Black Legion (1937)

Frank (Humphrey Bogart) loses out on a promotion to a polish immigrant just because, and get this, he is smart and hard working. Go figure! Frank is fed up and learns about this secret club called the Black Legion where hard working Americans fight back against this sort of thing! Racism is bad, hmmm kay!

The Black Legion (the club, not the movie) is a thinly disguised version of the Ku Klux Klan. The actual klan, in fact, sued the studio. Not for defamation of character, but for use of their symbols. Gotta have priorities. The Legion’s crimes are quite extreme. They kidnap and flog people, or burn down their house and run them out of town. If they burned crosses, maybe the Klan’s suit would have gone someplace.

Dick Foran played Frank's good friend who tries to lead him straight. He had a long career in many westerns, but I remember him from Bogart's Petrified Forest and a couple mummy films. Hottie Ann Sheridan has an early, small role. She would stand out in The Man Who Came to Dinner.

The Black Legion (the movie, not the club) is a little heavy handed with the message. Good people are all good, bad people are all bad, and Bogart’s Frank is the good guy led astray. I am curious how effective this kind of message worked during the era. In reality things are more complicated, and a message rejected outright by the audience that needs it most is of little value. But this is movies, not reality. And as a movie, it was meh. Bogart always raises the level of everything he is in. AMRU 2.5.

Black lives matter, our society does not value them equally, and that is wrong.