MATINEE: I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang (1932)
Directed by Mervyn LeRoy
In the 1930’s Warner Bros. was known as the scrappiest studio. Other studios had made working class movies, but Warners wore their proletarianism on their sleeve. They specialized in jagged gangster pictures like Little Caesar or The Public Enemy and spectacular musicals with a social conscious like 42nd Street or Gold Diggers of 1933.
I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang is a movie that’s been on my watchlist for a long time. I finally watched it this morning. It really hit me hard.
Paul Muni is one of those actors who’s filmography is a blind spot for me. In the 30’s he was considered the greatest actor working in Hollywood. He was Warner Bros first major star, before Bogey, before EGR, before Cagney. Once those guys entered the picture, he focused more on stage work, then he retired in 1960, and died in 1967. He wasn’t in that many movies after the 40’s, so I’ve just never come across his work.
I recently read Al Pacino’s autobiography Sonny Boy, and he cites Muni as a huge influence. Muni is probably most famous for starring in the original Scarface, also from 1932. While the setting and character names are different from the 1983 Scarface with Pacino, they’re both adapted from the same novel by Armitage Trail. Pacino and Muni ostensibly play the same character of a gangster who acquires power through pure violence. Pacino said he studied every Paul Muni movie as a child, and became obsessed with his process of getting into a character.
I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang was released in theaters on November 10th, 1932. It was directed by Mervyn LeRoy and is based on a novel of the same name by Robert E. Burns, which is based on the author’s own experiences working on a chain gang while serving a prison sentence in Georgia in the 1920’s. It is famous for being critical of the American prison and legal systems, at a time when such structures weren’t yet scrutinized by the public.
It was nominated for three Academy Awards, including best picture and best actor for Muni
The Cartoon - A Great Big Bunch of You (1932)
Since this is a Warner Bros movie, I wanted to start off my matinee with a Merry Melodies cartoon from the year the film was released.
In this short, a few items of garbage come to life at the local dump.
The Cast
Paul Muni - James Allen
Glenda Farrell - Marie Woods
Preston Foster - Pete
Allen Jenkins - Barney Sykes
Edward Ellis - Bomber Wells
Helen Vinson - Helen
Noel Francis - Linda
Hale Hamilton - Rev. Clint Allen
Louise Carter - Mother
Synopsis
The movie starts off in 1919, where a young man named James Allen (Muni) is returning home to civilian life after serving in WWI. He is promised his old clerical job at the local factory, but war has made him restless. He wants to travel and make a life for himself on his own terms. His dream is to become an engineer, building bridges, which he received training for in the service. His mother and brother, who’s a minister, think he’s being foolish and should take the opportunity in front of him while it lasts. His mother finally gives him her blessing and he takes off in search of the American dream.
He travels from New York, to Boston, to New Orleans, and to Chicago, but he can’t catch a break. Unskilled labor is plentiful but he cannot find steady employment using his education he received in the army. He sleeps in freight cars and in flop houses. In St. Louis he tries to pawn his medal of honor he received during the war. The pawn shop owner laughs and shows him a box full of medals just like his. It’s fucking worthless.
He arrives in Georgia, and finds a vacant cot in a flop house for men. He meets a guy who introduces himself as Pete (Preston Foster), who invites him out for a hamburger, promising him that the manager of the diner owes him a favor. They arrive at the local greasy spoon and the man behind the counter takes one look at Pete and goes “You?! I thought you left town.” Clearly he’s not excited to see him. James looks uneasy right away. Pete orders two burgers, then pulls a gun on the counter man saying “put up yer hands!”
James freaks out. He didn’t sign up for this. He thought he was just gonna get treated to a burger! Pete shoots the counter man, then points the gun at James and forces him to grab the cash from the register. The register only has $5. Pete tells James to put the cash in his pocket. The cops bust in and shoot Pete. James runs, but gets caught.
The judge throws the book at James and gives him TEN YEARS of hard labor on a chain gang, for being forced at gunpoint to steal five fucking dollars .
We see the harsh conditions of chain gang life. The guards are abusive, and the conditions under which they are housed are inhumane. The food they’re given to eat is adjacent to actual shit and garbage. There’s a lot of “wiping off the sweat here, boss” stuff which is also a big part of another great prison movie, Cool Hand Luke (1967). You gotta ask permission for everything, even to pass out.
He meets and befriends a couple of cons on the chain gang like Bomber Wells, Barney Sykes, a frail guy named “Red” and Sebastian T Yale, who is a giant.
