Thu 30 May 2024
Reviewed by Tony Baer: A. I. BEZZERIDES – Long Haul (They Drive by Night).
Posted by Steve under Reviews[5] Comments
A. I. BEZZERIDES – Long Haul. Carrick & Evans, New York, hardcover, 1938. Reprinted in paperback as They Drive by Night (Dell, 1950) and Tough Guy (Lion, 1953).
Brothers Nick and Paul Benay are trying to make it as over-the-road truckers. Between loan payments on the truck, repairs, middlemen, chiselers, and rotting freight, it’s tough road to hoe. One brother sleeps while the other drives. And vice versa.
The only way to make it pay is to pay off your truck and haul your own freight. That’s the dream that keeps guys going. But just as soon as it seems like they’re gonna get there, something happens. A drunk driver veers into oncoming traffic, totaling their truck, juicy oranges fluttering down the freeway.
Paul is concussed, and the only way to keep going is Nick has to pull all-nighters, 72 hours, without sleep. He’s nodding off, nightmares jolting him awake, of a crack up. Is it real or only imagined, this time, flying off a cliff?
Depressing story, yes, but stilted prose is what keeps from the winner’s circle.
Made into a Bogart film in 1940.
May 30th, 2024 at 8:48 pm
If Wikipedia is to be believed, Bezzarides wrote only three novels.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._I._Bezzerides
He was a lot more involved with the movie and TV industry, with a total of 29 screenwriting credits on IMDb.
In that regard, other than LONG HAUL and the movie made from it, he may be best known for writing the screenplay for the Mike Hammer film KISS ME DEADLY. Here’s a relevant paragraph from the Wiki page:
‘Bezzerides’ script for Kiss Me Deadly (1955) transformed the novel by Mickey Spillane into an apocalyptic, atomic-age paranoia film noir. When asked about his script, and his decision to make “the great whatsit” the Pandora’s Box objective of a ruthless cast of characters, Bezzerides commented: “People ask me about the hidden meanings in the script, about the A-bomb, about McCarthyism, what does the poetry mean, and so on. And I can only say that I didn’t think about it when I wrote it . . . I was having fun with it. I wanted to make every scene, every character, interesting. A girl comes up to Ralph Meeker, I make her a nympho. She grabs him and kisses him the first time she sees him. She says, “You don’t taste like anybody I know.” I’m a big car nut, so I put in all that stuff with the cars and the mechanic. I was an engineer, and I gave the detective the first phone answering machine in that picture. I was having fun.”‘
May 30th, 2024 at 9:24 pm
It was a George Raft film with Bogart in support. Raft is just great, as is Ann Sheridan with Lupino over the top and Bogart okay.
May 30th, 2024 at 10:39 pm
May 31st, 2024 at 4:34 am
Yeah, and just so the viewers would know Bogie wasn’t the hero of the piece, they made him wear a dumb hat.
May 31st, 2024 at 10:07 pm
Bezzerides was as interested in writing a social statement as a good story. The movie managed to do that Warner’s working stiff thing without much preaching where the novel is more interested in dramatizing the plight of the long haul trucker.
With the help of Raft, Sheridan, Lupino, and Bogie the movie’s melodrama went down a bit smoother than the books preaching.