Tue 22 Jul 2014
A Movie Review by Jonathan Lewis: BLACK LEGION (1937).
Posted by Steve under Crime Films , Reviews[14] Comments
BLACK LEGION. Warner Bros., 1937. Humphrey Bogart, Dick Foran, Erin O’Brien-Moore, Ann Sheridan, Helen Flint, Joe Sawyer. Director: Archie Mayo.
Black Legion is a 1937 crime drama/proto-film noir directed by Archie Mayo and starring Humphrey Bogart. The movie is both a good suspense tale and a morality play, an attempt to categorize anti-immigrant vigilantism as distinctly anti-American. Overall, it’s a very good film, rich on atmospherics and with excellent acting by Bogart. Still, it comes across as just a bit too predictable, replete with a lumbering, albeit well-intentioned, political sermon at the very end.
The plot follows factory worker and dedicated family man Frank Taylor (Bogart) as he spirals ever downward into a self-destructive morass of alcoholism, rage, and political violence.
After being passed over for a promotion, with the position going instead to a man of Polish heritage, an aggrieved Taylor joins the Black Legion, a Midwest offshoot of the virulently racist Ku Klux Klan. (As an historical aside, it’s interesting to note that the studio considered, but ultimately rejected, the Romanian-Jewish born Edward G. Robinson to portray Taylor).
For a time at least, Taylor (Bogart) ends up believing the nativist slop served up on the airwaves by the Black Legion. This shortsightedness will be his downfall. His political activities will end up costing him his marriage to his wife, Ruth, (Erin O’Brien Moore) and his friendship with neighbor and work colleague, Ed Jackson (Dick Foran). Ann Sheridan portrays Jackson’s girlfriend, Betty Grogan.
Along for the ride is Joe Sawyer, portraying the oafish, brute Cliff Summers, a factory worker who introduces him to the Legion and their nefarious activities. While it is Cliff who is responsible for getting Taylor to attend a secret, subterranean Black Legion meeting, it is ultimately Taylor and Taylor alone who is responsible for nearly everything bad that happens next.
Similar to how the KKK is portrayed in the excellent film, Storm Warning, also a Warner Brothers film which I reviewed here, Black Legion portrays the organization as much as a scam as a nativist organization. The film goes to great lengths to show the audience that the Black Legion’s leadership consists of con men primarily interested in money and profits. They’re selling nativism and a bunch of gullible fools are buying.
Black Legion isn’t remotely a happy film. Indeed, there is something very noir about both the film and its protagonist. You don’t exactly feel sorry for Taylor at the end when he’s being carted off to prison for his role in the shockingly unnecessary death of his friend, Ed (Foran), who had threatened to expose the Legion’s activities to law enforcement.
All told, Black Legion remains a very good movie, one that has a powerful, if clumsily delivered message. Unlike many other Bogart films which more than stand the test of time, it just comes across as somewhat dated.
July 23rd, 2014 at 8:23 am
It’s interesting to note that Bogart, Dick Foran and Joe Sawyer were all in PETRIFIED FOREST (1936), also from Warner Brothers and directed by Archie Mayo.
It’s easy to think of Dick Foran as a B-westerm cowboy star, and a singing one at that, but a look at his IMDb resume shows a long career in all kinds of roles and extending into television through 1969. Mostly small parts,I imagine, but a long career.
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0285264/reference
July 23rd, 2014 at 10:27 am
Re Dick Foran
In the early forties Foran went to Broadway for a revival of Rodgers and Hart’s Connecticut Yankee. This was a career move to move on into top parts in pictures. From that point of view he was cast in Guest Wife (1945) with Claudette Colbert and Don Ameche under the direction of Sam Wood. The film was a modest success for all but Foran was back in supporting parts in quickly ;made second feature almost immediately with the notable exception of Fort Apache in which his wonderful singing voice was used to some effect.
July 23rd, 2014 at 12:15 pm
I noticed that Black Legion, like Storm Warning, went out of its way to not give away its setting. We do get the sense that it’s set in the industrial Midwest, but it easily could have been Michigan, Ohio, or such. Audiences at the time, however, may have been quite familiar with the Black Legion’s presence in Detroit.
Storm Warning could have been set in the Midwest as well as in the Deep South. I do believe in that film, however, there is a reference to a bus route through Alabama/Georgia.
Also, the more I think about it, I realize Ann Sheridan was something of an underutilized resource in this film. I had expected her to have a bit more of a presence in the film apart from her role as Dick Foran’s character’s girlfriend/fiancee.
July 23rd, 2014 at 12:37 pm
Re Ann Sheridan
At that point in her career she had yet to have a good part — and it would be several more years before that happened. I suppose Angels Wash Their Faces (1939) is the first true sighting.
