Release Date: January 17, 1937
Running Time: 83 minutes
Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Dick Foran, Erin O’Brien Moore, Ann Sheridan, Helen Flint, Joseph Sawyer
Director: Archie Mayo, Michael Curtis (uncredited)
Black Legion is a hard hitting film that fictionalizes a real world vigilante group of the same name that operated primarily in Michigan in the 1930’s. They were an offshoot of the Ku Klux Klan. In 1936 alone, the year this film was beginning development, the Black Legion was believed to have killed nearly fifty people. If you lived in the mid-western United States during this time you would have undoubtably have heard of this militia group. In modern times they aren’t as notoriously well known as the KKK, at least not outside of their area of influence, so this film may help shed a little light on what they were and what they stood for. It also, as many Hayes Code films of the era did, provides a cautionary tale that is brimming with the consequences of the main character’s actions.
The film begins at a midwestern factory where Frank Taylor (Humphrey Bogart) is certain he will be selected for the recent opening as foreman. He is a hard worker with a young family and in need of an economic boost to help him take care of a few repairs at home as well as replace a car that is starting to wear out. To his dismay the position is given to another worker, an immigrant who had some ideas that helped streamlined manufacturing and saved time and money. Bitter about the situation, Frank accepts an offer to join in on meetings with the Black Legion, an anti-immigration group that at first seems to speak exactly what Frank feels, that immigrants are taking away work from hard working and, in their opinion, more deserving Americans. It isn’t long before Frank has sworn an oath to forever join himself to the Black Legion, an oath that he will come to see as a chain, binding him to acts that will plague him for the rest of his life.
At first all seems to be going his way. The Legion stages a fire that runs off the new foreman and Frank takes over the job. But it doesn’t take long before his extra-curricular lead to troubles at home and a workplace accident that costs him his position. Instead of taking responsibility for his problems, Frank blames everyone else around him leading his wife to take their young son and leave him.
For the 1930’s, Black Legion doesn’t pull any punches. There are scenes so brutal and despicable, that even when Frank finally sees the true nature of what he has chained himself to, we have a hard time feeling sorry for him. This is doubly so because of Frank’s character who, even after personally committing a heinous crime, attempts to shift the blame from himself. The crime is entirely his fault as was the fire that got him his promotion earlier in the film.
The satisfaction of the final reel depends entirely on whether you feel any sympathy for Frank. The way Bogart plays Frank, no sympathy should be felt for him. We feel bad for him because he ruined more than just his own life when he joined the Legion. But feeling sorry for him does not mean we feel sympathy for him. If anything, right up to the final scenes, we feel disgusted with him. He has done everything to destroy his own life and he is not remotely able to take responsibility for it. His actions in the final moments come across more as a checklist to satisfy the Hayes Code, where villains were not allowed to get away with their villainy, than true character development on the part of Frank. We are satisfied that justice is handed out, but the way it played out was not very convincing.
Still, Bogart sells this unlikeable character. He is no gun twirling gangster we’re rooting for to get gunned down in the final reel, but he is detestable for much different reasons. He is a coward who stands for a very real evil in the world that exists to this very day. The message of fascism and racism/anti-immigration spouted by the Black Legion can be heard to this very day and the consequences of indulging in those thoughts and ideas are still reveling today. It is a film that still needs to be seen and pondered because nearly eighty years later it is still relevant.
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