Up the River (1930)

My Review

“Up the River” is a pre-Code comedy film where Humphrey Bogart and Spencer Tracy play veteran convicts who repeatedly break in and out of jail to save a fellow inmate from a blackmailing crook. The film is only mildly humous and marginally interesting due to lack of experience of director John Ford, who is working here early in his career. This is also the big screen debut of Tracy and Bogart.

Co-stars include Clare Luce, Warren Hymer, Morgan Wallace, William Collier, Bob Burns, and Ward Bond in a small role. This show nothing changes much as Bond was in many of Ford’s films over the decades. The prison baseball scenes were a big part of the film’s comedy, and helped the watchable “Up the River” make money at the Depression Era box office for producer John Ford and the Fox Film Corporation. It was filmed at the Fox Film Corp. studios in Hollywood.