frank got the gig, joining the cast as Fairchild Finnegan.  By the early 1950s, Frank’s film career was winding down, so he migrated to Television, racking up over 80 TV credits. From 1964 through 1965, Frank and his Going My Way co-star teamed up for The Bing Crosby Show, where Frank played Bing's comic foil, Willis Walter.

Frank's in the swim with Elvis
in Easy Come, Easy Go (1967)

Ironically, Frank had supporting roles in two different films titled Easy Come, Easy Go (ECEG), which just goes to show that everything old is new again, at least when it comes to movie titles! The first ECEG was a 1947 comedy-drama described on the IMDb as “A film that possibly held the record for the most Irish-descent players in an American-produced movie before The Quiet Man was shot on location in Ireland, and that includes The Informer.”  The second ECEG was a 1967 Elvis Presley comedy-adventure with Navy frogman Elvis and local shopkeeper Frank joining forces to find undersea treasure—which turns tricky when Frank’s character, Captain Jack, confesses he’s afraid of water!

Being an in-demand
character actor is thirsty work!

Frank quietly retired from show business in 1969 with his wife, Dorothy, and died of natural causes in 1981, survived by his wife of 48 years and his three children. Of course, he lives on in the hearts and films of his many fans, including all of us here at Team Bartilucci HQ.  What A Character, indeed!

The 1947 Easy Come, Easy Go. Don't mix those two up!

If you want to hear more about All Through the Night, check my review here.

ALL THROUGH THE NIGHT: The Continuing Adventures of Annabelle's Husband

Here’s a high concept for you: “Damon Runyon Kicks Nazi Heinie in NYC.” That’s the clever premise of first-time “A” picture director Vincent Sherman’s 1941 Warner Bros. wartime comedy-thriller All Through the Night (ATtN). Don’t you love it already? And what a cast — it’s Character Actor Central, and all in their prime! The good guys’ corner includes a dazzling array of funny, colorful sidekicks and associates in addition to Humphrey Bogart himself: William Demarest; Jackie Gleason (then billed as Jackie C. Gleason); Phil Silvers as a nearsighted but patriotic waiter; the lovely Kaaren Verne (Kings Row, The Seventh Cross); Barton MacLane (whose many films with Bogart included The Maltese Falcon and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, though TV fans may remember him best as General Peterson on I Dream of Jeannie); Edward Brophy (who Team Bartilucci knows best as Joe Morelli in The Thin Man, and who the young Disney fans in our lives know best as the voice of Timothy Mouse in Dumbo); Wallace Ford (billed as “Wally” here) and Charles Cane from Dead Reckoning; Frank McHugh, in the role that endeared him to Team Bartilucci and earned him the affectionate nickname “Annabelle’s Husband” (more on that shortly); and of all people, The Grapes of Wrath Oscar-winner Jane Darwell as Bogart’s mom (doesn’t sound like it should work, but it does, trust me!). The bad guys they’re up against are no slouches, either: Conrad Veidt; Dame Judith Anderson, Martin Kosleck, and Peter Lorre (who ended up married to co-star Verne for several years, ironically enough). There’s gonna be a rumble in Manhattan tonight!

Sunshine explains how to catch
the Nazis with their Panzers down.

This fast, funny, suspenseful adventure gives Bogart one of his most entertaining roles as Alfred “Gloves” Donahue, a dapper New York City “sports promoter.” Translation: gambler and bookie. I should know; that was what my dear old dad did when he wasn’t managing his Italian restaurant in the Bronx when I was a little tyke. My favorite euphemism for Gloves’ line of work comes from a radio bulletin when he’s wrongly accused of murder, describing him as a “man about town and well-known figure in the sporting world.” But I’m getting ahead of myself! The film opens with Gloves’ “boys,” Sunshine (Demarest), Starchy (Gleason), and waiter Louie (Silvers) using toy soldiers and such to map out a campaign against the Nazis. Our guy Gloves joins Sunshine and their cohort Barney (McHugh) at the restaurant. Gloves is a rough-and-tumble but essentially decent guy who’s good to his lovable mother (Darwell). He’s more interested in the sports page than the war news on the front page, until Mom seeks out Gloves for help. Mr. Miller (Ludwig Stossel) is missing. This is a crisis, as Mrs. Miller (Irene Seidner) is Mom Donahue’s BFF, plus Mr. M. is Gloves’ favorite cheesecake maker! We viewers had just seen Pepi (Lorre), a pianist (no, not Adrien Brody) and generally slimy so-and-so, slinking around Miller’s store, eating candy he hasn’t paid for and making veiled threats — not a good sign! Well, Mom Donahue has even sharper “women’s intuition” than Grace Kelly did in Rear Window, and her never-wrong “funny feeling” is once again on the money, alas; Mr. Miller is found murdered in his basement.

