The House Across the Bay *** (1940, George Raft, Joan Bennett, Lloyd Nolan) – Classic Movie Review 8215

Director Archie Mayo’s 1940 black and white thriller The House Across the Bay stars George Raft as club boss Steve Larwitt, who is sent to jail for 10 years in Alcatraz for income tax evasion by his singer wife Brenda Bentley (Joan Bennett) to prevent him from being murdered by hoodlums, prompting both their scheming attorney Slant Kolma (Lloyd Nolan) and smooth aircraft manufacturer millionaire Tim Nolan (Walter Pidgeon) make a pitch for her. Nolan moves in on Bennett, and Raft swears his revenge, and then gets out of prison.

The House Across the Bay is a solid, deftly made and neatly performed Forties action crime drama that has a tense atmosphere and rattles along at a fair lick, let down only by the story’s slight predictability and lack of credibility. The screenplay is by Kathryn Scola, based on an original  story by Myles Connolly. The performances are engagingly ripe and rich in a grade-A film with an attractive B-movie flavour and ambitions. It is commendably taut and compact at 88 minutes.

Raft and Bennett have done better but are as watchable as ever, and Nolan and Gladys George as Mary Bogale, the leader of a fraternity of visiting Alcatraz women, are excellent.

Also in the cast are June Knight, William Wayne, Peggy Shannon, Cy Kendall and Joseph Sawyer.

When Mayo also walked off set just before shooting the finale, Alfred Hitchcock shot some scenes with Pidgeon and Bennett in a plane as a favour to producer Walter Wanger, with whom Hitchcock worked on Foreign Correspondent.

Raft was a friend of Bennett and her husband Wanger. The House Across the Bay was the third of four films Bennett did with Raft, and she wrote the forward to his book The George Raft File.

Film noir femme fatale queen Bennett made her finest films in the Forties with Fritz Lang: Man Hunt (1941), The Woman in the Window (1944) and Scarlet Street (1945). She was married to Wanger from 12 January 1940 till their divorce on 20 September 1965, with two children. In December 1951, Wanger shot her agent in a jealous rage, in a scandal virtually ending Bennett’s film career. Her final feature was Suspiria (1977). Fine dancer Raft was always careful to ask Wanger’s permission to tango with Bennett.

Raft turned down High Sierra, The Maltese Falcon, and Casablanca, career mis-judgments that proved the making of Humphrey Bogart.

© Derek Winnert 2019 Classic Movie Review 8215

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