I Am A Fugitive From A Chain Gang (1932) | |
Background
I Am A Fugitive From A Chain Gang (1932) is a gritty, uncompromising, critical, and combative look at the unjust and barbaric treatment of criminals in a southern state's prison system following World War I. The harsh and grim melodramatic film was one of the first of Warner Bros.' films of social conscience, reform and protest during the early 30s (at the height of the Depression-era). The film reflected the dire effects of the Great Depression on the common man in its story of a WWI veteran who faced unemployment, was unjustly convicted of a petty robbery, and then twice served and escaped from a southern chain gang as a hunted fugitive during the 1920s. One of the film's taglines described his second escape:
A few other prison films had already been released before this short, 90 minute film: the classic The Big House (1930) about brutish prison conditions, Howard Hawks' Criminal Code (1931), Ladies of the Big House (1931), and director Rowland Brown's Hell's Highway (1932) (the first of the hard-hitting chain-gang films - deliberately released by RKO's producer David Selznick a few months earlier). And many later men-in-chains films have paid homage to this one by borrowing various plot elements in different ways: Blackmail (1939) with Edward G. Robinson, Stanley Kramer's The Defiant Ones (1958) with Tony Curtis and Sidney Poitier as escapee prisoners chained together, and Cool Hand Luke (1967) with Paul Newman as a recalcitrant prisoner. Val Kilmer starred in a made-for-TV movie re-creation, The Man Who Broke 1,000 Chains (1987), about a man sentenced to work on a chain gang after WWII for a petty crime. Director Mervyn LeRoy (who had directed the early great gangster film Little Caesar (1930)), delivered this pure and straight-forward film to expectant audiences. It starred stage actor Paul Muni, already known for playing a very different kind of character - a remorseless, tough, and psychopathic criminal named Tony Camonte in director Howard Hawks' Scarface: The Shame of the Nation (1932). [Note: A character actor, Muni played many biographical personalities during his long award-winning career, i.e., Louis Pasteur in The Story of Louis Pasteur (1936), Emile Zola in The Life of Emile Zola (1937), and President Benito Pablo Juarez in Juarez (1939).] The film earned three Academy Award nominations (with no wins): Best Picture (it lost to Cavalcade), Best Actor (Muni lost his second nomination to Charles Laughton for his performance in The Private Life of Henry VIII), and Best Sound. This powerful, stark film was adapted by Sheridan Gibney (uncredited), Brown Holmes, and Howard J. Green, and based on the writings of Robert Elliott Burns (a pseudonym chosen by his ghostwriting brother Rev. Vincent G. Burns), first serialized in True Detective Mysteries (from January - June 1931), and then published as a sequel in March 1932, and as a novel of almost the same name (I Am a Fugitive From a Georgia Chain Gang) by Vanguard Press. The film is remarkably faithful to the incredible true-life, autobiographical misfortunes and experiences of Burns:
In the realistic film, to appease southern film exhibitors and the state of Georgia, there is no mention or hint of the state of Georgia (it was omitted from the title of the picture), but it's clear that the character is imprisoned in a southern state (with large numbers of blacks on the chain gang) and its penal system were being implicated. The film was actually banned in Georgia. The StoryAfter the credits, the film opens with snapshot portraits of each of the sixteen major cast members with their character names. A World War I veteran Sgt. James Allen (Paul Muni) is returning home from the war on a troop ship that docks in New York. The papers report their heroic arrival: "SUNSET DIVISION RETURNING HOME TODAY." The soldiers are pleased to be at the end of bunk inspections. For his future, Allen is planning on using his military's technical training to get "some kind of construction job...being in the Engineering Corps has been swell experience and I'm makin' the most of it." Ironically, one of the soldiers remarks: "Well, we'll be readin' about you in the newspapers, I'll bet." Allen doesn't plan to return to his "old grind" in a factory job. After a triumphant parade of marching GI's in the city, he