Warner Bros. in the 1930s was a studio that produced a large number of gritty social exposés.  Black Legion (1937) is one of the best of the bunch, dealing with a secretive, ultra-patriotic group of hooded hooligans very much like the Ku Klux Klan.

Although the story is noted to be fictional, it clearly follows the true fate of Charles Poole, who was murdered in Detroit some seventy years ago by a group called “the Black Legion.”  The trial which followed Poole’s murder created headlines across the country and led to the group’s destruction.  A year later, Warner Bros. produced this film, with up-and-coming actor Humphrey Bogart in the lead, and Archie Mayo at the helm.

It provides a well-rounded role for Bogart, who had just been seen in The Petrified Forest.  Just a few years later he would be playing it cool in The Maltese Falcon, but here he’s a regular joe, a machine-shop worker disgusted to lose a promotion to a “dirty foreigner.”  He is persuaded to join a secret society that requires him to swear an oath of allegiance “to exterminate the anarchists, the Communists, the Roman hierarchy (Bogart stumbles over this word) and their abettors.”  At first he enjoys the power inherent in driving “undesirable elements” out of town by force, but soon he learns that joining the dark side mandates a terrible toll on one’s soul; at least, if one has a conscience.

Director Mayo takes care to stage the group’s assaults as petty and vindictive, as well as cowardly.  While Bogart’s home life with pretty and understanding wife Erin O’Brien-Moore and cute son Dickie Jones is perhaps too good to be true, his problems at the factory and gradual realization of his precarious predicament are sure-handed and very realistic.  Bogart’s despair which follows the climactic murder is superbly realized, particularly when his wife visits him briefly in jail.

Black Legion is hard-hitting, socially significant, powerful movie entertainment.  Its message against prejudice is crystal clear, yet it doesn’t romanticize its characters or their motivations.  It marked Bogart’s first starring role and proved that he was worthy of top-flight projects.  It’s a terrific movie that, sadly, remains all too relevant today.  My rating:  ✰ ✰ ✰ ½.  (7:4).