From the 1950s: Bad Day at Black Rock

1955 Drama

From Metro Goldwyn Mayer

Directed by John Sturges

Starring

Spencer Tracy

Robert Ryan

Anne Francis

Dean Jagger

Walter Brennan

John Ericson

Ernest Borgnine

Lee Marvin

Russell Collins

Walter Sande

It is 1945 and a one-armed Tracy arrives via rail in a God-forsaken, sagebrush-ridden, desert community with a dozen or so buildings and is met with mysterious hostility from the town's apparently few residents.  As the train stops the residents quit what they're doing to come outside to gawk.  You see, that train hasn't stopped in Black Rock in four years.  I expect you'd be curious, too, and hopefully, a whole lot more friendly.

Everyone Tracy runs across wants to know why he's in town and they seem kinda pushy about it.  He asks person by person how he can get ahold of a fellow named Komoko.  Most respond with what do you want with him which Tracy refuses to answer.  Hmmm, no one providing answers. What can possibly go wrong?  

Two things become clear pretty quickly.  Ranch owner Ryan seems to run the town and appears to know exactly what happened to Komoko.  His response, however, on the latter is that, as he tells Tracy, a couple of months after Kokomo came to town, he was sent to an internment area and no one's seen him since.  Tracy doesn't believe him.  We don't either.

We note that not everyone in the town is as offensive or as scary as Ryan and his two goons, Marvin and Borgnine.  They certainly cornered the bully market on mean and lethal.

As apparently the only woman in town (that was the story we didn't hear about), Francis runs the gas station and is at first somewhat sympathetic to Tracy.  She is the sister of Ericson who is stationed at the front desk of the town hotel.  Francis advises that her brother (Ericson) is a coward and an obvious pawn of those in charge.

Also a coward is Jagger as the town sheriff.  I'm useless and I know it, he says.  But he doesn't want to be.  Is this the weak link that Tracy needs?  Then there's Brennan, the mortician.  He's neither a bad guy nor a coward.  But he's put away his integrity in favor of breathing.  

Tracy has no vehicle.  There's none to rent.  In time there will be no outside phone lines to call police and the telegram he's written out is not sent.  Francis agrees to loan him her Jeep so that he can visit Adobe Flat, a campsite of some sort that Komoko owned.  When Tracy visits it, he sees it's been burnt to the ground and of course no Komoko.  Ryan is livid that Francis loaned out her vehicle.  She responds with I wouldn't hurt you for anything.  

On the way back to town, Borgnine hassles Tracy by tailgating and honking and eventually using his car to batter the back of the Jeep, ultimately sending it down a small embankment.  A physical encounter in the town's only diner results in one-armed Tracy besting the beefy Borgnine in my favorite scene.  All those cast-gathering scenes I love so much in movies take place in either the diner or the lobby of the hotel.

Tracy wants to know why everyone is needling him and what they're so afraid of.  Ryan says he needs to mind his own business.  He says the town is suspicious of strangers, just like in the Old West.  The steely Tracy gets Ryan to talk about why he was left out of the war and he responds with how much Ryan hates the Japanese.  

Brennan tells Tracy that if he doesn't get out of town, he will likely be murdered.  He says it will happen that night.  Tracy steps up things with Brennan, Ericson and Jagger.  Brennan tries to fire up an old car of his for Tracy to make his getaway but it won't start.  Tracy tries to fire up Ericson by insulting him in every way imaginable.

Brennan and Ericson, cajones now re-implanted, lure Marvin to a quiet area and bash him over the head and throw him unconscious in jail.  Brennan tells Tracy that Ryan murdered Komoko and everyone else has remained silent.

Tracy tells most of the usual suspects that he wanted to see Komoko to give him a medal his son earned in the war.  That's all.  It could have been so easy.  He tells them he knows that Komoko was murdered by Ryan and informs them he is going to get ahold of the police.  We wonder how.

