Humphrey Bogart plays Gloves Donahue, a rough-hewn but essentially decent New York gambler. The
Runyonesque plot gets moving when Gloves tries to find out what's holding up his favorite restaurant's daily shipment of cheesecake. Paying a call on the bakery, Gloves stumbles into a Nazi spy ring, masterminded by
Conrad Veidt. Mixed up in all this is nightclub singer
Kaaren Verne, whose loyalties are in question in her early scenes but who turns out to be as true-blue as the patriotic Gloves. Combining a quick wit with quicker fists, Gloves and his "mob" thwart the Nazis before they're able to skip the country. The cast is a movie buff's dream, ranging from
Jane Darwell as
Bogart's mom to
Peter Lorre as a cynical Nazi flunkey to
William Demarest,
Frank McHugh,
Phil Silvers and
Jackie Gleason as
Bogie's favorite cohorts. The film's best scene would have us believe that
Bogart could confound a gang of erudite Nazis with a steady stream of Manhattan slang. One shudders to think how leaden
All Through the Night would have been had
George Raft accepted the role of Gloves Donahue. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide