Legion of Terror | |
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Directed by | Charles C. Coleman |
Written by | Bert Granet |
Produced by | Ralph Cohn |
Starring | Bruce Cabot Marguerite Churchill Ward Bond Crawford Weaver |
Cinematography | George Meehan |
Edited by | Al Clark |
Music by | Louis Silvers |
Production company | Columbia Pictures |
Distributed by | Columbia Pictures |
Release date |
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Running time | 63 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Legion of Terror is a 1936 American drama/action film, directed by Charles C. Coleman. The film, which stars Bruce Cabot, Marguerite Churchill, Ward Bond, and Crawford Weaver, [1] is a fictionalized story about the real-life Ku Klux Klan splinter group called the Black Legion of the 1930s. It was inspired by the May 1935 murder in Michigan of Charles Poole, a Works Progress Administration worker.
The film preceded and also inspired the making of the critically acclaimed 1937 Warner Bros. feature film Black Legion , which co-starred Humphrey Bogart, Dick Foran, Erin O'Brien-Moore and Ann Sheridan which was based on the same case.
In Washington, D.C., Frank Marshall and his friend, "Slim" Hewitt, are both sworn in as postal inspectors. After a bomb which was sent from the (fictional) town of Stanfield, Connecticut, that was addressed to U.S. Senator Morton is found in the Senate mailroom, Frank and Slim are both sent to Stanfield to investigate. On the train, Frank becomes acquainted with one Nancy Foster, a resident of Stanfield. When they arrive, Frank and Slim take on assumed names and get jobs in a local factory. When Frank goes to Nancy's house for dinner, her brother Don tells him that the Hood Legion (a group similar to that of the 1930s militant separatist political/fascist paramilitary group Black Legion ) has complete control of the town.
Soon Frank and Slim both realize that the factory where they work as well as the local newspaper is in the legion's control. Don has received several threatening letters advising him to join the legion. Frank and Slim successfully infiltrate the group by undergoing an initiation ceremony in which masked members in long robes blindfold Frank and Slim and hold guns to their heads before giving them each a bullet as a token of their membership.
When Don complains to Colonel McCollum, a local newspaper editor, about his refusal to print Don's allegations against the legion's nefarious activities, Don is framed and arrested for drunk driving. Although he is released, he is ostracized by the townspeople. McCollum then orders his men to take Don to the legion's secret tribunal into the woods, where Don is tried, found guilty, and shot to death by legion members. Nancy tries to go to the police to report the incident, but they are unable to find the killers. When Frank tries to convey his sympathy to Nancy, she forces him to confess his membership in the legion, and vows never to speak to him again.
When Nancy then goes to the owner of the newspaper with her story, he upbraids McCollum, causing him to decide that Nancy should be tried by the legion's tribunal. Slim then confronts McCollum with the knowledge that the legion killed Don, and he is taken to the legion's meeting ground to be tried as a traitor. When Frank learns that Nancy and Slim are being held prisoner, he goes to the governor and secures the National Guard, which rescues Nancy and Slim and arrests the legion members. It is then revealed that McCollum was the leader of the legion, after which he and his assistant try to escape, but are burned to death when their car overturns. Frank then reveals his true identity to Nancy, and they make plans to marry. Later, in the Post Office Department in Washington, D.C., the chief inspector congratulates Frank and Slim for their work, but warns them that Americans are a nation of "joiners", and as such are susceptible to organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan and the Hooded Legion, which they join believing they are being patriotic, when in fact they are placing themselves in the hands of racketeers who operate the legions solely for their own benefit. [2]
Variety magazine called Legion of Terror "an indictment of crackpot politico-fraternal organizations." This film marked Crawford Weaver's film debut. [3]
Vina Fay Wray was a Canadian/American actress best remembered for starring as Ann Darrow in the 1933 film King Kong. Through an acting career that spanned nearly six decades, Wray attained international recognition as an actress in horror films. She has been dubbed one of the early "scream queens".
The Ku Klux Klan, commonly shortened to the KKK or the Klan, is an American white supremacist terrorist and hate group whose primary targets are African Americans, Jews, Latinos, Asian Americans, Catholics, Native Americans as well as immigrants, leftists, homosexuals, Muslims, and atheists.
