Slim (1937) is a hymn to the workingman,
the kind of quiet and laudatory look into a segment of our working population
that we don’t see in too many films today, but were a staple of the Great
Depression when work was scarce, and valued, and interpreted on screen as the
subject of tales of great heroism, social comment, and inspiration. The job was the journey, the quest, the
challenge, and the actors—even the biggest stars of the day—remarkably
secondary to that.
Today
we mark the upcoming Labor Day with a gang of hardworking average Joes who
build towers for electric lines. Henry
Fonda is the farm boy who looks admiringly skyward at these daredevils and
wants to join them in a job he sees as glamorous and full of adventure.
Pat O’Brien is the veteran lineman, a man
with a mysterious past, who travels from job to job in what he calls a “tumbleweed
life” and takes the young Fonda under his wing.
J.
Farrell MacDonald is the boss on one jobsite—who, despite his years, looks pretty fit in a poolroom
brawl scene, and Stuart Erwin is the comic relief, a shiftless fellow with lots
of tall tales. In a very brief cameo, we
see Jane Wyman as his girlfriend. John
Litel gets a small role as one of workers.
Margaret
Lindsay is a Chicago nurse, Cally, who once treated Mr. O’Brien after a
terrible work-related injury and is in love with him and pining for the day
when he gets all this dangerous “tumbleweed” life out of his blood. When O’Brien and Fonda visit and they paint
the town red as a threesome, Miss Lindsay falls for young Mr. Fonda instead. Together, they toast, “To a long, hard life
and a quick checkout.”
When
Fonda gets hurt on the job, Miss Lindsay sells the expensive bracelet O’Brien
bought her, to pay for Fonda’s medical bills in this world without medical
insurance.
It’s
a fairly simple story, but the real “electricity” in this film comes from some
quite lyrical and really exciting camera images: Fonda climbing the metal tower for the first
time, holding on for dear life at the top, almost sick from the dizzy height—a
new perspective on the flat Midwest land for this former farm boy. The men wear battered fedoras, apparently
unconcerned about the wind taking their wide-brimmed hats.
There’s
a couple great shots of the men around the tower saying their lines, another
shot climbing, while in the background, coincidentally, a massive locomotive
plows by, pulling freight in a juxtaposed image of industrial America;
electrical power and steam power.
Shots
of an electric substation during a blizzard, spitting off sparks from wires
downed by the storm, and the men having to climb the icy towers to repair
them. The body of one unlucky man
falling to his death, electrocuted when he becomes ensnared in “hot” wires.
A
carefree auto trip through Chicago where Fonda, and we, gawk at the enormous
buildings which O’Brien reminds us would not be possible without electricity
and the work that he and Fonda do.
The
film is valuable for what exists between the “lines.” This was an era when only about 10 percent of
the rural population during the Great Depression had electricity. Fonda’s farm, where he lived with an aunt and
uncle, likely had none. President
Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s infrastructure projects sought to remedy that, and
in the process, created tens of thousands of jobs. His public works projects saved a generation
from starving, and brought the United States a wealth of new construction that
benefited generations to come.
Though
the movie is not specifically an homage to FDR, but rather to the linemen, we
cannot help but note the hat-tip to the government in an era where private
industry was not always necessarily stepping up to the plate. The intro narration is typically poetic, but
nonetheless true:
“Mankind’s
control over the natural forces of electricity...the very air we breathe is
harnessed and made subservient...the power that
girdles the globe...and annihilates distance and gives him
control of time and space.
“…without
the courage and the fidelity of the men who labor at all hours and in all
weather to keep aloft the lines that bring us our electrical supply, this era
of miracles would not have come to pass.”
The
voiceover guides us over broad empty prairie and a cityscape at night with the
dotted lights of windows in skyscrapers against a black sky.
The
electricity that makes this possible, “…runs our factories and trains, the current
that lights our great cities stands obedient, ready to answer the pull of a
switch.”
To
all of our linemen, and to workers everywhere:
Happy Labor Day.
****************
Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star.
by Jacqueline T. Lynch
The first book on the career of actress Ann Blyth. Multitalented and remarkably versatile, Blyth began on radio as a child, appeared on Broadway at the age of twelve in Lillian Hellman's Watch on the Rhine, and enjoyed a long and diverse career in films, theatre, television, and concerts. A sensitive dramatic actress, the youngest at the time to be nominated for her role in Mildred Pierce (1945), she also displayed a gift for comedy, and was especially endeared to fans for her expressive and exquisite lyric soprano, which was showcased in many film and stage musicals. Still a popular guest at film festivals, lovely Ms. Blyth remains a treasure of the Hollywood's golden age.
