Black Legion (film)
Black Legion is a 1937 American crime drama film, directed by Archie Mayo, with a script by Abem Finkel and William Wister Haines based on an original story by producer Robert Lord. The film stars Humphrey Bogart, Dick Foran, Erin O'Brien-Moore and Ann Sheridan. It is a fictionalized treatment of the historic Black Legion of the 1930s in Michigan, a white vigilante group. A third of its members lived in Detroit, which had also been a center of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s.
| Black Legion | |
|---|---|
Theatrical poster | |
| Directed by | Archie Mayo Michael Curtiz (uncredited) |
| Screenplay by | Abem Finkel William Wister Haines |
| Story by | Robert Lord |
| Produced by | Robert Lord |
| Starring | Humphrey Bogart Dick Foran Erin O'Brien-Moore Ann Sheridan |
| Cinematography | George Barnes |
| Edited by | Owen Marks |
| Music by | W. Franke Harling Howard Jackson Bernhard Kaun |
Production company | Warner Bros. |
| Distributed by | Warner Bros. |
Release dates |
|
Running time | 83 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $235,000 |
The plot is based on the May 1935 kidnapping and murder in Detroit of Charles A. Poole, a Works Progress Administration organizer. Twelve men were tried and 11 convicted of his murder; all were sentenced to life. Authorities prosecuted another 37 men for related crimes; they were also convicted and sentenced to prison, breaking up the Legion. Columbia Pictures had made Legion of Terror (1936) based on the same case.
Black Legion was praised by critics for its dramatization of a dark social phenomenon. It was one of several films of this period in opposition to fascist and racist organizations. Having followed Bogart's breakthrough in The Petrified Forest (1936), a number of reviewers commented that Bogart's performance should lead to his becoming a major star. Warner Bros. did not give the film any special treatment, however, promoting it and Bogart in their standard fashion. Stardom did come with High Sierra in 1941.