My Scrapbook
Newspaper Ad for the 1930 film Roadhouse Nights
Based on Dashiell Hammett’s Red Harvest
This ad was from the March 12, 1930 issue of The Sheboygan Press, from Sheboygan, Wisconsin, and proudly proclaims that
Roadhouse Nights was declared to be the best picture of the month by Milwaukee papers.
The pre-code gangster flick, allegedly based on Hammett’s Red Harvest featuring The Continental Op, starred Helen Morgan and Fred Kohler, along with Jimmy Durante (making his film debut) and Charles Ruggles, junked most of the book’s plot points and turned it into a musical comedy that promised “Comedy and Thrills in One Grand Riot.”
“They changed everything but the title,” Hammett complained, “and then they changed that to ‘Roadhouse Nights’.”
