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Monday, September 14, 2020

HEAVEN WITH A BARBED WIRE FENCE (1939)

Hard to imagine how this little left-leaning proletariat idyll got past cigar-chomping Sol M. Wurtzel, gruff head of 20th/Fox’s B-Unit, home to Western & Musical programmers, Charlie Chan and Mr. Moto.  A blip on his production slate (15 pics in ‘39), it’s one of a series of quickies helmed by that smiling villain of a supporting player Ricardo Cortez.*  He’s good, too!  A handful of films in ‘39 & ‘40, then back to acting.  (No doubt, it paid better.)  Here, with A-list cinematographer Edward Cronjager, he smoothly handles debuts for Glenn Ford, a department store stiff heading West to claim the small farm he’s spent six years working for, and Richard Conte, wanderlust hobo he meets at a diner.  A grown up Tom Sawyer & Huck Finn on the road, or rather the rail, since they opt to travel by hopping freight cars, meeting up with cute Jean Rogers (a Spanish Civil War orphan without papers . . . or believable accent) & con man Raymond Walburn, ex-professor of Paleontology/near brother to Frank Morgan’s Prof. Marvel from another 1939 pic.  Adventures along the way, many felonious, leave Ford on his own to discover his farm is nothing but scrub land.  Yet, some crops thrive in scrub, no?   Running just over an hour and very telling of what passed for Left-Wing political messaging in Hollywood (what a great classroom assignment it would make!), we’re left with a supposed ‘Party Line’ scenario that ends up celebrating a guy saving up to buy personal property & independently start a family.  At heart, nothing ‘collectivistic’ here at all, instead a dream of pure American capitalism with a Red, White & Blue moral to aspire to.  Sure enough, story & co-scripter ‘Hollywood Ten’ poster boy Dalton Trumbo.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Cortez, né Morris Krantz, got his ‘Latin’ moniker for looking a bit like Rudolph Valentino.  Good enough for kid brother Jacob to also take it on as cinematographer Stanley Cortez, famous for MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS/’42; NIGHT OF THE HUNTER/’55.

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