Bikes on Film: Open All Night

 Starring Adolphe Menjou, Viola Dana, Raymond Griffith, Jetta Goudal, et al, Open All Night is a comedic silent film which opened in 1924. A review of the film in the Pomona Progress Bulletin from October 29th of that year notes the opening at the California Theater in Los Angeles. Directed by Paul Bern, Willis Goldbeck adapted the original story by Paul Morand, and the review give exceedingly high marks, saying the film "deserves to be awarded the blue ribbon of honor... for originality of theme, for novelty of settings and background, for shrewd direction and excellent acting."

The storyline: "A couple's marriage is going stale. She wants a take-charge kind of guy, someone who'll show her who the boss is. He's not that type... When they meet a macho professional bicyclist and his girlfriend, the wife becomes attracted to the muscular, it not particularly bright, athlete and the husband finds himself drawn to his girlfriend." So there is the bicycle catch, but there is more to it and, what may be most interesting, is that "the big punch of the picture is the six day bicycle race." For this action the production company constructed an exact duplicate of the Winter Circus velodrome in Paris, where "from start to finish there is always something doing and that something provides thrill and action aplenty."