Night World is a pre-Code

Pre-Code

Pre-Code Hollywood refers to the era in the American film industry between the introduction of sound in the late 1920s and the enforcement of the Motion Picture Production Code censorship guidelines. Although the Code was adopted in 1930, oversight was poor and it did not become rigorously...

 drama film

Drama film

A drama film is a film genre that depends mostly on in-depth development of realistic characters dealing with emotional themes. Dramatic themes such as alcoholism, drug addiction, infidelity, moral dilemmas, racial prejudice, religious intolerance, poverty, class divisions, violence against women...

 featuring Lew Ayres

Lew Ayres

Lew Ayres was an American actor, best known for starring as Paul in All Quiet on the Western Front and for playing Dr...

, Mae Clarke

Mae Clarke

Mae Clarke was an American actress most noted for playing Frankenstein's bride, chased by Boris Karloff in Frankenstein, and having a grapefruit smashed into her face by James Cagney in The Public Enemy, both released in 1931.-Early life and career:Clarke was born Violet Mary Klotz in...

, and Boris Karloff

Boris Karloff

William Henry Pratt , better known by his stage name Boris Karloff, was an English actor.Karloff is best remembered for his roles in horror films and his portrayal of Frankenstein's monster in Frankenstein , Bride of Frankenstein , and Son of Frankenstein...

.

Production background

The movie was directed by Hobart Henley

Hobart Henley

Hobart Henley was an American silent film actor, director, and screenwriter....

 and features an early Busby Berkeley

Busby Berkeley

Busby Berkeley was a highly influential Hollywood movie director and musical choreographer. Berkeley was famous for his elaborate musical production numbers that often involved complex geometric patterns...

 music number, "Who's Your Little Who-Zis".

Plot

The whole film takes place in the nightclub of Happy MacDonald (Karloff). One of the more outrageous aspects of the film is that one of the people at the nightclub is a wildly stereotypical gay "queen". Although Karloff is a villain, he plays a charming man, quite unlike most of the parts he was allowed to play at the time.

Cast

• Lew Ayres
  Lew Ayres
  Lew Ayres was an American actor, best known for starring as Paul in All Quiet on the Western Front and for playing Dr...
  
   as Michael Rand
• Mae Clarke
  Mae Clarke
  Mae Clarke was an American actress most noted for playing Frankenstein's bride, chased by Boris Karloff in Frankenstein, and having a grapefruit smashed into her face by James Cagney in The Public Enemy, both released in 1931.-Early life and career:Clarke was born Violet Mary Klotz in...
  
   as Ruth Taylor
• Boris Karloff
  Boris Karloff
  William Henry Pratt , better known by his stage name Boris Karloff, was an English actor.Karloff is best remembered for his roles in horror films and his portrayal of Frankenstein's monster in Frankenstein , Bride of Frankenstein , and Son of Frankenstein...
  
   as "Happy" MacDonald
• Dorothy Revier
  Dorothy Revier
  Dorothy Revier was an American actress.She was educated in the public schools of Oakland before going to New York City to study classical dancing...
  
   as Jill MacDonald
• Hedda Hopper
  Hedda Hopper
  Hedda Hopper was an American actress and gossip columnist, whose long-running feud with friend turned arch-rival Louella Parsons became at least as notorious as many of Hopper's columns.-Early life:...
  
   as Mrs. Rand
• Louise Beavers
  Louise Beavers
  Louise Beavers was an African-American film and television actress. Beavers appeared in dozens of films from the 1920s to the 1930s, most often in the role of a maid, servant, or slave. A native of Cincinnati, Ohio, Beavers was a member of Sigma Gamma Rho sorority, one of the four African-American...
  
   as the maid
• George Raft
  George Raft
  George Raft was an American film actor and dancer identified with portrayals of gangsters in crime melodramas of the 1930s and 1940s...
  
  as Ed Powell