TUESDAY, JUNE 23 @ 03:30 AM (ET)
It’s a comedy. No, it’s a crime film. A drama. A musical. A romance. According to IMDb, it’s all of the above. Set your DVR for It All Came True – a lesser-known film starring Humphrey Bogart and Ann Sheridan, but another interesting film from Bogart’s transitional period. He’s Chips Maguire, a racketeer on the lam from the cops with his side-kick/piano player Tommy Taylor (Jeffrey Lynn). They flee to the boarding house run by Tommy’s mother, where Chips plans to reside incognito under the alias “Mr. Grasselli.” The residents of the boardinghouse include several retired vaudeville performers, as well as Zasu Pitts as a perennially frightened old maid, and Sarah Jane Ryan (Sheridan), the daughter of Mrs. Taylor’s partner Maggie (Una O’Connor).
Unfortunately, it seems the boardinghouse has a mortgage that’s overdue. As Chips warms to his surroundings and his hostesses, he decides the way to solve the financial predicament is by turning the place into a night club. Hey kids. Let’s put on a show!
This film is built on a series of sort of yin-yang relationships. Chips is fond of Tommy and the music he writes, but has no problem blackmailing him into bringing him home to the boardinghouse in the first place. When Tommy returns home to the boarding house, we learn that he’s had a contentious relationship with Sarah Jane, but it becomes obvious that mutual attraction is at the root of the animosity. Mrs Taylor and her partner Maggie are like honey and vinegar. Mrs. Taylor lives in a kind of dream world, constructing scenarios to explain reality in the most favorable light, while projecting an idealized future. Maggie is no-nonsense in the way only Una O’Connor can play it. And Chips, who starts out muttering I hate “muddahs” eventually softens to Mrs. Taylor’s maternal attention.