"Kid Galahad" was only four years old when Warners decided to remake it, changing the setting from boxing to a second-rate circus, and upping Bogart from villain to lead. But he's still sort of a villain, an unscrupulous circus manager whose thoughts turn murderous when nice guy Eddie Albert starts eyeing Bogie's innocent sister, Joan Leslie. First, Bogie was 42 and Leslie 15 or 16, and second, it's a little discomfiting watching Albert romancing a teen. Albert's a grocer who becomes a lion tamer (implausible) when a lion escapes the circus and heads downtown (implausible) and Albert expertly captures him (implausible). He's a pleasant presence, but he's not a star, as Warners appears to have been grooming him for. Meantime, Sylvia Sidney, the best thing in the movie, is on the sidelines, in a kind-of romance with both men, and other fun people pop up, Sig Rumann as the other lion tamer and Clara Blandick playing another Aunt Em. It strains credibility that, first, Bogie would turn murderous, and, second, that he'd repent on his deathbed, in time for a happy-ish ending. Some nice circus atmosphere, efficient direction by the never-more-than-efficient Ray Enright, and some well edited encounters with kings of the jungle. There's just nothing special about it.
Review of The Wagons Roll at Night
