

Unnoticed, Nutsy takes Pop Kelly's hat from the shack and later burns it on the beach. While they are chatting, Nutsy acting as a voice of reason and encouraging Bobo to accept that he may have reached a point where he wants a home, Anna returns. Nutsy stops by that night and finds Bobo having definitely decided to leave town alone. Bobo loses his temper and nearly strangles Tiny, but catches himself and tells him to get out and never come back. After she is gone, Tiny hints broadly at what damage he might be able to do to Bobo, regarding his history of aggression. Anna overhears and tells Bobo she is "much obliged for everything" but she is "blowing now", planning to go back to her life and make her way.īobo appears to have fallen for Anna. He argues for he and Bobo to finally leave town as they agreed. Tiny shows up and begins badmouthing Anna ("she used to work in a hash house") and implying she is a prostitute. The next morning, the young woman, Anna ( Ida Lupino), has rebounded and tidies up the shack while Bobo repairs the boat of a wealthy doctor, Frank Brothers (Jerome Cowan) and his mistress (Helene Reynolds). Initially ungrateful and angry about being saved, she falls asleep in the bed and he takes the floor. Bobo rescues her and takes her back to the barge. As he and Nutsy talk after Tiny leaves, Nutsy realizes Bobo is in possession of Pop Kelly's hat.Īs the two men walk near the water, a female group begins to shout about a young woman who is about to drown herself in the surf. He agrees to meet Tiny later that night and leave town together. Despite Tiny's assurances that he didn't hurt anyone, Bobo worries. He takes the job on the barge, then goes into town to meet up with his friends, Tiny ( Thomas Mitchell ) and Nutsy, the town watchman and amateur philosopher ( Claude Rains) at a local boardinghouse.

He is afraid he may have killed the man, due to drunken violence he has been capable of in the past. A police boat passes and, hearing that they are searching for the murderer of local bar-fly Pop Kelly ( Arthur Aylesworth), who was strangled to death sometime during Bobo's drinking spree, causes Bobo to put the brakes on his plans to go. Bobo does not remember the encounter and intends to leave.

The barge's owner, fisherman Takeo (Victor Sen Yung), comes by to remind him how they met the previous night, and that he agreed to work for Takeo. After blacking out from an all-night drinking binge, dock worker Bobo ( Jean Gabin) wakes up in a decrepit shack on a San Pablo Bay barge.