Pals Francis & Ericson

Francis offers to drive Tracy out of town but she instead drives him back to Adobe Flat where Ryan is waiting with his rifle.  There's a shootout, someone catches on fire and someone dies.  Who do you suppose it is?

Millard Kaufman and Don McGuire's screenplay is chock full of taut suspense and it never lets up.  All the fat has been trimmed and like that train speeding through the barren desert, we need to get somewhere quickly. I hadn't seen it for years until a couple of days ago and I was taken with all the nuance and little surprises.

This isn't a whodunit film, per se.  As all the characters are introduced (each, of course, gets a scene or two with Tracy), we're pretty sure we know who did it.  This is about the fix everyone is in now.  This is about the nosey dude who got off the train and stirred the vipers surrounding the nest of secrets.  

And let's be clear, if there weren't so damn many good actors in this thing, it could have been on TV's Playhouse 90 or some such venue.  Schary saw the promise and thankfully he hired the best all-around.

A look at it could almost allow an acting student to not attend the next few classes.  There are five Oscar winners although two of them hadn't won at the time of filming.  Tracy won two, Brennan won three and Jagger had recently won.  Borgnine was coming right up and later Marvin would make five.

Tracy, Borgnine, Marvin

Villainy didn't get much better than when it was displayed by Ryan, Marvin and Borgnine.  We've all seen their films if we're of a certain age, that is.  The public knew it and so did the studios.  How else to explain that Borgnine and Ryan made three movie together, Ryan and Marvin made four and Marvin and Borgnine made five plus a TV movie?  And who knows what movie all three costarred in besides this one?  You eagle-eyes know it's The Dirty Dozen. 

Director Sturges never put his foot on the brakes.  Like that  silver train the story comes speeding into town spreading suspense everywhere and causing nothing short of a fever. Everyone catches it.

Sturges was a compelling storyteller of mainly male-dominated films, usually westerns, who filmed flawless action sequences in such movies as Gunfight at O.K. Corral, The Magnificent Seven, The Great Escape and Ice Station Zebra.  After years of so-so movies, Bad Day became his breakout film and the only one for which he received an Oscar nomination.  He said it was his favorite.

Sturges, seated behind Tracy, watching his two stars

Sturges came with a pedigree in handling difficult actors.  There was McQueen (three times with the baddest of them all), Sinatra, Brynner, Douglas, Lancaster, Bronson, Harvey, Marvin and Tracy.  It's amazing he didn't quit making movies.  He was thrilled when he got the gig since it was known he was not the first choice.  He wasn't hired until almost time for filming to commence.  

Tracy was reluctant to sign on.  He almost always was unless Hepburn was his costar and then she tended to handle all the business and legal issues that he detested.  He was dealing with his worsening alcoholism, he didn't want to work in the heat and altitude of Lone Pine, California and he (rightfully) thought he was too old for the part.

Studio head Dore Schary didn't give up.  He gave the character his disability because he knew actors loved to play disabled characters.  That moved the needle the most but it wasn't until Schary (falsely) told Tracy the script had been sent to Alan Ladd, who was interested, that Tracy signed on.  Despite his early grumblings, he knew it was a great role for him (he would get an Oscar nomination) and he got on well with Sturges with whom he'd worked before and would again.

This is one of Tracy's best roles.  He moves with integrity and purpose, so sturdy and mature, clearly the only adult in the story.  I have a sense of wonderment watching this man's facial expressions, especially the anger that wells up as he's being needled.  Did he ever give a bad performance?

Ericson with the warring Brennan and Tracy

The cantankerous actor didn't always get on with his costars on any of his movies.  But he reserved some of his greatest vitriol for Walter Brennan whom he despised.  Their differences were political and Brennan's constant badgering (wasn't there enough of that in the script?).  Finally, Tracy resorted to communicating with Brennan through Sturges, even if all three were standing in a circle.  Tracy also gave Anne Francis the cold shoulder in the beginning because he thought mistakenly she was messing around with Ryan.  

