One Good Turn - 1931

One Good Turn (1931) shows the pluck, the kindness, and the good humor needed to forge on during the Great Depression, all qualities that were abundant in a Laurel and Hardy short—along with several smacks on the head.

Laurel and Hardy, like The Three Stooges, moved from job to job as interesting and humorous scenarios for their exploits.  We mark this Labor Day with one Laurel and Hardy short that not only has them without employment, but actually mentions that their plight is due to the Depression, as we continue our look this year at movies made during the Great Depression that addressed that crisis.

We find our heroes on the side of the road in their rattletrap 1911 Ford open touring car, where they are camped.  Oliver Hardy washes their laundry in a stream resembling more a mud puddle than a brook, and Stan Laurel cooks soup over a campfire, but accidentally burns down their pup tent with all their belongings.  Any trip, slip, or misunderstanding usually leads to catastrophe for the boys, but their personality traits that always have Stan squeakily whimpering and Ollie punctuating his emotions with a side glance at the camera—breaking the fourth wall is part of their schtick—are so well known that we really don’t need complicated plots.  The gags are set up and we have an easy time almost knowing what’s next.

Ollie remarks on their situation, “Our earthly possessions are slowly getting less and less, no place to sleep, and no food.  What could be worse?”  Then they notice their laundry, which includes, of course, a union suit, has shrunk with washing.

The boys stop at a nearby house to beg for food.  Like any practiced hobo, they check to make sure there are no dogs about.  With hat in hand, Ollie smiles charmingly and asks the elderly lady of the house, played by Mary Carr, “Pardon the intrusion, lady, but my friend and I are victims of the Depression.  We haven’t tasted food for three whole days.”

To which Stan remarks, “Yesterday, today, and tomorrow.”

Ollie coyly twists his finger around on his derby hat and requests a piece of buttered toast, but Stan heartily adds, “Would you mind throwing a piece of ham over that?”

The lady is kind and says she is going to “fix them something very nice.”

Ollie, ups the ante, “Is there some little thing we could do to repay your kindness?  We’re willing to work, you know.”

Stan suggests that Ollie chop wood, and Ollie tells him to do it. Eventually, the lady calls them into the kitchen and gives them coffee and sandwiches.  The prolonged taking of one more and then one more sandwich by Stan, completely oblivious to good manners, has Ollie steaming, and after a few tit-for-tat reprisals, they settle down to enjoy their food.

But what’s this?  They overhear the lady in the next room in conversation with a man who says he is going to foreclose on the mortgage, and that she must have $100 by three o’clock or he will throw her out on the street! She pleads with him for more time, discovering that the money she has saved in her sewing basket has been stolen!  He is heartless. 

“I have you in my clutches!”  It sounds like an old-time “mellerdramer,” which it is.  Unbeknownst to the boys, the lady is just rehearsing a play for the local community theatre.  James Finlayson, well known to Laurel and Hardy fans, is the evil banker.  The lady refers to him by his real name, which was perhaps a joke among the cast.  Blink and you miss him Snub Pollard also plays one of the community theatre players.

Our hapless heroes, however, eavesdropping from the kitchen, think it’s real.  Gallantly, Ollie vows to raise the money, and the boys go into town to auction off their car.

Billy Gilbert plays a drunk who places a bid, but then mistakenly puts his wallet into Stan’s coat pocket. After a misunderstanding in the bidding and Ollie pummeling Stan in the car that remains unsold and, in fact, crumbles to pieces in their fight, the wallet is discovered.  Ollie thinks Stan has stolen the old lady’s mortgage money.

Just how he jumps to this unlikely conclusion, we can’t imagine, but the childlike chums are quick to wound (literally) and quick to jump to conclusions.  He muscles Stan back to the old lady’s house to return the money and to confess.  She laughingly tells them it was a play rehearsal they heard, and Ollie, a tad embarrassed, makes the hysterical remark, “I must have made a faux pas.”

Stan, fed up, goes after Ollie with an axe and brings down the old lady’s shed on his head.

The gags and slapstick would have been familiar and fun to the Depression-era audiences, but those audiences were not as blind to the social commentary of the film as we might be today.  People did camp out on the side of the road.  They did live in their cars.  They were removed from their homes when the banks foreclosed.  They and their belongings were thrown out on the street.

