The '45 re-release of the '40 film. Apparently someone became a star in the interim. 

WARNING: SPOILERS

When Warner Bros. re-released “It All Came True” in late 1945 they gave Humphrey Bogart top billing—he was originally third—but the promotion makes sense even without Bogart’s sudden stardom. His character here, Grasselli, née Chips Maguire, really is the hero of the film.

Sure, he’s a gangster who kills a guy in cold blood in the first five minutes, but the victim was a dirty rat and that’s the code. Sure, he’s willing to pin the murder on a bland songwriter/piano man in his employ, Tommy Taylor (Jeffrey Lynn), but he never does, just uses evidence in his possession to finagle a room at Tommy’s mom’s boarding house as a hideout. And sure, at the boarding house, he cheats the old ladies at cards, but they’re not playing for money, and anyway when Tommy’s girl, Sarah Jane (Ann Sheridan), takes him to task for that, telling him he took away their fun, he’s contemplative, tugging at his ear as he’d do as Philip Marlowe in “The Big Sleep.”

Yes, when Sarah Jane sings a hip-wiggling song in the parlor, he looks her up and down like a cartoon wolf, but he never does make a pass, even when she’s alone with him in his room. He treats her like a human being.

More importantly, he solves all the movie’s problems. The old ladies are about to lose the boarding house because of $1,000 in back taxes? He pays it off. And hey, while we're at it, why not turn the front parlor into a throwback 1890s nightclub—The Roaring Nineties? That’s his idea. And when one of the tenants, Miss Flint (Zasu Pitts), accidentally spills his identity to the cops, who come to arrest him, and he has evidence to blame it all on boring old Tommy? Well, Tommy and Sarah Jane are in love, and aw, what the heck, he’ll take the fall.

He gives, creates, and sacrifices. What more do you people want?

Let’s stick a gangster in…
All of which makes me think that the movie was originally written for a gangster-lead like Edward G. Robinson or George Raft. Apparently it was offered to Raft, but as usual he turned it down. Good. Doubt he could’ve done half the job Bogart does—even if the movie’s not great.

This is one of six films Bogie made between “Roaring Twenties” (when he was bullet-fodder for Cagney) and “High Sierra” (when Houston first tapped him as romantic lead), and it reteams him with “Twenties” costar Jeffrey Lynne, whom Warner Bros. was still trying to make happen. Indeed, its working title, per AFI, was “The Roaring Nineties.” They should’ve stuck with that. This one is gossamer. 

Is this the period when Warners was like “Hey, let’s stick a gangster in…” and then finds the last place you’d expect? So a monastery for Edward G. Robinson in “Brother Orchid.” For Bogart, it’s a boarding house run by two sweet old ladies and peopled with characters:

• Rene Salmon (Grant Mitchell), who wouldn’t dream of reading you any of his poetry, oh no, oh no, before doing exactly that forever
• The Great Boldini (Felix Bressart), a onetime magician, who is perpetually upstaged by his dog Fanto
• Miss Flint, a true-crime lover, who imagines men following her, though none do

The boarding house is run by Sarah Jane’s mom (Una O’Connor), and Tommy’s mom (Jessie Busley), and both hold out hope that either one of their children will come to the rescue. Neither does.

The nightclub idea comes to Chips during an after-dinner parlor session with everyone showing off their wares. He think Rene dull, Boldini hilarious and Sarah Jane sexy, but why his mind goes to the Belle Epoque I don’t know—other than, before and during World War II, Hollywood kept going there: “The Magnificent Ambersons,” “Meet Me in St. Louis,” “Hello Frisco, Hello,” ”Johnny Come Lately." 

When the nightclub finally opens, it is indeed the Roaring ’90s—with barbershop quartets, an old lady group, the Elderbloom Chorus, who transition, humorously, into a kind of Cab Calloway number, “Flat Foot Floogie.” Even Sarah Jane skips the “Gaucho Serenade” number she did previously for a medley of oldies: “Mister Dooley,” “Put on Your Old Grey Bonnet,” “Cuddle Up a Little Closer, Lovey Mine,” “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling.”

Brassy and sulky
Some of the movie isn’t bad—particularly Bogie in gangster mode being mollycoddled by the boarding house matrons. Who doesn’t love that?

But much of the movie is just off. When Miss Flint figures out the new tenant is Chips Maguire, it’s Sarah Jane who figures out how to shut her up. She reads her a “news story” about how a rat was tortured before he was killed, and it’s gruesome, and Miss Flint practically faints. All of this is treated as comedy.

Overall, Sheridan is too brassy and Lynn too sulky to be interesting, and they definitely don’t match. The director is Lewis Seiler, who did a bunch of Bogie’s forgettable B movies: “Crime School,” “King of the Underworld,” “You Can’t Get Away With Murder.” This is their second-to-last movie together. Bogie became a star and Seiler didn’t direct those.