Ryan was excellent at playing embittered paranoids.  There's a skittishness about him, like watching a steam cooker that's getting ready to blow.   He has caused Black Rock to become a town of virtual dead people.  He is a moral weakling who brutalizes others with his vigilanteism.  

Ryan and Tracy got along famously.  When neither was filming, they would go off together in the wilderness and discuss Hollywood, their fellow actors and politics.   

Francis, the only woman in the cast, isn't given a lot to do but there can be no doubt that 1955 was her year in films with Blackboard Jungle, Battle Cry and Bad Day... the three Bs.

Francis wasn't the only one who had a good year in 1955.  Borgnine was another.   He had made around a dozen movies by this time with his role as the brutal Fatso in From Here to Eternity (1955) a standout.  Borgnine was very excited about making this film because Tracy was going to be in it.  Like a lot of people, he thought Tracy was the best actor in the world.  Besides his excitement, Borgnine was also intimated because of their big fight scene together.

Tracy was also thoughtful with the younger actor and saw much promise.  He had no idea how soon that promise would be fulfilled.  Tracy, as stated, was Oscar-nominated for his role here.  Why didn't he win?  Because Borgnine did... for Marty.  Tracy took the occasion to say I told you so.

Marvin had not yet made it big either but it was pretty difficult to go to the movies and not see him in something.  He was usually a thug and a damned good one, too.  Here he is coolly bullying,  He probably says the film's most famous line.  As Tracy gets off the train, carrying his one suitcase, looking hot and confused. Marvin says you look like you need a hand.  Bad Day was the first of the seven films Marvin made in 1955.

Dean Jagger

Watching Jagger is always a pleasure.  Here his character is one who evolves... from coward to hero.    Brennan's character says he is consumed with apathy.  Tired of his obedience to Ryan and spurred on by the courage of Tracy, he is the first one to break rank.

As the nervous hotel clerk, this is not Ericson's best role but it is in his most high-profile movie.  He is unknown to most present-day audiences and is probably best known for his blond good looks.  He made few movies and in 1965-66 joined Francis in the TV series Honey West.

Adding immeasurably to the suspense is André Previn's urgent score which is there from the opening frame to the exciting finale.  It wouldn't be complete if we didn't mention 

William C. Mellor's atmospheric, color photography.  Also in the first frame is the stunning rush of that train against the backdrop of the Mojave Desert.  We know we're in for quite a ride.

The president of Lowe's Inc., the parent company of MGM, asked Schary to cancel the picture because the subject matter was a little dicey.  A State Department official was 

concerned the film may do damage overseas and at home because of our treatment of Japanese-Americans during the war by imprisoning them in internment camps.  There was the added issue that the character is lynched.  And if that weren't enough, the main internment camp, Manzanar, where 120,000 Japanese-Americans were incarcerated, was only 20 miles or so from the movie location.  

Schary responded that he understood the potential of a mess but as the producer of 1947's Crossfire with its story of Jewish bias (again with Ryan as the villain), the acceptance by the informed public that it's simply a story and a good one, passed muster.  He felt the same would be so for Bad Day and it was.

I had a slight issue (my viewing the other day confirmed nothing has changed) with the people who lived in this boring town and the town itself.  Did these people have homes?  I saw not one home, even from a distance.  Perhaps the drunken old sheriff would have been there and a cafe owner but would a town like that have had a hotel?  I even question a telegraph office.  Where were the women?  What is this, a gay retirement village?  Why would two good-looking young folks like Francis and Ericson have lived in a God-forsaken town like this? 

This complaint may have been resolved had the movie been a little longer than 81 minutes and certainly at the expense of characterization.  I would have liked some backstory on some of these folks.  

It's been called a neo-western.  If it had been done in black and white, it could have passed as film noir.  Whatever... it is a most-watchable suspenser, wonderfully paced by its director, with glorious acting by some of those Golden Age actors.

Here's a preview.