Castle on the Hudson [Years Without Days] ** (1940, John Garfield, Ann Sheridan, Pat O’Brien, Burgess Meredith, Henry O’Neill, Jerome Cowan) – Classic Movie Review 8022

John Garfield enjoys an acting field day as mobster Tommy Gordon, the gem-crook gangster who refuses to participate in a Sing Sing prison break because it is his unlucky day, in director Anatole Litvak’s 1940 Warner Bros black and white crime thriller Castle on the Hudson [Years Without Days in GB].

A faithful remake of the 1932 20,000 Years in Sing Sing, the movie emerges as a tolerable but undistinguished, close rehash of a dozen or so Thirties prison sagas, mostly from Warner Bros.

Despite some wit in Seton I Miller, Brown Holmes and Courtney Terrett’s otherwise cliché-ridden screenplay, as well as notable turns from Ann Sheridan (as Gordon’s girlfriend Kay, who works to get him a parole), Pat O’Brien (as the stern but nice prison boss Warden Long), Jerome Cowan (as a dodgy attorney Ed Crowley), Burgess Meredith as stir-crazy convict Steven Rockford and Henry O’Neill as the District Attorney, this jail thriller still a very routine, hollow affair.

Also in the cast are Guinn ‘Big Boy’ Williams, John Litel, Margot Stevenson, Willard Robertson, Edward Pawley, Billy Wayne, Nedda Harrigan, Wade Botelier, Barbara Pepper, Robert Strange, Robert Homans and Grant Mitchell as Dr Ames the prison psychologist.

Castle on the Hudson [Years Without Days in GB] is directed by Anatole Litvak, runs 77 minutes, is made and released by Warner Bros , is written by Seton I Miller, Brown Holmes and Courtney Terrett, based on the book by Warden Lewis E Lawes, is shot in black and white by Arthur Edeson, is produced by Jack L Warner (in charge of production), Hal B Wallis (executive producer), Anatole Litvak (producer) and Samuel Bischoff (associate producer), is scored by Adolph Deutsch and Leo F Forbstein (musical director), and designed by John Hughes.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 8022

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