Black Legion

Black Legion is a hard hitting film that fictionalizes a real world vigilante group of the same name, an offshoot of the Ku Klux Klan, that operated primarily in Michigan in the 1930’s. 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 heard of this group. In modern times they aren’t as well known as the KKK anymore 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 group’s actions.

The film begins at a midwestern factory where Frank Taylor (Humphrey Bogart) is certain he will be selected for a promotion to foreman in a manufacturing facility. 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 save a lot of 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 to exactly what Frank feels, that immigrants are taking away work from hard working and, in the Black Legion’s opinion, more deserving Americans. It isn’t long before Frank has sworn an oath to forever join himself to the Group, 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 is able to take over the job. But it doesn’t take long before his extra-curricular activities lead to troubles at home. To compound things, the Legion wishes to expand, requiring each member to recruit two more. While attempting to do so, Frank neglects his foreman duties for a moment causing an expensive accident that costs him his promotion. Instead of taking responsibility for his actions, Frank blames everyone else around him leading his wife to take their young son and leave him. This leads him further down a path of alcoholism and violence that eventually leads to him committing murder.

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. It is softened a little as he hesitates to speak some of the more heinous parts of his oath to the legion but once he commits he allows himself to fall prey to their poisonous words and actions. It isn’t until much later when he has lost everything he was fighting for in the first place does he consider trying to remove himself from their evil influence. But quitting the legion is not an option for anyone who takes the oath.

Ultimately Frank is arrested and pressured by the legion to lie under oath to protect himself and the group. His wife, but not his son, comes back to be there for the trial. But guilt is nagging at him and eating away at his resolve. The final moments of this movie are a trial to determine Frank’s guilt in the murder. 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 sympathetic 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.  When he finally does admit his guilt and rats out the rest of the legion we can see he is penitent but knows it is too late for him. The reaction from his wife sells the horror of the whole affair more even than Frank’s.

Bogart sells this unlikeable character. He is no gun twirling gangster we’re rooting 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 actions are still prevalent. It is a film that still needs to be seen and pondered because, nearly eighty years later, it is still exists.

Release Date: January 17, 1937

Running Time: 83 Minutes

Starring: Humphrey Bogart, Dick Foran, Erin O'Brien Moore, Ann Sheridan, Helen Flint, Joseph Sawyer

Directed By: Archie Mayo and Michael Curtiz (Uncredited)