travels by train to his small hometown of Lynndale, where his Mother (Louise Carter), his pretty girlfriend (?) Alice (Sally Blane - actress Loretta Young's sister), and brother Rev. Clint Allen (Hale Hamilton) are waiting to embrace him. Factory owner Mr. Parker (Reginald Barlow) also is there promising to restore Jim's old factory job. Later in the Allen home, Allen's prissy brother sits down and wants to hear "all about the war." But his single-minded concern is to have Jim accept Parker's guarantee of a job offer to take up where he left off. Because he wants to build bridges as a master engineer instead of returning to his unexciting, clerical job in a shoe factory, Jim explains his new attitude to his family:
The Rev. excuses Jim's ungrateful attitude as tiredness:
To appease them and follow their pre-determined plan, Jim starts work at the Parker Manufacturing Company ("The Home of Kumfort Shoes") the next day. A factory whistle blows as the day begins in the shipping room, where Jim is positioned by a window to check the flow of shipments. Instead of seriously concentrating on his work, Jim watches as a bridge is being built in the distance, and takes long lunch breaks "loitering around that new bridge." Over dinner one evening, Jim's brother mentions Mr. Parker's disappointment over his job performance: "You haven't shown him anything. You know your duty is to your job." But independent, freedom-loving Jim can't concentrate on the job and wants out to go "somewhere, anywhere...just where I can do what I want to":
His mother encourages him to follow his heart if that will make him happy: "He's got to be happy. He's got to find himself." A map charts Jim's train journey from the Mid-Atlantic states to New England (North of Boston) to find construction work. But after a short stint, he is laid off ("last in, first out"). So he crisscrosses the country to find steady work. He travels by steamer down the East Coast, across the Lower Gulf states and the Gulf of Mexico to New Orleans (where no jobs are available), and then by train North to Oshkosh (and Lake Winnebago) in Wisconsin. There, he drives a truck in a lumbering company - his "first job in four months." But the job is short-lived and he must again hit the road. Appearing increasingly like a transient, penniless bum, he travels by rail to the St. Louis area. In a pawn shop, he offers to give up his Belgian Croix de Guerre, but the owner already has a drawer case full of medals from other unemployed, vagrant veterans. Spiraling downward, he now walks the railroad ties with his dusty shoes into the South (the map fades away when it reaches Tennessee), where he beds down in a flophouse. [The film never identifies his location - Georgia.] A sign advertises:
A fellow drifter-tramp named Pete (Preston Foster), who is playing solitaire, proposes going to a lunch-wagon/diner for a handout of hamburgers. Hungry and destitute, Allen responds to the hustler:
Pete persuades the reluctant cook in the empty diner to toss two greasy hamburgers (covered with onions) on the grill. And then to Jim's surprise, Pete suddenly pulls a gun on the cook. At gunpoint, he also orders Allen to "get that dough out of the register. Go on, do as I say." The unwilling accomplice stuffs the $5 dollars from the till into his pocket, as Pete rips out the phone lines and shouts to the cook: "Don't start yellin' for the cops." But the police have already been alerted and kill the gunman. Allen panics and flees out the side door, and is implicated when caught with the cash, although he pleads with them: "I didn't do nothin'." He is an innocent man, but unfortunately in court, he is dealt a harsh punishment from the Judge (Berton Churchill): "I see no reason for leniency since the money was found on your person. Futhermore, upon detection, you attempted to escape which would, of necessity, increase the seriousness of your offense." In accordance with the laws of the state (unidentified), Allen is sentenced to prison at hard labor for ten years for the $5 robbery. The pounding of the judge's gavel transitions to the clanging sound of a blacksmith's hammer placing shackles on his ankles. Wearing the horizontally-striped uniform of a prisoner on a chain gang, he is assigned to hard labor in County Camp No. 2 - a primitive, forbidding labor camp with armed guards and a stockade. |