I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932)

Directed by Mervyn LeRoy
Starring Paul Muni, Glenda Farrell and Helen Vinson
Produced by Warner Bros.

I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang is based on a true life story of Robert Burns, a man sentenced to labor on a chain gang and subsequently escaped.  In the film, Burns has been renamed as James Allen, a World War I veteran who returns to America to find it is much harder to achieve his dreams than he might have hoped.

In truth, the beginning of the movie is not great.  Allen discovers that his old factory job is waiting for him, but turns it down to become an engineer.  Only he cannot find a job as an engineer.  So he engages in the all time dumbest job search I've ever seen.

He goes from New Jersey to Boston (because they are hiring in New England), gets and loses a job.  Then he goes to New Orleans. Nothing.  Then Osh-Kosh, Wisconsin.  Then St. Louis.  By now he is basically a hobo. It seems to be the most unfocused, unproductive job search of all time.  


There is a nicely, realized small moment when, at the end of his financial rope, Allen tries to pawn his war medal.  The shop owner shows him a case filled with the same medal.  Clearly, he's not the only war hero to fall on hard times.

Allen eventually meets up with another hobo who offers to find him a handout at a local diner.  Only the other man tries to rob the place.  The criminal is killed but James is captured and sentenced to a prison chain gang.

The movie kicks into gear here.  We see how horrific the conditions are.  Men working a sledgehammer all day and needing to ask permission not just to go to the bathroom, but even to wipe the sweat off their brow.  Each night, the guards would judge who didn't do enough work and they'd be whipped.  The film doesn't flinch from showing the brutality.  

Allen escapes and changes his name to the unimaginative Alan James.  But he's never free.  His landlady becomes his girlfriend and blackmails him into marriage when she discovers his history.  He has to hide his face every time he crosses paths with a policeman. 

Ultimately, he becomes a highly successful engineer and falls in love.  He attempts to divorce his current unloving and unfaithful wife, but she follows through on her threat and it becomes a tug of war between his current home state of Illinois and Georgia where he served his time.

The film asks interesting questions about the nature of crime and punishment, but leaves the audience to reach its own conclusions.  It also exposes a terrible punishment to which we once subjected fellow citizens.  They built our roads and railroads, but under barbaric conditions.

As a film, I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang is above average.  More than that though, I found myself turning to Google just to learn more about chain gangs.  And any film that encourages the viewer to engage with history deserves a strong recommend.

**** out of *****

Young America (1932)

Directed by Frank Borzage
Starring Spencer Tracy, Doris Kenyon and Ralph Bellamy
Produced by Fox Film Corporation

And now, on a very special episode of 100 Years of Movies... 

Young America is a message movie.  For me, movies that have a "I am going to pound my theme over your head" point to get across may have the highest degree of difficulty of any genre.  And despite the involvement of familiar names like Spencer Tracy and director Frank Borzage, this just does not come close to clearing the bar.

The film starts with Judge Blake allowing Edith Doray to shadow him for a day as hears the cases of juvenile delinquents before settling in on the story of one of the boys, Arthur Simpson, who is "the worst kid in town."

It will shock no one to learn that Arthur has a heart of gold but ends up in some unfortunate situations. Edith gets Art a job at the pharmacy her husband Jack operates.  But of course, that next day, a bully is getting handsy with a girl on her way to school, so Art steps in. Then in school, the bully torments Art's friend "Nutty" and Art attacks the kid leading to a suspension.  The bully then pummels Art after school, making him late for his job and getting him fired.  


The movie goes crazy when Nutty's grandmother falls ill and needs her medicine.  It's late so after trying to find Jack, the boys break into the pharmacy to get the medicine.  They end up in front of the judge who takes pity and suspends their sentence, but only on the condition that they never speak to one another again.

So a week after this, Nutty gets sick.  Art goes to see him and Nutty dies.  There was no typo there.  The kid just dies.  But not before giving us the most rote "I am about to die" speech of all time.  Every cliche of that speech is there to behold.

There's a plotline that involves the Dorays taking Art into their house, but frankly this whole think is pointless. Adults don't understand kids.  Okay, got it.  Any solution to that you'd care to share? No? Okay, moving on...

The acting is good.  Tommy Conlon plays Art and is kind of great. Ralph Bellamy on the otherhand decides to play "sympathetic judge" as "bored, overly-nonchalant judge" and it fails pretty miserably.

Young America was a three star film and then Nutty gave that speech and died and so did the film.  

 *1/2 out of *****

Rewatching: Freaks (1932)

Directed by Tod Browning
Starring Wallace Ford, Leila Hyams and Olga Baclanova
Produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Director Tod Browning made 62 movies in 24 years.  Sadly, of all those films, he's only really remembered for two.  The first, Dracula, we covered in our 1931 retrospective.