Bomber notes that Sebastian is good at hammering a spike, which James saves in his head for later.
Four weeks pass. James witnesses all the physical torture the men have to endure. Ontop of having to carry out grueling feats of labor, the guards whip the prisoners with the world’s biggest leather strap. They do this for absolutely no reason, they’re just sadistic.
Barney gets released, and Red gets carried out in a coffin on the same day. James notes that the only ways to get out of this hell hole are serve your time, or die.
A year passes. James asks Sebastian for help getting his ankle shackles off. He asks him to hit the shackles against the tracks of the railroad they’re working on, so they can bend and he can slip them off later. Sebastian is one of the few POCs in this movie, and is like “Look, you better not scream, because if you do, they’ll hurt me twice as hard.” James promises he won’t scream. Sebastian strikes his ankles with a giant hammer not once, but FOUR TIMES EACH. True to his word, our hero doesn’t scream at all.
Later that night, we see James slip the shackles off his GNARLY bruised feet under the cover of darkness. He practices taking them on and off and starts making his plans.
The following Monday, James makes his escape. He hides underneath swamp water by breathing through reeds, which is ANOTHER thing we’ve all learned from Looney Tunes. This works and gets the guard dogs off his scent.
James wanders through railroad tracks, avoiding detection, much like Harrison Ford or David Janssen in The Fugitive.
He’s saved enough money to apparently buy a new outfit, plus a shave and a haircut. He looks sharp. He’s ready to live a new life on the lamb from law.
He finds Barney holed up in some cheap hotel. Barney agrees to let him crash until he gets a train ticket out of town. Barney introduces him to a woman named Linda (Noel Francis) who’s wearing a slinky black dress, and tells her to “take care of him.”
Our hero manages to evade capture long enough to leave town, change his name to “Allen James” and find steady work for a construction company. He finds an apartment, but the landlady, Marie (Glenda Farrell) is immediately horny for James, and offers him cheaper rent in exchange for fucking. These early 30’s movies are fun because they were made before the Hays Code was implemented, which meant they were highly sexual and violent, even by today’s standards.
James and his new identity climbs the ranks at his construction outfit, and eventually becomes chief engineer, overseeing the building of a new bridge.
Things are fun for a little bit, but Marie starts to get too clingy, and is annoyed when James is always studying for his job. Then Marie drops the word “love” and James starts being kind of a dick and says “hey whoa, I never said I loved you.” Marie gets pissed and tells him he’ll be sorry.
When James starts making more money, he tells Marie he’s moving out. Marie is all like “not so fast” and shows him a letter that his stupid brother wrote, outlining his entire story of escaping a chain gang. Marie blackmails James saying she won’t spill the beans, if they get married.
Five years pass. It’s now 1928. James is a good standing member of society.
He meets a woman named Helen at a dinner party and they start falling for each other. He asks Marie for a divorce, but she refuses to grant him one. Meanwhile she’s going around town with other guys, and spending James’ money.
James and Marie have a fight and the next day, James is picked up by the police.
We see a little montage of newspaper headlines addressing the case. James is open about the dehumanizing conditions of the prison system. Articles asking “what has become of states rights?” and “what has become of our civilization?” are being written. There’s public outcry over the conditions prisoners are forced to endure every day.
Since James has made something of himself, and has become an honored member of society, the state of Georgia offers James a deal; surrender voluntarily, and serve 90 days in order to be eligible for pardon. Once he serves out his 90 days, he will be pardoned for his previous offense.
There’s one problem though. The state of Georgia has been embarrassed by all the negative press the chain gang system has faced. They want James to suffer. They break their deal, and after 90 days, James is told has to serve 9 more years. James is crushed by this betrayal. His brother tells him that if he’s a model prisoner, he’ll get to go home in a year. Well, a year passes and the state has decided to suspend the pardon indefinitely. James loses his mind.
James meets Bomber again in this new chain gang, and the two make a daring escape by blowing up a bridge, the only thing James wanted to build. Bomber dies, but James escapes the prison farm again.
A year passes, and James is still on the lamb. He finds Helen coming out of a garage and the two quickly embrace. James says he can’t ever stop running. The state won’t rest until he is dead, because that’s the only way anyone is ever really free. No food, no rest, no friends, no peace. Helen asks “what do you do for food? How do you live?”
James replies “I steal” as he slinks back into the dark of night and disappears.
Roll credits.
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