Fury ***** (1936, Sylvia Sidney, Spencer Tracy, Walter Abel, Bruce Cabot, Edward Ellism Walter Brennan) – Classic Movie Review 2190

Co-writer/director Fritz Lang’s outstanding 1936 American drama film Fury finds Spencer Tracy on his most blistering form in this forceful, continuingly relevant attack on small-town mob violence. Lang’s American début provided an instant movie classic. He had just arrived in the US following a year in Paris after he fled the Nazi regime in Germany.

Tracy plays auto mechanic Joe Wilson, a fugitive who has been wrongly accused of kidnapping and murder, and flees from a jail burnt down by a mob who are out to lynch him. Having just survived the lynch mob attack, he then hides out with his brothers and pretends that he has died in the fire, framing the mob for his ‘murder’ and watching the ‘killers’ come to ‘justice’.

Lang and Tracy give the clearest picture of how the idiocy of both official justice and taking justice into your own hands can combine to turn a decent man into ruthless, vindictive and bitter vengeance seeker.

In her only MGM movie, top-billed big star Sylvia Sidney makes a strong impression as Tracy’s girlfriend, Katherine Grant. Lang made it a condition that she was cast before he signed his contract with the studio. Sidney was also top billed over Henry Fonda in You Only Live Once.

Bartlett Cormack helps Lang carve out the distinguished screenplay, based on the Oscar-nominated Best Original Story Mob Rule by Norman Krasna. The story is based on the real-life 1933 kidnapping and murder of Brooke Hart, the son of the owner of Hart’s Department Store in San Jose, California. The two kidnapping suspects were taken from jail by a vigilante mob, who dragged them across the street to St James Park and lynched them.

Also co-starring are Walter Abel, Edward Ellis, Walter Brennan, Bruce Cabot.

Also in the cast are George Walcott, Frank Albertson, Arthur Stone, Morgan Wallace, George Chandler, Roger Gray, Edwin Maxwell, Howard C Hickman, Jonathan Hale, Leila Bennett, Esther Dale, Helen Flint, Ward Bond, Harry Hayden, Edward Brady, Clara Blandick, Mary Foy, Nora Cecil, Sherry Hall, Arthur Hoyt, Clarence Kold, Si Jenks, Robert Homans, Fay Helm, Esther Muir, Bert Roach, Christian Rub, Frank Sully, Syd Saylor, Gertrude Sutton, Carl Stockdale, Guy Usher, Minerva Urecal, Duke York and Will Stanton.

Lang is thought to be the first film-maker to use newsreel footage as a courtroom device in a movie.

The dog Tracy takes in from the rain at the start of the movie is the Cairn Terrier Terry, aka Toto from The Wizard of Oz (1939).

Walter Brennan, who plays Bugs Meyers, had an extended illness that enforced some of his courtroom scenes to be transferred to George Chandler, playing Milton Johnson.

Lang threw smoke bombs into the riot scene to stir up the actors, one of whom struck Bruce Cabot, who had to be restrained from punching Lang.

[Spoiler alert] The gritty film was an unusual one for escapist studio MGM, who enforced a happy ending of a kiss scene and a reconciliation between Wilson and his girlfriend at the end. MGM’s risk paid off. It was a hit, costing $604,000 and earning $1.3 million in rentals, for a profit of $248,000.

Norman Krasna wrote the story after reading about a lynching and pitched the idea verbally to producer Joseph L Mankiewicz, who then dictated it. Unsurprisingly, many changes were made from Krasna’s story in the final script.

Spencer Tracy as Joe Wilson.

The cast are Sylvia Sidney as Katherine Grant, Spencer Tracy as Joe Wilson, Walter Abel as District Attorney Adams, Bruce Cabot as Kirby Dawson, Edward Ellis as Sheriff, Walter Brennan as “Bugs” Meyers, Frank Albertson as Charlie, George Walcott as Tom, Arthur Stone as Durkin, Morgan Wallace as Fred Garrett, George Chandler as Milton Jackson, Roger Gray as Stranger, Edwin Maxwell as Will Vickery, Howard Hickman as Governor, Jonathan Hale as Defense Attorney, Leila Bennett as Edna Hooper, Esther Dale as Mrs. Whipple, Helen Flint as Franchette, Gwen Lee as Mrs Fred Garrett, Frederick Burton as Judge Daniel Hopkins, George Walcott, Ward Bond, Harry Hayden, Edward Brady, Clara Blandick, Mary Foy, Nora Cecil, Sherry Hall, Arthur Hoyt, Clarence Kold, Si Jenks, Robert Homans, Fay Helm, Esther Muir, Bert Roach, Christian Rub, Frank Sully, Syd Saylor, Gertrude Sutton, Carl Stockdale, Guy Usher, Minerva Urecal, Duke York and Will Stanton.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2190

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