Freaks is the other and it is not just one of my favorite films of the period.  It's one of my favorite films. Period.

The plot revolves around a circus side show.  The "freaks" include Hans and Frieda, two midgets that are dating; Daisy and Violet, conjoined twins with one married to a circus clown; and The Human Torso, a limbless man who can light a cigarette without help. There are others, but you get the picture.


The main plot kicks into gear when Cleopatra, a human trapeze artist, learns that Hans is heir to a great fortune.  From there, she plots with the show's strongman Hercules to woo and marry Hans, kill him and make off with the fortune.

There is so much to love about Freaks. There's always a risk of Browning exploiting the sideshow characters who were actual performers with a variety of maladies and abnormalities.  The film never goes there.  It treats the actors with respect.

The script smartly sets the action right in the middle of the world of the circus.  There's no new performer who has to have everything explained.  We are simply dropped into the lives of performers and expected to keep up.

A lot of the performers get subplots or moments.  We get a terrific sense of what life is like in a world where performers have no legs, women have beards and two bickering sisters literally cannot get away from each other. 

The film has long had a reputation as a "horror" film which a sentiment any fair reading would immediately dismiss.  It's a melodrama set in a unique world.  The horror elements, to the extent there here at all, exist solely in the last ten minutes of the film.  And even then, I don't think it ever becomes terrifying or grotesque.  Suspenseful?  Definitely.

 Freaks is about the easiest recommend in the world to me.  I've loved this movie since I saw it years ago.  Sadly, it was despised in its time and ultimately ended Browning's career.  It's a real shame because all Freaks shows is just how ahead of his time he was.

***** out of ***** 

NOTE: The turning point in the film is a wedding feast with Cleopatra becoming inducted into the world of the side show performers. The "freaks" pass around a cup that they each drink from and chant "Gobble gobble - one of us - we accept her." If you've ever wondered where the Simpsons' writers got "one of us" from, look no further.
 

Polly of the Circus (1932)

Directed by Alfred Santell
Starring Marion Davies, Clark Gable and C. Aubrey Smith
Produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM)

The circus comes to a conservative town and the show's star, Polly the trapeze artist, is not pleased.  All of her promotional posters have been...altered.  Some of the locals find the woman's bare legs indecent so her image gets dressed up in a variety of ways.

An outraged Polly tries to confront an elderly priest over his apparent censorship.  Only problem is the old man is just a visiting bishop and the actual pastor in the town is really Clark Gable. I mean, the young John Hartley.

Anyway, John explains he had nothing to do with defacing the posters.  In fact, he is looking forward to catching her show that night.  Polly leaves in a huff and we as an audience hate her because of her complete lack of being Clark Gable.

So what can bring these two together? A horrific accident.


At the circus that night, an angered Polly attempts to perform her act.  And she succeeds until a yelling heckler asks where her pants are.  The momentary distraction is all it takes.  Polly reaches for a trapeze that isn't there and falls forward off the narrow platform.

The moment is critical for making us believe everything that happens for the rest of the film.  The director could have approached it a number of ways.  He could have just cut to the audience reaction.  He could have done a long shot of the fall from across the tent.  He could have simply cut from her misstep to Polly in a hospital bed.

But no. director Alfred Santell places the camera above and gives us the fall from the perspective of the platform. We see he plummet.  And we feel her hit the ground.  And our collective stomach turns.

When Hartley rushes to her aid, volunteering his home across the street as a place to get her help, there is no inkling of romance.  It's an emergency.  Polly is critically injured and needs immediate attention.  We believe this because we saw it in all its brutality.

Making this the starting point for what ultimately turns into a romance makes the path less obvious.  It's not a meet-cute.  It's a meet-ewww.  It makes the rest of the film feel less inevitable than this type of movie typically plays.

Of course, this is Hollywood and it's Clark Gable and a gorgeous Marion Davies.  So she convalesces at his home because she cannot be moved.  And she acts like she hasn't recovered because she wants to stay with John. And they have to fall in love.

Once we get there, the predictability sets in.  Obstacles to their romance appear and you never believe they won't be overcome. The conservative town turns against Hartley and we are supposed to believe that Hartley will care what the town thinks.  But we don't because Hartley is Clark Gable and the town isn't so that is not a fair fight at all.

There's an ending that feels overwrought featuring an implied potential suicide attempt.  And the film features what is fast becoming my least favorite staple of 1930s cinema: the perpetually drunk supporting character.

Polly of the Circus is ultimately an okay movie elevated by terrific lead performances and a cracker of a first act.

*** out of *****