July 23rd, 2014 at 3:55 pm
She would, of course, be reunited in another WB film with Bogart several years later in “They Drive By Night.” Although, she would be somewhat secondary to Ida Lupino
July 24th, 2014 at 1:28 am
This is a bit off-center …
I saw this picture for the first time on TCM about a year ago.
As I was watching I saw an actor who looked naggingly familiar to me. Lord knows that happens often enough on TCM, but this one drove me momentarily nuts.
I’d have to see the movie again to tell you which role this actor played, but I do recall that he was one of the early victims of the legion.
Anyway, I waited to the end hoping to see a cast list, and when I did …
Growing up in Chicago in the ’50s, one of my earliest TV memories was Super Circus, live from the Civic Theatre west of the Loop, going out to the whole ABC network (such as it was).
Ringmaster Claude Kirchner, bandleader/cheerleader Mary Hartline, and the three clowns, Cliffy, Nicky, and Scampy.
Of these three, Cliffy was the chief clown, opening the show, announcing the sponsors, and bossing around Nicky the tramp and Scampy the kid clown in the skits.
What does this have to do with Black Legion?
The actor I mentioned above – the burly, cheerful character who gets it early in the picture – was Clifford Soubier, years before he returned to the Chicago stage, and thence to Super Circus.
For a ’50s kid like me (and even at my advancing age), it was still a jolt to see Cliffy the clown getting beaten to death by the Klan (I think he was beaten to death – I haven’t had the heart to watch Black Legion since).
Funny, the things you think of around here …
July 24th, 2014 at 2:02 am
That’s a pretty engaging personal story.
Soubier portrays Mike Grogan, the Irish-American father to Ann Sheridan’s character and the owner of the home next to that of Bogart’s character. He does, as you mention, become a victim of the Legion.
July 24th, 2014 at 3:00 am
Thanx and a hat tip to Jonathan Lewis.
Geez Loueez, do we keep weird hours around here ….
July 25th, 2014 at 4:37 pm
This one was as much a reaction to American Bundist as the KKK with the Black Legion a dig both at the Klan and at Mussolini’s Black Shirts and Hitler’s Brown Shirts. Though no foreign influence is shown, the nativism here is as in line with fascism as the Klan’s hatreds.
This was a common theme in the pulps, with Operator #5, Dan Fowler G-Man, and the Spider battling like organizations. It sometimes feels as if half the Operator #5 covers feature various groups marching on DC to bring down the government.
This is one of the weakest of Warner’s social dramas. largely because there is no hero. The chief complaint I have about this one is it is mostly unpleasant and there is no real triumph of good over evil. That may have been realistic, but it doesn’t make for very good drama.
And it is not one of Bogart’s better performances. Knowing his politics we can imagine he despised this character, and frankly it shows in his performance as much as the screenplay. It doesn’t really seem to take all that much to turn his character into a fanatic.
A touch of Capraesque sentimentality or Fordian flag waving would have helped a great deal. I don’t disagree with the films politics, I just believe that the story would have had more impact if it had been presented as a bit less of a political tract. Instead I find this film unrelentingly depressing with far less than a star turn by Bogart. From this film I would never have imagined he had HIGH SIERRA or THE MALTESE FALCON in him.
CONFESSIONS OF A NAZI SPY is equally dark about Americans, but ultimately it raises the audiences ire and sends you out of the theater ready to fight the enemy within and without. This one sends you home suspicious and distrustful of your neighbors.
July 25th, 2014 at 4:45 pm
Barry
You mention Foran’s singing voice. For a brief time he did a series of singing cowboy films at Warners, the most notable feature being his horse Golden Cloud, who shortly would get a name change when Roy Rogers bought him from the studio and renamed him Trigger. Of course he, the horse, not Foran, has a featured role in THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD.
Foran also features in the ‘Million Dollar Serial’, THE RIDERS OF DEATH VALLEY, with Buck Jones, a young Rod Cameron, Leo Carillo, and the villainy of Charles Bickford and Lon Chaney Jr.
July 26th, 2014 at 12:12 am
For what it’s worth, I still consider Mississippi Burning to be among the best movies depicting the KKK
July 26th, 2014 at 1:30 am
Jonathan
It matters and I agree. At least they had the courage to call it the KKK.
July 30th, 2014 at 9:59 am
One thing I got from the movie that’s rarely mentioned is that Taylor’s problems ultimately come from despair, not spite.
And his despair loses him everything.
July 30th, 2014 at 10:12 pm
Good observation. He’s a very desperate man at the beginning, when he realizes he won’t get the promotion and he won’t be able to afford certain things for his family.