Up the River
Directed by John Ford
Written by Maurine Dallas Watkins
1930/US
Fox Film Corporation
IMDb page
Repeat viewing/YouTube
May: [May and June, twin sisters singing part of “The Prisoner’s Song” on the hayride wagon] ‘I’ll be carried to the new jail tomorrow, Leaving my poor darling alone, With the cold prison bars all around me, And my head on a pillow of stone…
Humphrey Bogart shines as a romantic lead in his first feature film.
Implausible but fun Fox prison comedy. I was about to explain the plot but it’s pretty complicated and really doesn’t make much sense. Suffice it to say that this prison is quite comfortable in many aspects. Spencer Tracy is a cocky career criminal/convict and Humphrey Bogart (looking very young and handsome) is an upper crust prisoner who falls in love with one of women convicts.
This movie manages to have choral singing, a talent show, a baseball game, a hay ride, and a romance all wrapped up in a prison story. It should have been a mess but I thought it worked in spite of itself.
This is the only movie in which Bogart and Tracy co-starred. Both were making their feature film debuts.
The man could certainly act!