Just as is happening more and more today. The felon in the White House has taken measures to criminalize homelessness, institutionalize captured homeless, and, ironically, increase the number of homeless in this country.

May we show as much resilience, heart, and generosity in our troubled time as Laurel and Hardy.  But I somehow think if one of us were knocked repeatedly on the head by chunks of firewood, we might not fare as well as he does. Got to give him that.

  *******************************

Jacqueline T. Lynch is the author of Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. and Movies in Our Time - Hollywood Mirrors and Mimics the Twentieth Century and Hollywood Fights Fascism and Christmas in Classic Films. TO JOIN HER READERS' GROUP - follow this link for a free book as a thank-you for joining.

My new non-fiction book, CHILDREN'S WARTIME ADVENTURE NOVELS - The Silent Generation's Vicarious Experience of World War II -- is now available in eBook here at Barnes & Noble, Apple, Kobo, and a wide variety of other online shops.

Or here from my Shopify store if you want to buy direct from me and avoid the big companies.

And it is here in eBook, paperback print, and hardcover, from Amazon.

It is also here in paperback from Ingram.

And here in hardcover from Ingram.

From Cherry Ames, to Meet the Malones, from Dave Dawson to Kitty Carter - Canteen Girl, the Silent Generation spent their childhood immersed in geopolitical events through the prism of their middle grade and young adult books.  From the home front to the battlefield, these books are a window on their world, and influenced their hard-working, conformity-loving generation. 

 

 

 

SECOND EDITION - a re-issue of ANN BLYTH: ACTRESS. SINGER. STAR.

Tomorrow, Ann Blyth, one of the last remaining figures from Hollywood's Golden Age, will celebrate her 97th birthday.

Ten years ago, I published a book on her career, Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star., that had its roots in a year-long series of blog posts in 2014 on her work.  As I mentioned a couple months ago, I've been working on putting out a second edition, with some additional material, and making a hardcover version available, as well, for the first time.  

I'm pleased to announce that the book is now out in eBook, paperback, hardcover, and audio.  I guess that covers all bases.

You may purchase the eBook here at my Shopify store,

     or from a variety of online shops, including Barnes & Noble and Apple iTunes here.

The paperback version and the hardcover version are also available from Barnes & Noble here, and the paperback 

from  Walmart here.

You may purchase the paperback from IngramSpark here, 

     and also a hardcover version from IngramSpark here.

At Amazon, you may purchase the eBook, the paperback, the hardcover, or the audiobook here.

You can also purchase both the paperback and the hardcover through Bookshop.org which supports local bookstores.

How delightful it is to celebrate a long career and a happy life.  

Modern Times (1936)

Modern Times (1936) says goodbye to The Little Tramp and hello to a brave new world. Charlie Chaplin takes aim at the horrors of industrialism and the tribulations of the Great Depression, and yet he brings along a nostalgic zest for the earlier twentieth century that is not going gently into that good night.  Inevitably, he presents us with a Valentine.

Continuing our look this year at films from the 1930s that make a social commentary on that decade, as I’ve mentioned before, many filmmakers in this era chose to deliberately comment on social conditions in that challenging time and make “modern times” the backdrop of even silly comedies.  You didn’t have to look far to see a message.   We turn now to a giant (a little giant maybe, but still a giant) in the history of film who does just this, and uses it to give his most famous and beloved character not just a curtain call, but a socially relevant one.

Mr. Chaplin came to realize that The Little Tramp’s era of particular innocence was over, and practically speaking, there was no way to continue his adventures not speaking.  Therefore, this is the last “silent film” made featuring our hapless hero.  However, it is also the first film we hear Chaplin’s voice—later in the movie when he sings a silly song.

The film is mostly silent, with some sound effects and very little dialogue—mostly from the boss of the factory who bellows at his employees via a large television-type screen.  This is not your father’s industrial revolution; in fact, the factory where Chaplin works is almost Buck Rogers futuristic, an Art Deco version of a factory.  It is the 1930s, after all.

The movie starts with a stark title screen and a rather film noir-ish musical theme, threatening and foreboding.   We see the image of a flock of sheep, and then the image of men climbing subway steps in a herd, running to the factory, to suggest that they are sheep.  The title card tells us this is “A story of industry, of individual enterprise—humanity crusading in the pursuit of happiness.”

