Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated) Binding: VHS Tape EAN: 9780790749488 Format: Black & White, NTSC ISBN: 0790749483 Label: Warner Home Video Manufacturer: Warner Home Video Number Of Items: 1 Publisher: Warner Home Video Release Date: March 07, 2000 Running Time: 83 minutes Studio: Warner Home Video Theatrical Release Date: January 30, 1937 Sales Rank: 15545
Amazon.com: One of Humphrey Bogart's earliest starring vehicles, this 1936 melodrama typifies the Warner Bros. touch in its modest but potent production values and Depression-era social acumen. Prompted by contemporary news reports of new neofascist groups targeting political and religious minorities, the script conjures up a shadowy, Klan-like organization preying on factory workers to set them against blue-collar immigrants. Bogart is Frank Taylor, a hard-working drill-press operator hoping for a promotion that can help him better provide for his adoring wife and cherubic young son. Frank's coworkers reassure him he'll snag the foreman's post, but when a studious young Polish American gets the nod, Frank's bitter disappointment sets the stage for the tragedy that follows.
What proceeds in this 83-minute feature is a pointed morality play about tolerance and democracy. The legion's rank and file invoke a "free, white, and 100 percent American" future in justifying their scare tactics, which hound Frank's rival out of town, briefly gaining him the coveted job. But his deepening involvement in the mob soon drives wife and son away, costs him his job, and ultimately spurs him to murder his best friend, Ed (Dick Foran). Indicted for the murder, Frank is nearly acquitted by a crooked defense team funded by the corrupt businessmen who are bankrolling the legion (more to profit off the sale of robes and revolvers than to incite any real political change), but his climactic, cathartic pang of conscience brings the tale to its moralistic end.
Bogart, who dutifully marched through dozens of features before graduating to true stardom, gives the simplistic story its modest power through a credible performance that traces Frank's descent from streetwise but principled worker to angry, disillusioned thug. The supporting cast also includes Ann Sheridan, likewise fine in an otherwise two-dimensional role as Foran's wife. --Sam Sutherland
Customer Reviews
Average Rating:
Rating: - A Story About Secret Societies
"The names in this drama are all fictitious." But it is based on real crimes. The film begins in a factory where the workers take a meal break. One worker uses a slide rule to educate himself during lunch. ... Read More
Rating: - A Klan robe by any other name would still smell as bad
The subject of BLACK LEGION (1937) remains relevant today.
Here, Humphrey Bogart is Frank Taylor, a factory machine operator who has a reasonable expectation that he'll be named the new shop foreman ... Read More
Rating: - Warner's social drama but not very good
In 1937, Warner Brothers continued their crusade on social issues with the release of "Black Legion", a powerful story of fascist vigilantes, clearly based on the Klu Klux Klan.
Rating: - Early Bogart film is a depression-era moral tale
1937's "Black Legion" tells a story of a man's involvement with what amounts to the Klan without coming out and calling it that. Humphrey Bogart stars as Frank Taylor, a working man who loses a bid to become foreman ... Read More
Rating: - Still Potent Story Of Mob Violence Containing One Of Humphrey Bogart's Earliest Starring Performances
The 1930's to a large extent were a miserable time career wise for Humphrey Bogart. Ploughing through a seemingly endless line of "B" gangster roles, underworld thugs, and unsavoury killers he seemed doomed never to ... Read More
- Warner's social drama but not very good
- Early Bogart film is a depression-era moral tale