William Dennis Weaver was an American actor and former president of the Screen Actors Guild, best known for his work in television and films from the early 1950s until just before his death in 2006. Weaver's two most famous roles were as Marshal Matt Dillon's trusty partner Chester Goode/Proudfoot on the CBS western Gunsmoke and as Deputy Marshal Sam McCloud on the NBC police drama McCloud. He starred in the 1971 television film Duel, the first film of director Steven Spielberg. He is also remembered for his role as the twitchy motel attendant in Orson Welles's film Touch of Evil (1958).
Bruce Cabot was an American film actor, best remembered as Jack Driscoll in King Kong (1933) and for his roles in films such as The Last of the Mohicans (1936), Fritz Lang's Fury (1936), and the Western Dodge City (1939). He was also known as one of "Wayne's Regulars", appearing in a number of John Wayne films beginning with Angel and the Badman (1947), and concluding with Big Jake (1971).
Susan Cabot was an American film, stage, and television actress. She rose to prominence for her roles in a variety of Western films, including Tomahawk (1951), The Duel at Silver Creek (1952), and Gunsmoke (1953).
The Black Legion was a white supremacist terrorist organization active in the Midwestern United States during the Great Depression of the 1930s. It split off from the Ku Klux Klan. According to historian Rick Perlstein, the FBI estimated its membership "at 135,000, including a large number of public officials, possibly including Detroit’s police chief." In 1936 the group was suspected of having killed as many as 50 people, according to the Associated Press, including Charles Poole, an organizer for the federal Works Progress Administration.
Frankie Darro was an American actor and later in his career a stuntman. He began his career as a child actor in silent films, progressed to lead roles and co-starring roles in adventure, western, dramatic, and comedy films, and later became a character actor and voice-over artist. He is perhaps best known for his role as Lampwick, the unlucky boy who turns into a donkey in Walt Disney's second animated feature, Pinocchio (1940). In early credits, his last name was spelled Darrow.
William Dudley Chipley was an American railroad executive and politician who was instrumental in the building of the Pensacola and Atlantic Railroad and was a tireless promoter of Pensacola, his adopted city, where he was elected to one term as mayor, and later to a term as Florida state senator.
Attack on Terror: The FBI vs. the Ku Klux Klan is a 1975 American two-part made-for-television drama film which dramatizes the events following the 1964 abduction and murders of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner in Mississippi. In this, it is similar in theme to the 1988 movie Mississippi Burning, though some names and details were changed, and both productions pick up the approximate storyline of the 1990 TV-movie Murder in Mississippi.
Mr. Vertigo is a novel written by the American author Paul Auster. Faber & Faber first published it in 1994 in Great Britain. The book fits well in Auster's bibliography, which has reappearing themes like failure and identity and genres like absurdist fiction, crime fiction and existentialism.
On the fictional television drama The Wire, the Stanfield Organization is a criminal organization led by Marlo Stanfield. The Organization is introduced in Season Three of The Wire as a growing and significantly violent drug syndicate. Marlo has established his organization's power in West Baltimore's main streets in the shadow of the dominating Barksdale Organization, which was more concerned with conducting its activities in the Franklin Terrace Towers.
The White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan is a Ku Klux Klan organization which is active in the United States. It originated in Mississippi and Louisiana in the early 1960s under the leadership of Samuel Bowers, its first Imperial Wizard. The White Knights of Mississippi were formed in 1964 when they separated from the Original Knights after the resignation of Imperial Wizard Roy Davis. Roughly 200 members of the Original Knights of Louisiana also joined the White Knights. The White Knights were not interested in holding public demonstrations nor were they interested in letting any information about themselves get out to the masses. Similar to the United Klans of America (UKA), the White Knights of Mississippi were very secretive about their group. Within a year, their membership was up to around six thousand, and they had Klaverns in over half of the counties in Mississippi. By 1967, the number of active members had shrunk to around four hundred.
Street-level characters comprise a large part of the cast on the fictional HBO drama series The Wire. Characters in this section range from homeless drug addicts up to drug king-pins in charge of entire criminal empires.
Frank Rice was an American film actor. He appeared in more than 120 films between 1912 and 1936. He was born in Muskegon, Michigan, and died in Los Angeles, California of hepatitis. Rice was educated in Portland, Oregon.
Brother Rat is a 1938 American comedy drama film about cadets at Virginia Military Institute in Lexington, Virginia, directed by William Keighley, and starring president-to-be Ronald Reagan, Priscilla Lane, Eddie Albert, Jane Wyman, and Wayne Morris.
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.
Robert Donald Walker was an American film actor. He appeared in more than 200 films between 1913 and 1953. He was born in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania and died in Los Angeles.
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