Will humanity succeed in finding happiness?  Maybe only at times.

It doesn’t start well for The Little Tramp and quickly goes downhill from there.  We see him tightening nuts on an assembly line, having trouble keeping up.  The bellowing owner from his omniscient screen observes them and wants more speed.  He is played by Al Ernest Garcia.

Charlie takes a smoke break in the washroom, but he gets yelled at by the face on the screen even in there.  Big Brother is even in the bathroom.

Efficiency experts come to the factory to demonstrate a new machine that will make the workers eat lunch faster—and poor Charlie is chosen to demonstrate.  Strapped into a chair, a revolving, demonic lazy Susan is placed before him, and he is force-fed soup, corn on the cob, and gets the traditional slapstick pie in the face from a mechanical arm, while his face is blotted intermittently with a large office blotter.  It’s a funny skit, and levity helps us—if not Charlie—from going crazy at the imprisonment of his workplace. 

When Charlie is on a break or off the line, he continues to twitch with the motion of tightening nuts with two large wrenches.  Poor Charlie goes berserk from the stress, ends up being threaded through the giant cogs of a machine in the iconic scene.  Afterwards, he takes his large wrenches and attempts to tighten anything—including the large dress buttons strategically placed on the breasts of a passing woman.  This is one of those gags that’s more funny if we are led right up to the moment and then is suddenly cut off, because what we imagine could happen is always funnier.

Playfully and maniacally out of control, Charlie is chased by his co-workers, taken to a hospital, and later, cured of a nervous breakdown, and must start his life over.

He is constantly starting over from square one in this movie, and that, too, is a comment on the modern condition.  We must be prepared to start over.  Always.

In another funny mistake, he falls into a manhole and comes up with a red warning flag, such that construction workers would take on a job, and when he emerges from the manhole with the flag, just at that moment, a protest march by a communist workers’ group is going by and he gets swept up with them.  He is rounded up and taken to the police station. 

Meanwhile, Paulette Goddard plays a poor girl living in a shack by the waterfront with her widowed father and two kid sisters. She is The Gamin. Dad is out of work, heavily burdened by the Depression, and Paulette, with a scrappy survivor’s instinct, steals bananas to feed the family.  Reportedly, one of her little sisters was played by Gloria DeHaven at 10 or 11 years old in her first role.

Charlie is sent to prison, and when cocaine is smuggled to another prisoner via a salt shaker, referred to on our helpful title card as “nose powder,” Charlie inadvertently douses his food with it.  His wide-eyed reaction tells us he is high.  One wonders how that got by the Production Code.  Helpless to control himself, he accidentally foils a plot by revolting prisoners to overtake the guards, and he is rewarded with release.  He doesn’t really want to leave, though.  He is cozy in his cell, with no responsibilities and three squares a day.  It’s a good setup for a guy like Charlie, who loses every job he gets.  When he is freed, he is told, “Now make good.”

The Gamin, meanwhile, gets into trouble when her poor father is shot to death.  The authorities step in and take the two younger girls, but Paulette escapes.  She finally crosses paths with Charlie when he gets fired from a shipbuilding company on the waterfront where she lives, and he accidentally launches a half-built ship. She has stolen bread and runs smack into him.  Gentleman that he is, and out of work besides, he allows himself to be arrested and carted off to the hoosegow once again.  He offers his seat to Paulette in the police van and helps her to escape.  Even eating a big meal in a restaurant without the money to pay for it won’t keep him in jail for long, but when he meets Paulette, Charlie decides it’s better to stay out of jail, and he vows he will get a home for them both, “even if I have to work for it.”

They are two lost souls battling the storms of life, but The Little Tramp is a man-child, and their relationship is as playful as brother and sister.

He takes a job as a night watchman in a department store.  Again, as we’ve seen in this previous post on Employees' Entrance (1933), the multi-story downtown department store has a special place in the Great Depression.  It is the cathedral of commerce, with the promise of good times coming again, despite most people not having enough money to do more than window-shop.

Charlie provides a place for Paulette to sleep on home furnishings floor, and while she luxuriates in a comfortable floor model bed, he runs into a former co-worker from the factory that has now been shut down.  He is Big Bill, played by Stanley “Tiny” Sandford, and he is going to rob the store.  One of his accomplices explains, “We ain’t burglars—we’re hungry.”  