Gloves picked a fine time to
accidentally leave his calling card!

Speaking of cheesecake, the lovely German-accented singer Leda Hamilton (Verne) drops by wearing a picture hat and a worried look. Turns out Pepi is Leda’s accompanist. Now Gloves is the one with the funny feeling, first with his attraction to the mysterious yet endearing Leda, then the growing realization that Pepi and Leda are involved with a bunch of mugs even tougher than Gloves and his cronies. When Mom tries to get info out of Leda at The Duchess Club, the nightspot run by Gloves’ rival Marty Callahan (MacLane), Gloves steps in, and before he knows it, shots are fired and he’s framed for the murder of the obnoxious Joe Denning (Brophy). Joe only gives Gloves one clue before dying: he lifts his hand. The chase is on, and soon Gloves and Company realize they’re dealing with “Fivers”— Fifth Columnists, headed by smooth antiques dealer Franz Ebbing (Veidt)! Leda seems to run hot and cold, first knocking Gloves out, then helping him and Sunshine escape. Turns out there’s a terrible hold over her: her father’s in the Dachau concentration camp, and Ebbing and company have been keeping Papa’s death from “natural causes” from her so she’d keep working with them. (I wonder what those Nazi creeps defined as “natural causes”?) Now that Gloves and Leda are joining forces, they’ve got to find out what those Nazi scum are up to over at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Will Gloves get himself and Leda out of this mess? Will Barney and his brand-new bride Annabelle (Jean Ames) get to enjoy any action on their wedding night that doesn’t involve chases and clobbering? You bet — with a little help from their cronies, of course! Native New Yorkers rule!

Congrats & good luck to Barney & Annabelle,
married to the mob!

George Raft, notorious for turning down roles that wound up turning his replacements into stars, was offered the role of Gloves Donahue first. Thank goodness Humphrey Bogart landed the role instead, because Bogie was a tough guy with a knack for comedy! As wonderful as the whole cast is, McHugh is our favorite among the supporting cast. Indeed, we affectionately call him “Annabelle’s Husband.” He gets lots of the best lines, too, like these:

Drake on the move! Perry Mason’s
William Hopper in his first film role.

Barney: “Annabelle’s waiting for me…after all, I’m a married man. I got obligations.”

Gloves: “All right, send her flowers.”

Barney: “Well…that wasn’t my idea.”

Talking to Madame (Anderson) at the auction house after Gloves and Sunshine are knocked out and tied up:

Barney: “Lookit, lady, when we started out tonight, there were three of us. Twenty minutes later, there was only two. Now there’s only one. One of us isn’t enough to leave here alone!”

A portrait's worth 1000 words: fiendish Fivers afoot!

The screenplay by Leonard Spigelgass and Edwin Gilbert (story by Spigelgass), and Leo Rosten writing as Leonard Q. Ross is fast and funny, blending comedy, action, and suspense effortlessly. I especially got a kick out of the breezy, sometimes punny dialogue (like Gleason’s “The first one of those (Nazi) guys I tag, I’m gonna kick him right in the swastika!” and Bogart’s “Hey, there’s more here than meets the FBI!”). I was also tickled when I spotted Hedda Hopper’s son DeWolfe Hopper in an uncredited role as a reporter in the background of the film’s last scene; of course, we Perry Mason fans know him better as William Hopper, who played Perry’s private investigator Paul Drake, as well as starring in the films 20 Million Miles to Earth, The Deadly Mantis, and The Bad Seed, among others!

Considering ATtN ends with Gloves’ Mom rushing to him in the middle of a press conference to tell him that now the milkman is MIA, it would have been so cool if Warners had made a sequel, and/or maybe even a new movie series! But alas, at that time, the attack on Pearl Harbor was still too fresh in 1941 audiences’ minds for them to embrace a quasi-realistic World War 2 spy thriller with broadly humorous overtones. Happily, ATtN is available on DVD and TCM (as it was during Conrad Veidt Day recently on TCM’s Summer Under the Stars) so we modern movie lovers can enjoy this entertaining genre blend guilt-free!

Hmm, wonder which cheesecake Peter Lorre liked best? Miller's cheesecake?

Or then-wife Kaaren Verne? ;-)

It’s double jeopardy for Gloves and Leda as
they unravel the evil Fifth Columnists' plot.

 Poor little pooch! It’s not the dog’s fault his owner is Nazi scum!