La legión negra

At the time it came out Black Legion came from the B Picture Unit at Warner Brothers. Some of the players in it became A list stars later on. Nevertheless this was playing the second half of double features when first released. But it made a tremendous impact and viewing it almost 70 years later, still makes an impact.

Warner Brothers as the working class studio was the only one who could have made a film like Black Legion. Working class stiff Humphrey Bogart gets passed over for a promotion at a job, losing it to Polish American Henry Brandon. This makes him ripe for the propaganda of a nativist crew of nightriders who call themselves The Black Legion.

Another co-worker Joe Sawyer gets Bogart to join with a whole lot of bad consequences for just about every principal player in the cast.

Since this film was about ordinary people it had a great message to tell. We've had nativist outbreaks in America through out our history. The Twenties and Thirties with groups like the Ku Klux Klan and the Black Legion were particularly bad. Bad economic times usually bring out either the best or the worst in people.

Humphrey Bogart is joined by a whole bunch of people from his film debut in The Petrified Forest. Joe Sawyer, Dick Foran, Paul Harvey, Eddie Acuff, it must have seemed like a reunion film. For me this has always been Joe Sawyer's career role for the screen. In The Petrified Forest he was one of Bogey's gang. Here he's the evil influence on Bogart, a nice reversal. He had a similar part in San Quentin.

Dick Foran is the Mercutio/Benvolio part here, the good friend to Bogart. He was actually a bigger name than Bogey at the time this was made, as he was starring in a bunch singing cowboy films for Warner Brothers. This was one of the few times he was show he could do more than he was usually given.

Films back then had a whole lot of stern father figures like Lionel Barrymore and Lewis Stone who could deliver lectures like no other. Capping this film is Samuel S. Hinds as a trial judge telling the Black Legion defendants what Americanism and the Bill of Rights is all about. Words to live by still.

"Black Legion" was a very unusual role for Humphrey Bogart, but I think he got it because he was not yet an established star and Warner Brothers put him in many different sorts of parts. So, if you are looking for the tough and assertive sort of Bogart, this is NOT the film for you! No, Bogie plays a despicable sort of jerk--and a cowardly one at that.

The film begins at a machine shop. It seems that someone is going to be promoted to foreman and Bogart is sure it will be him. However, a Polish-American worker gets the job instead. While this man DID deserve it, Bogie is sullen and angry--and soon jumps at an opportunity to join a local hate club. The Black Legion is sort of like the KKK with its trappings but is more anti-foreigner in focus. So, to get back at the foreman, Bogart sicks his new 'friends' on them and he soon gets the job promotion. Where does all this new power lead him? See this powerful film and find out for yourself.

While I wish the film had taken a stronger and clearer stand against the Klan, it is a very powerful film for 1937, as many folks would have supported groups like the Legion. Groups like the American Bund and the popularity of antisemitic celebrities like Charles Lindburgh and Henry Ford (who wrote books espousing hatred of Jews, foreigners and the like) during this time could not be denied. In other words, this film might have alienated many potential viewers and the studio chose to take a deliberate stand for what is right. And, it's a strong film with a very good performance by Bogart in a VERY different sort of role. Well worth seeing--and probably a bit stronger in its message than the studio's "Storm Warning"--another anti-hate group film that was made a dozen years later.

Very unusual movie for Humphrey Bogart, made a few years before he would become a headline star for WB. He plays a machine shop worker who takes for granted that he will become his shop's new foreman because of his seniority. But when they give it to an educated young Polish-American instead, Bogie becomes resentful and angry. This leads him to joining up with a hate group known as the Black Legion, which is basically the KKK. The Black Legion has a pledge that has to be heard to be believed, so make sure you pay attention to it.

Strong performance from Bogie, as well as a great supporting cast that includes Ann Sheridan, Dick Foran, Joe Sawyer, John Litel, Samuel S. Hinds, and more. A lot of people seem to pick on the movie for not being strong enough in its message, despite the fact that they can't point to any other movies from the period that were even brave enough to try this much. They did what they could do. It's a powerful movie, even if it seems watered down by today's standards. But today we aren't exactly living in the age of subtlety, are we?

Most of the previous reviews get it right about Black Legion; it's not Bogart's best by a long shot. But here's the catch: it's not a "thinly veiled" swipe at the KKK. It's about the actual, real-life Black Legion. I know; you've never heard of it. Neither did I, until I was cleaning out the stack of magazines in our Indiana farmhouse. Let's hear it for hoarding, because there it was, as large as one of those Life Magazines - a profile on ...the Black Legion.

I was horrified, but it did exist:

"The Black Legion was a secret vigilante terrorist group and a white supremacist organization in the Midwestern United States that splintered from the Ku Klux Klan and operated during the Great Depression of the 1930s. According to historian Rick Perlstein, the FBI estimated its membership "at 135,000, including a large number of public officials, possibly including Detroit's police chief." In 1936 the group was suspected of assassinating as many as 50 people according to the Associated Press.[1]

The white paramilitary group was founded in the 1920s by William Shepard in east central Ohio in the Appalachian region, as a security force named the Black Guard in order to protect Ku Klux Klan officers.[2][3] The Legion became active in chapters throughout Ohio. One of its self-described leaders, Virgil "Bert" Effinger, lived and worked in Lima, Ohio."

So why is there so little in our history books about it? It was a relatively short lived hate group, but it showed up in other places: "Hollywood, radio and the press responded to the lurid nature of the Legion with works that referred to it. Legion of Terror (1936) starred Ward Bond and Bruce Cabot, and was based on this group. Black Legion (1937), a feature film, starred Humphrey Bogart. True Detective Mysteries, a radio show based on the magazine of the same title, broadcast an episode on April 1, 1937 that referred directly to the Black Legion and Poole's murder. The radio show The Shadow, with Orson Welles in the title role, broadcast an episode on March 20, 1938, entitled "The White Legion"; it was based loosely on the Black Legion. Malcolm X and Alex Haley collaborated on the leader's The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965); he noted the Legion as being active in Lansing, Michigan where his family lived. Malcolm X was six when his father died in 1931; he believed the father was killed by the Black Legion. The TV series History's Mysteries presented an episode about the group entitled "Terror in the Heartland: The Black Legion" (1998).

I realize I haven't written much about the movie; others have done that well. But we need to accept that this... is based on real life.

A frustrated Humphrey Bogart joins the "Black Legion," a 1937 film directed by Archie Mayo. The film also stars Dick Foran and Ann Sheridan.

Bogart plays Frank Taylor, a husband and father who expects to get a promotion at the auto plant where he works. It goes instead to a young, hard-working man named Dombrowski. When Frank doesn't get the job, he's furious. That night on the radio he hears the head of the Black Legion railing against foreigners taking American jobs, and he decides to join them.

The Black Legion, of course, is the Ku Klux Klan, with the sheets and the whole deal. Their methods are brutal - fires, flogging, beatings, etc.

It appears all you needed was a foreign last name to qualify as a victim of this group. Back in the '20s and '30s, Italians, Irish, and other immigrant groups could only get menial jobs like sweeping floors, the prejudice against them was so great.

It was quite a forward step to make a film about this back in 1937, and it's a good one. Bogart at the time was about 37, and we're so used to seeing him older that he looks like a baby here. He's terrific as a loving father and husband who becomes a new, violent person under the influence of the Legion. He loses more than he gains. It's a great example of how easily people can find a scapegoat for their troubles.

Ann Sheridan has a supporting role -- she's very young but recognizable from her voice! Good movie.