It ends, of course, with Charlie taken off to jail again, but before that we have that stunning scene where he tries out roller skates and nearly plumets to his death on a floor where renovation construction is not finished and he comes very close to falling several stories while cutting a caper with fancy skating moves.  Classic film fans may know this is just a very clever matte shot, and Chaplin was not in danger doing the stunt, but it looks terrific.

When Charlie is released from jail this time, Paulette faithfully waits for him, and provides a tumbledown shack for their home, and she has returned to stealing food. 

The factory where he worked at the beginning of the movie is reopening and he hopes to get a real home for them.  He is assigned as an assistant to a mechanic, played by Chester Conklin.  This time, Chester gets caught in the cogs and Charlie’s not much help.  Paulette, Charlie, and Chester would all reunite in The Great Dictator (1940).

Believe it or not, he has another stay in jail, while Paulette gets a job as a dancer in a café, and she gets him a job as a singing waiter there when he’s out of the lockup.  Here’s where we get to finally hear Charlie Chaplin’s voice.  He cannot remember the words to the song he’s supposed to sing, so he makes up gibberish and we see him dashing about the dancefloor, twisting himself into a frenetic ballet, and singing a song Chaplin wrote called, “Je cherche après titine,” which is a mixture of French and Italian that he roguishly performs as a supposedly risqué song. Have a look here.

But wouldn’t you know, life comes down hard again, and the authorities who have been looking for Paulette all this time have returned.  She and Charlie escape, but scrappy Paulette has finally run out of courage.  They stand on the dusty open road that stretches out miles ahead of them.  Is it promising, or is it bleak?  Perhaps it’s just a matter of viewpoint.

“What’s the use of trying?” she says in tears.

He answers, “Buck up—never say die.  We’ll get along!”  It is the theme of the Great Depression for those who survived it.  I can remember many years ago watching a documentary series on the Great Depression with my father, who was a teenager during those years, and who joined the Civilian Conservation Corps to help send money back to support his widowed mother and kid sisters.  At the time, it was an adventure.  Bad times were shrugged off because if they weren’t, you were done for just by giving up.  But as an old man, looking back, with perhaps less courage than he had when he was a teen, and having acquired a great deal more knowledge about life in the meantime, he muttered, stony-faced at the TV:  “My God, it’s a wonder we ever survived it.”

In the background, while Charlie is comforting Paulette, we hear the music he wrote, which would later gain lyrics and the title “Smile.”  The first to record it supposedly was Nat King Cole, many years later.  You can listen to it here.

There was no single anthem of that generation, but this quiet, hopeful song may have been one of them.

It was a perfect way, as Charlie and Paulette gather their things and walk down the road together to meet head-on whatever happens next, for The Little Tramp to leave us.  I like to think he’s still down the road somewhere, shrugging off mishaps.

  *******************************

Jacqueline T. Lynch is the author of Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. and Movies in Our Time - Hollywood Mirrors and Mimics the Twentieth Century and Hollywood Fights Fascism and Christmas in Classic Films. TO JOIN HER READERS' GROUP - follow this link for a free book as a thank-you for joining.

My new non-fiction book, CHILDREN'S WARTIME ADVENTURE NOVELS - The Silent Generation's Vicarious Experience of World War II -- is now available in eBook here at Barnes & Noble, Apple, Kobo, and a wide variety of other online shops.

Or here from my Shopify store if you want to buy direct from me and avoid the big companies.

And it is here in eBook, paperback print, and hardcover, from Amazon.

It is also here in paperback from Ingram.

And here in hardcover from Ingram.

From Cherry Ames, to Meet the Malones, from Dave Dawson to Kitty Carter - Canteen Girl, the Silent Generation spent their childhood immersed in geopolitical events through the prism of their middle grade and young adult books.  From the home front to the battlefield, these books are a window on their world, and influenced their hard-working, conformity-loving generation. 

 

 

 

 

 

Happy Independence Day

Wishing all our American readers a Happy Independence Day tomorrow, with a reminder of the most sacred words of our Declaration of Independence, adopted this day, 249 years ago -- some of our specific complaints against King George III:

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

The traitor felon in the White House is guilty of all of them.

Happy NO KINGS DAY.

Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. -- second edition

This is to announce a new/old project.  Ten years ago, I published ANN BLYTH: ACTRESS. SINGER. STAR.  A lot of water has gone under the bridge in the last decade, but it remains a book close to my heart.  

In the past several weeks, I've been tinkering with the manuscript with the intention of publishing a second edition, one that will include a few more bits of info, a handful of additional photos from her stage appearances, an afterward about the book, and...an additional hardcover edition.

I'm also working to get the print paperback more widely available.  At the moment, the eBook is sold through a variety of online shops, including my own, here.  The print book currently is available only from Amazon.  In the coming weeks, I hope to make the print paperback book also available through Barnes & Noble online and as many other online shops as possible.

The new hardcover edition at first will be sold only through Amazon, but I hope in future to make the hardcover also available for purchase at other venues.

Massacre (1934)

Massacre (1934) is a bold standoff against treatment and societal views of the modern Native American, as well as the industry that brought us westerns with little appetite for treating Indians as nothing more than stereotypes…and targets.

It manages, however, to be more than just a message film, for the story involves a lot of action, a fast-moving story line, and cool deliberation on the part of Joe Thunderhorse, a man whose two-fisted approach to life brings him away from the reservation so long that Sioux culture and its modern problems mean little to him.  He’s out for himself and very successful at it.  What brings him back to his tribe is a shock, and he brings the audience with him.

Richard Barthelmess, one of my favorites, is very good in this strong role.  He manages, as does his character, to straddle the world of hardscrabble make-a-buck early 1930s and the ancient culture into which he was born but left at a young age to make his way in the world.  For him, it is not just the “white man’s world,” it is his world.  He walks with authority, like the son of a chief, like a guy who wears his self-confidence as if it were a bullet-proof vest. He generally has a great time, but he is not afraid to challenge anyone.

We first meet him in Indian garb riding a horse in a procession at a wild west show at the Chicago World’s Fair of 1933, and the theme of the fair, “Century of Progress” is only part of the irony facing the audience when, sinking into the story, we immediately begin to consider the plight of the Native American in twentieth-century America.  Where is their progress?  

Barthelmess is the star of the show, and his pictures on programs bring in a lot of money to the stock company, run by Robert Barratt, a kind of Wild Bill Hickok knockoff.  Barthelmess does trick riding, fancy shooting at targets, and makes the girls swoon, particularly Claire Dodd, a wealthy sophisticate who has designs on him. 

Barthelmess earns the princely sum of $300 per week, and demands for $400 and will get it.  He has a valet played by Clarence Muse.  No jovial Indian sidekick, his manservant is Black, but seems more a pal than a lackey.  He calls Barthelmess “Chief” like everyone else does, not “Boss.”   Our first surprise is when the monosyllabic “Chief” rides out of the stadium, goes to the manager’s tent where his valet removes the wig with the long braids, and reveals a modern Joe, who changes into a suit and speaks English fluently.  We see he has only been playing a part.  He is suddenly almost like a cross between Clark Gable’s masculine polish and James Cagney’s Bowery toughness.  He smokes, he chews gum (sometimes at the same time), and strides out to his own sporty automobile with his name and picture emblazoned on the doors.  The ten-gallon hat he wears is so large and ostentatious, it probably really does hold ten gallons.

I like the shot of Mr. Muse's face in the obverse side of the hand mirror he holds for Barthelmess.

Mr. Barthelmess amuses himself with the adoration of the females in the crowd, and has a shallow romantic relationship with Claire Dodd.  It is interesting that while Hollywood would not stoop to his having a white manservant, he is allowed to have a white lady friend.  Their kiss, a long and seductive encounter between two races in America at that time we might consider to be a daring image.  Was it allowed because the audience was already familiar with the long career of Richard Barthelmess and knew he was not really Sioux, or is it because Claire Dodd is playing a coolly unsympathetic woman who collects men and marries on a whim?  We have to question her emotional and mental stability when, as Barthelmess arrives for a cocktail party at her mansion, she brings him to a room that is filled with Indian regalia and artifacts.  He looks at the objects, interested, as if he is on a museum tour, and will later confess that he realized at that moment he has gotten so far afield from his native roots that the significance of the pieces were lost on him and needed to be explained to him.

