Another Old Movie Blog: Black Legion

Black Legion (1937) reveals how a factory worker from the Midwest is lured into a white supremacist gang, commits atrocities in fellowship with them, and what happens to his family, friends, and community. It should have made Humphrey Bogart a star, but that would have to wait a few years until the studio decided to promote him as such. But Warner Bros. showed no hesitancy to rush to produce this film barely a year after the real-life incident on which it was based.

One is drawn to obvious social and political parallels today about the recurrence of violent fascism in our country, culminating most recently with the attempted coup and overthrow of the government with the Trumpist-militants’ terrorist attack on the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. The depressing thought that such lunatics have always existed in this country is certainly shameful, but Black Legion is a film that one should view not just with sober realization of an evil undercurrent in our country; the movie should be recognized with pride as an important film that Hollywood had the guts to make. America is uniquely forthright in airing our dirty laundry, so to speak, and uniquely able to reboot, again and again. Our ability to address social ills and repair injustice, as difficult and slow as that is, should be a source of pride and something to which each succeeding generation should aspire. Movies like Black Legion informed a Depression-era audience by reflecting their own times, their own world. It was current events. The uncomfortable topic wasn’t trivialized, hidden, or given the asinine “both-sides-ism” treatment in order not to offend people who might take revenge. (Of course, Warner Bros. execs didn’t have to fear MAGA goons walking around the streets in those days with military-grade automatic weapons.) It was just a story about a guy. That happened to be true.

Humphrey Bogart plays Frank Taylor, a factory worker who is seemingly happy in his life. He’s got a steady job – something to be grateful for in these Depression days – a good marriage, a good, healthy son played by Dickie Jones, and some good buddies like Dick Foran. We learn early on that Bogie, though he likes his job, is not exactly a go-getter. Like some of the other fellows, he teases a fellow machinist on the line who spends his lunch hour studying so that he might earn a promotion. His name is Joe Dombrowski, played by Henry Brandon in one of eleven films he did that year. Oh, the life of a bit player. It’s a wonder he had time for lunch at all.

John Litel is the foreman (he did nine films released in 1937). He’s moving up the ladder to a better job and the company will choose from among the workers to take his place. Bogie thinks he’s got seniority and is better at this job than anyone on the line, convinces himself the job’s in the bag. He’s so sure, he’s walking on cloud nine and plans to buy a car to celebrate, plans on fixing up the house and buying his wife a vacuum cleaner.

But Joe Dombrowski gets the job. Bogie is humiliated, and angry. The charming scenes with his wife at home, and listening to a children’s adventure show on the radio with his boy are wiped away in his growing resentment of being passed over. Bogie is very skilled in showing the, at first, subtle change in his character. The early lighthearted scenes are a far cry from the usual brooding gangster he played in his early film career, but he is entirely believable at creating a very likable persona.

Then being passed over clouds his mood, and later, his judgment. Suddenly, the home and the job are both dissatisfying. His resentment grows, and it’s not directed at the company he works for but rather the fellow who got the job. Joe Dombrowski lives with his widowed father on a small farm on the outskirts of town. His father is an immigrant from Poland. We don’t know if Joe was born in the U.S. or not, but he and his father get labeled as foreigners, one strike against them in this apparently fairly homogenous white Midwestern town. Another strike is they are likely Roman Catholic, in what is apparently a largely Protestant community. Put these two together in a fellow who got a job that a “real American” considered was his, and we have the typical trigger for a vigilante group looking for any excuse to start trouble.

Bogie, following a trail of hints and whispers of a brotherhood who will give him a sense of belonging, not to say superiority, stumbles upon the Black Legion in the basement of a drugstore in town. The druggist, and other prominent businessmen, are members, “free, white and 100 percent American.”

They take him into the gang and in an initiation ceremony late at night in the woods, he kneels like a postulant before a group of men clothed in Ku Klux Klan-style robes and hoods, and takes an oath:

“In the name of God and the Devil, one to reward and the other to punish, and by the powers of light and darkness, good and evil, here under the black arch of Heaven's avenging symbol, I pledge and consecrate my heart, my brain, my body, and my limbs and swear by all the powers of Heaven and Hell to devote my life to the obedience of my superiors and that no danger or peril shall deter me from executing their orders. That I will exert every possible means in my power for the extermination of the anarchist, the Roman hierarchy and their abettors…”

Taking an oath in the name of Satan is peculiarly appropriate for a mob intent on such evil activities, and Bogie falters over some of the words, seems bewildered and nervous about what he is doing, wondering what it means and what might really be expected of him. He seems surprised at what he is reading on the card, but he adjusts quickly to his new brethren when he is offered a robe and hood (for $6.50) and his very own revolver (for $14.95.)

The scene back at home when he poses with his new revolver in front of a mirror, admiring his tough image, swaggering a little – we have seen that many times since, not only on feature films (Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver – 1976), but in countless sickening cell phone videos posted to the Internet by self-described avengers.

