the audience applauded

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

"Black Legion" is one of the more controversial films from "Warner Bros" and it should have made Humphrey Bogart a star. The film's premise is daring for the times, especially after the American Film Censors had clamped down pretty hard on Hollywood films in general. Bogart plays a factory worker who has had the same job for many years. He is a married man with a son and has an ordinary existence. At the beginning of the film, Bogart has the chance of being promoted to that of shop steward at the factory. However, he is passed over by a young worker who is from an Eastern European background. Angry and resentful, Bogart is coerced by a work colleague into joining a secret society that tries to rid America of all citizens who aren't born and bred Americans. The society is a thinly veiled version of the Klu Klux Klan, as aggressive and violent means are employed. Before long, Bogart is in over his head and it's not long before tragedy occurs. This is the kind of film that reflects the old fashioned kind of Republican politics and is disturbing because of that. The cast of talented actors do full justice to some excellent dialogue. The violence is quite stark and unflinching. I wouldn't be surprised if "Black Legion" ran into Censorship trouble. The film turns into a human interest story about how American society is reflected and portrayed via the politics from the secret society. Humphrey Bogart does very well in the leading role. If only "Warner Bros" had found more films like the above for him, Bogart wouldn't have been stuck in a rut the way he was until 1941. The climax is what you would expect from a film like this but it rounds up a fine film.

Archie Mayo and Michael Curtiz co-directed this hard-hitting drama that stars Humphrey Bogart as Frank Taylor, a machinist in a factory who loses a promotion to a "foreigner", and has his disappointment turn to bitter hatred when he is coaxed on by a co-worker(played by Joe Sawyer) to join a secretive organization called the Black Legion, which preaches violence against all foreigners. They resemble the Ku Klux Klan, and Frank gets sucked into this violent world, that turns him mean even to his own wife. When his friend and neighbor Ed Jackson(played by Dick Foran) becomes a target, Frank tries to get out, but it is too late... Compelling film is surprisingly potent for its time, and uncompromising in its content. A bit predictable and obvious at times, but remains most prescient and worthwhile viewing.

The row of hooded men lined up execution style is a scary scene that spreads through the movie as a whole. The result is a rather obvious but still hard-hitting political drama from the Depression era studio of record, Warner Bros. No need to repeat the familiar plot. The movie is really a reflection on proto-fascism and not on the Depression or economic crisis since these broader contexts are never even mentioned. Nor is the hot 1930's topic of union organizing mentioned, surprising for a movie that deals with an industrial workforce of machine operators. I suppose these omissions are intended to keep the focus tightly on one particular response to the bad times of 1936, namely right-wing extremism.Within that tight framework, the movie does a good job of showing the appeal of a Black Legion. Frank (Bogart) amounts to an every-man. He wants the prestige and advantages of a better job that he's promised his family and believes he's most qualified for. When immigrant Dombrowski gets the promotion instead, Frank suffers deep humiliation making him vulnerable to Legion propaganda that blames foreigners, like Dombrowski, for taking good "American" jobs. I expect the message resonated among distressed audiences of the time, and still does in our own time.I also like the way the stereotypes become smoother and more attractive as we're introduced to the Legion's top people. Note how the business types are as much concerned with the organization's money-making as they are with its politics—an easily over-looked aspect. Also, the women divide into two familiar categories— either the virtuous wife&mother type (O'Brien & Sheridan) or the promiscuous trampy type (Flint). Both types in this pre-feminist era are portrayed as pretty much dependent on the men in their lives. Thus, the men carry an especially heavy responsibility making them more vulnerable to appeals.As the beleaguered machinist, husband and father, Bogart shows a range of surprisingly vulnerable emotions, unlike the hardened cynic roles he specialized in as an icon. Nonetheless, he's quite good in a difficult part. I especially like the ending that refuses to compromise, though I'm not sure how effective the judge's abstract appeal to American values is in countering the more visceral proto-fascist appeal. Anyway, the movie is definitely underrated and deserves to be pulled out of obscurity for its tough-minded approach to a surprisingly topical message.

Fine Warners muckraking, with Bogie in an atypical good-average-Joe-gone-wrong role, as an assembly line worker in a typical middle American town who is passed over for a promotion and grows quickly to resent the smart Polish guy who got the job. This sends him into a downward spiral of despising the foreign-born, developing a narrow ideology of what constitutes a true American, and joining a frightening, Klan-like hate group to harass and scare off the immigrants. (No black people in this 1930s Anytown, but you can bet if there were, he'd be after them, too.) Bogie has to play a wide range of emotions, even breaking down and sobbing and clinging to his wife's apron strings, and while it takes a while to get used to him in this regular-guy persona, he's very good. It's a plausible story, still relevant in these days of teabaggers and Palinistas, and Bogie is ably supported by Dick Foran (as his more conscientious best friend), Erin O'Brien Moore (as his sad, increasingly desperate wife), and a young Ann Sheridan (whose character seems a bit too calm and forgiving in the final reels, considering what's been done to her loved ones). Daringly, it doesn't have a happy ending, and while there's a hokey fadeout with a judge intoning the moral of the story in one long take (as if we didn't get it already), it's a genuinely scary it-can-happen-here movie.