But it is her fascination with the objects and collecting them, the way she has collected men, that says a great deal about her.  She is not a historian, an anthropologist, or a scholar; she has created a fantasy revolving around Joe Thunderhorse that is more sexual desire than cultural interest.  She clings to him and murmurs her image of him as a wild, “red man” and she would like to be his “squaw.” 

This movie seems to straddle, perhaps knowingly, the conflicting images, tropes, of the Indian as a savage and as a noble and beautiful child of nature.  Joe Thunderhorse is neither, he’s a just guy. 

Massacre, like some of the previous movies covered (Heat Lightning, Employees’ Entrance), is a First National film, and we may reliably count on a frank, sometimes stark, socially conscious message.  The Vitaphone Orchestra and the opening credits with the cameo portraits of the principal players might momentarily distract us at the old moviehouse like a doily on a scratched tabletop, but we know what we’re getting underneath.  It’s wonderful, gritty honesty.

Spoilers at this point, naturally.

Barthelmess gets word that his father, still back on the reservation, is dying and is asking for him.  So he takes Clarence Muse with him and drives his outlandish auto out to the reservation, which he left when he was still a boy.  The government agent at the time he was there, played by Henry O’Neill, who is now working in Washington, D.C., sent him to the Haskell Institute, where he learned skills to make his way in the world.  But Barthelmess returns to a desolate landscape he had almost forgotten, and which seems to have gotten worse in the years since he’d left.  Even Clarence Muse notices and remarks, “White folks don’t give the Indian much of a break.”

The reservation is now run by unscrupulous managers.  There is Dudley Digges, the agent in charge, whose side hustle is graft and more graft.

Frank McGlynn, Sr., is the arrogant, posturing, bloviating missionary.  His funeral service for Joe’s father is all phony hype and brings no comfort to the family.  Joe will afterward insist on a Sioux ritual that is far more spiritual and sincere.  As Barthelmess looks to the night sky, he seems to truly mourn for his father, and perhaps for his people.

Sidney Toler, several years before his longtime gig as the kindly inspector Charlie Chan, plays the smarmy undertaker, whose crimes against the Sioux involve not only fraud and graft, but rape.

When Barthelmess arrives at the agent’s office on the reservation, he is all curiosity and impatience, and has no idea what corruption he has before him.  A poised, beautiful young officer worker, played by Ann Dvorak, catches his immediate attention.  She is Sioux also, and when she answers him in perfect English, he smiles in recognition and asks if she, too, had been sent to the Haskell Institute.  She was, but she came home to make a life on the reservation, and in her small way, to make a difference.  We don’t learn much about her character or her family, but she will prove invaluable to Barthelmess in helping him navigate this complicated world on the reservation.

The Haskell Institute, a real-life Indian school, was founded in 1884, and like many such boarding institutions, created an often harsh and even cruel environment for the Indian children who attended.  It grew into a land-grant college now known as Haskell Indian Native University, where some 140 Indian and native Alaskan nations are represented in its student body.  In February of this year, 2025, budget cuts as a result of the whims of the traitor felon currently residing in the White House have forced the lay-off of one-quarter of the staff.

Barthelmess renews acquaintance with his younger brother and sister, and cousins, but bristles at what he has observed in their miserable lives under the authority of the local agent.  He is not shy about complaining or throwing a punch or two, and Ann Dvorak warns him that he could be arrested and confined to the reservation and never be allowed to leave again.

He is enraged to discover that the unscrupulous undertaker, Sidney Toler, has raped his 15-year-old sister, Jennie, played by Agnes Narcha.  Lovely Miss Narcha plays the tragic role well, but has few lines and this was apparently one of only two movies she made.

Barthelmess hops in his car to go hunt down Toler, and we know he means business because he has bought the lariat off a cowboy on a horse in town.  Barthelmess speeds away, catches up to Toler’s car in one of a few car chases in this film, and lassos him from behind, yanking him out of the car and then dragging him along the dusty road, finally unleashing his inert, battered body.  He is unconscious and rolls to the side of the road, where Barthelmess leaves him.

Barthelmess is put on trial on the reservation in a kangaroo court, with three illiterate and docile Indians as judges to convict him.  Ann Dvorak sneaks him the key to the jail cell, and he and Clarence Muse drive off, away from the reservation. Cleverly, when the cop cars begin to chase his unmistakable auto down the highway, it is Mr. Muse they catch, wearing the ten-gallon hat as a disguise.  Barthelmess has taken Muse’s flat cap and hops a freight. 

Finally, he makes it to Washington, D.C., where he hopes to bring his plight to his old mentor, the former agent on the reservation, played by Henry O’Neill.  As he leaves the freight yard, we see the Capitol Dome in the distance over the top of an old wooden fence, and the familiar Blue Eagle of the NRA poster plastered on it.  President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s National Recovery Administration was established the year before, in 1933, and was a popular start to the New Deal among distressed workers.  Participation in the NRA among businessowners was voluntary, and in part involved agreeing to establish a minimum wage between 20 and 45 cents per hour, to limit the work week from between 35 to 40 hours, and to abolish child labor.  In 1935, the U.S. Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional. However, some of its features remained and were carried forward in other progressive legislation in those years. 

Barthelmess makes contact with Henry O’Neill, who sympathizes and takes his side when he is accused of the murder of Sidney Toler.  O’Neill acknowledges his fight for the Sioux has always been an uphill battle.  “Every move I make is blocked by the same organized group that have been bleeding the Indians for years…water power, oil rights, cattle ranges…whatever the Indian happens to own, they manage to get away from them through control of public opinion and legislation….”

O’Neill invites him to state his case in a congressional committee meeting.  Barthelmess explains life on the reservation in strong language when one of the committee members notes that Indians were granted American citizenship in the 1920s during the Calvin Coolidge administration in return for their services during World War I. 

Yes, they weren’t citizens until…the 1920s.

Barthelmess responds, “The Indian a citizen?  That’s funny.  He hasn’t any constitutional rights.  He can’t even hire a lawyer without the agent’s consent.  Oh, he’s given the right to live…on a wasteland.  He’s allowed the right to worship, but if he remembers that the Indian once had a religion of his own, he gets a beating for it.  He’s given the right to love, but a white man can violate an Indian girl and get away with it…You used to shoot the Indian down.  Now you cheat him and starve him and kill him off by dirt and disease.  It’s a massacre any way you tell it.”

These are strong words that probably a lot in the movie audience had never heard before or considered.  He is rewarded with applause, but taken back to the reservation to stand trial for murder.  Wallis Clark plays his lawyer, and they garner massive attention with headlines and crowds when the train pulls into the nearest town to the reservation. 

But Jennie, his sister, is missing.  She has been kidnapped to keep her from testifying about her rape.  With his usual fearless and no-nonsense manner, Barthelmess tracks her down, not afraid to use his fists or tell off anybody.  There is a buildup of suspenseful twists and turns right through to the end of the movie, with mob violence, where Barthelmess must keep his own people in check before they burn down the courthouse. 

The quiet ending of him standing on a cliff, surveying the wide reservation lands is another surprise, for he was shot down in an earlier scene.  Ann Dvorak joins him with a telegram giving him the appointment, should he choose to accept, of being the reservation’s new agent.  He remarks, “Just think of all the time I wasted shooting glass balls and signing autographs.  This is a real job.”

He and Ann will have, we assume, a happier future together, but not an easy one.  It is a satisfying ending, seeing how they are satisfied.

There appear to have been at least a few actual Native Americans in the cast in very small roles.  It would be interesting to find out what people from the native tribal nations thought of this movie, if any of them had been able to see it at the time in 1934. 

You can see it now on YouTube.

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Jacqueline T. Lynch is the author of Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. and Movies in Our Time - Hollywood Mirrors and Mimics the Twentieth Century and Hollywood Fights Fascism and Christmas in Classic Films. TO JOIN HER READERS' GROUP - follow this link for a free book as a thank-you for joining.

My new non-fiction book, CHILDREN'S WARTIME ADVENTURE NOVELS - The Silent Generation's Vicarious Experience of World War II -- is now available in eBook here at Barnes & Noble, Apple, Kobo, and a wide variety of other online shops.

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From Cherry Ames, to Meet the Malones, from Dave Dawson to Kitty Carter - Canteen Girl, the Silent Generation spent their childhood immersed in geopolitical events through the prism of their middle grade and young adult books.  From the home front to the battlefield, these books are a window on their world, and influenced their hard-working, conformity-loving generation.