Up the River *** (1930, Spencer Tracy, Warren Hymer, Claire Luce, Humphrey Bogart) – Classic Movie Review 8029

Director John Ford’s 1930 comedy crime drama Up the River is an amusing junior-league Ford prison comedy, with the main interest less in the original story by Maurine Dallas Watkins and the script than in the teaming of young Spencer Tracy and Humphrey Bogart (in their feature film débuts).

When ex-con Steve Jordan (Bogart) tries to start again, career criminal buddies Saint Louis (Tracy) and Dannemora Dan (Warren Hymer) break out of prison to stop his past being revealed and prevent him from being blackmailed into a life of crime. Claire Luce plays Judy Fields, the former inmate jail-bird Steve Jordan (Bogart) has fallen for. Unless the boys do something fast, Steve’s past would be exposed by the same man who framed Judy and put her in jail in the first place, unless Steve would agree to help him commit another crime.

Ford, who also worked on the screenplay with story writer Maurine Dallas Watkins and co-star William Collier Sr, insisted on hiring Tracy after seeing him in a Broadway hit play called The Last Mile. Three decades later, Ford made The Last Hurrah (1958) with Tracy.

It was made on a really tight production schedule as Tracy had only a two-week leave of absence from a hit Broadway show.

Up the River is the only movie in which Humphrey Bogart and Spencer Tracy co-star, though were good friends, but Bogart was contracted to Warner Bros while Tracy was contracted to Fox and then MGM. 

Future super-star Bogart was dropped in 1931 after five pictures at the Fox studio. In the 1931 Women of All Nations, he suffered the humiliation of having his scenes deleted. However, he did get to play in The Bad Sister with Bette Davis in 1931. It is also the film début of Claire Luce, who did not film again till 1935, and made a total of only six movies.

It is the final film role for veteran film actress Edythe Chapman. Also in the cast are William Collier Sr as Pop, Joan Marie Lawes as Jean, George MacFarlane, Robert Emmett O’Connor, Steve Pendleton, Sharon Lynn, Noel Francis, Goodee Montgomery, Bob Burns, John Swor, Louise Mackinstosh, Richard Keene, Johnnie Walker, Pat Somerset, Morgan Wallace, Althea Henley, Wilbur Mack, Harvey Clark, Carol Wines, Adele Windsor, Joe Brown, Mildred Vincent, Ward Bond, and Robert Parrish.

Up the River is directed by John Ford, runs 92 minutes, is made and released by Fox Film Corporation, is written by Maurine Dallas Watkins, John Ford and William Collier Sr, based on the original story by Maurine Dallas Watkins, is shot in black and white by Joseph H August, is produced by William Fox, is scored by James F Hanley, and is designed by Duncan Cramer.

Up the River was remade in 1938, again as Up the River, with Preston Foster, Arthur Treacher and Tony Martin.

© Derek Winnert 2019 Classic Movie Review 8029

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