He spends more time away from home in the evening, and tells his wife, played by Erin O’Brien-Moore, that he has joined a lodge. She is concerned, and she suffers his road to hell on the sidelines.

Bogie goes out with them at night to terrorize the Dombrowski farm, meaning to teach the “undesirable alien” a lesson. They beat up father and son, kidnap them, set fire to the home, and then dump the Dombrowskis on a freight train. The thugs drink and celebrate at a bar later on.

Bogie comes home drunk for the first time, gets Dombrowski’s job as shop foreman (not only did Joe Dombrowski not show up for work the next day, he was never seen again), buys a new car, and tries to get his pal, Dick Foran to join the Black Legion. Mr. Foran’s response, “That’s for half-wits.”

Bogie is understandably put off by this insult, but Dick Foran knows nothing about the group, not really. He rooms at the home of their older fellow worker, Mike Grogan, played by Clifford Soubier. Old Mike has a beautiful daughter, played by Ann Sheridan. Dick Foran and Ann Sheridan are sweethearts. Their bliss will soon be shaken by forces building around them.

The Black Legion goes on more raids, smashing the store windows of “cut rate” shops, i.e., immigrant-owned, Jewish-owned.

The militant group requires membership dues and each member is required to sign up two new recruits. Now that Bogie is the shop foreman, he’s in a position of authority to pressure his workers on his line to join.

He asks one worker what church the man goes to, and the man replies he goes to none.

“Are you willing to protect your job?” He takes another tack, plays the foreigner taking his job angle, and the guy agrees to join.

Bogie tends more to the Black Legion than he does his job, and there are problems on the production line. He messes up and asks people to cover for him with management. Bogie is demoted and his foreman’s position is given to someone else – Pa Grogan. Uh-oh, Mr. Grogan has an Irish accent. He wasn’t born in the U.S. He’s an immigrant taking the job of a “real” American.

No surprise, the Black Legion goes after Grogan next. He is brought out to the woods, stripped to the waist, tied to a tree, and whipped. “That ought to give the Irish something to remember us by.”

Old Grogan is hospitalized, and Dick Foran gets suspicious and asks Bogie’s wife about his lodge meetings. Bogie takes up with the town floozy, played by Helen Flint. Foran confronts Bogie, laying down the law to him when Bogie comes home drunk and hits his wife. Bogie, in a drunken panic, exclaims he can’t leave the group because they won’t let him. He fears their power. Fascists are always cannibalistic; they always destroy their own.

Dick Foran is now the target. He is kidnapped, taken to the woods, but in an attempt to run away, he is shot dead. All the thugs run away except for a shocked Bogie, who tearfully, haunted, tells Foran’s lifeless body, “I didn’t mean it!”

There is a suspenseful manhunt sequence as he stumbles away in the darkness, goes to a truck stop to pull himself together, flinches at the sight of motorcycle cops and spooked by the radio report of a body being found.

The cops nab Bogie, and through a series of scenes we see the mop-up of the terrorist gang. Bogie is imprisoned, and when his wife is brought to him, he falls on his knees, throws his arms around her, and cries.

But he has another visitor to his cell, a rep from the Black Legion, who wants him to keep quiet. He threatens to kill Bogie’s wife and child if Bogie talks. He is told to tell the judge that he killed Dick Foran in self-defense, and to not implicate anyone else who was there. There is a plot to defame Dick Foran, and a courtroom full of Black Legion thugs smirk at each other in anticipation of their victory.

But Bogie, overwhelmed at the faces in the courtroom, including his wife, his mind reeling at the events of the past months, cracks, confesses, and names names.

We are dashed into a conclusion of headlines and the judge reading from the Bill of Rights, but perhaps the most profound impact is the last shot of Humphrey Bogart as he is being led away to spend the rest of his life in prison. He throws a look to his wife. It is half-apology and half-plea for an explanation, as if to say, “How did this happen to me?” It is perhaps the bewilderment even more than the remorse that cuts to the audience.

How many real-life members of the Black Legion were moved by this film we won’t hazard a guess; they were undoubtedly more directly hit by the investigations that came their way after their kidnapping and murder of Charles Poole, a French-Catholic organizer for President Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration in Michigan in 1935, resulting in the imprisonment of nearly 50 of them. The fascist organization was against Blacks, Catholics, Jews, union members and leaders, Communists where they could find them and tagging people with that label when they could not. They counted businessmen, pillars of the community in their ranks, as well the disgruntled uneducated mobs who were their willing foot soldiers.

Read this fascinating article in The Detroit News for more on the Black Legion and the incident that inspired the movie.

Note that the article was published in 1997. Note that Michigan is again plagued by fascist terrorists, some of their leaders charged after their plot to kidnap and murder Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer was foiled by the FBI.

For more on classic films that explored and exposed fascism, have a look at my book Hollywood Fights Fascism, available in print and eBook: