The "We the People" radio program is devoting a broadcast to the story of refugee doctors, driven from their homeland and looking for positions in the doctor-less towns of America when Dr. Karl Braun (Charles Coburn) one of the physicians, relates the tale of how he and his daughter, Leni 'Lenchen' Braun (Sigrid Gurie) were driven from their homeland in Vienna.
As a result of the broadcast, father and daughter are summoned to the town of Asheville Forks, North Dakota by John Phillips (John Wayne), the leader of the farmers' organization there. They arrive in the midst of a dust storm, and Leni, distressed by the hardships she has suffered and by the death of her fiancé, Dr. Eric Von Scherer (Roland Varno), wants to leave the town immediately. Her father, however, insists on staying to aid the ailing and impoverished farmers who must helplessly watch as their fortunes are blown away by the wind.
Leni soon adapts to the farm community, and love comes to her and John. Soon afterward, word arrives from Eric that he is alive and coming to America, and Leni, out of gratitude, agrees to meet him in San Francisco and marry him.
John's troubles mount as a dust storm devastates the land, and he convinces the farmers to follow him to a new home in Oregon. Along the way a troublemaker, Clem Higgins (Trevor Bardette), attempts to agitate the farmers to venture to California instead, but John, after a bout of disillusionment, rallies the farmers on to Oregon.
Meanwhile, in San Francisco, Leni and her father are shocked to learn that Eric has joined forces with the Nazis, and father and daughter leave Eric to rejoin John in Oregon.
A 1940 American Black & White neo-western drama film (a/k/a "Doctors Don't Tell" and "The Refugee") directed by Bernard Vorhaus, produced by Sol C. Siegel, written by F. Hugh Herbert, Joseph Moncure March and Samuel Ornitz, cinematography by John Alton, starring John Wayne, Sigrid Gurie, Charles Coburn, Spencer Charters, Helen MacKellar, Roland Varno, Sonny Bupp, Wade Boteler, Trevor Bardette, Russell Simpson, Charles Waldron, and Wendell Niles. Released by Republic Pictures.
Charles Coburn diddn't make his first film until he was 56 and continued into his eighties, he also won and Oscar and was nominated for two more.
Wendell Niles, the "man on the street" reporter after the big dust storm, was a real radio announcer. He worked on many shows of the golden-age of radio including "The Burns and Allen Show."
Douglas Evans, shown as the master of ceremonies for the radio show "We The People," was a radio announcer in real life. He worked for KFI (Los Angeles) in the 1930s.
"We The People" was a real radio show that ran on the CBS blue network (originating on WABC, New York) from circa 1937 to circa 1949. The sponsor was Calumet Baking Powder. The show was created by Phillips Lord (of "Gangbusters" fame) to give "a half-hour to the people of this country so we can hear their experiences." The radio program shown in this movie is essentially the same as in real life--real people spoke at the microphone telling their own stories.
The film, mainly set in North Dakota was one of a handful of overtly anti-Nazi films produced by Hollywood before American entry into World War II. Isolationists and Nazi sympathizers condemned other Hollywood movies for being pro-British "propaganda" or for "glorifying war", however this was deliberately crafted to celebrate the pioneer spirit of America, and the determination of Americans to survive the dust bowl, and contrasted these values with the evils of Nazism, thus preventing isolationists and Nazi sympathizers from being able to criticize the film as they had criticized other anti-Nazi films during this period.
This film is definitely about the message, and it has two. There is the message about tyranny and the sacrifices that may be necessary by those who oppose it, and also that of the community and working together to overcome adversity.
Both the director and one of the scriptwriters (one of the Hollywood Ten) were later blacklisted.
Before America's entry into the war, few films were made explicitly criticizing the German or Italian regimes. After 1939 the British contingent in Hollywood, Chaplin's "The Great Dictator" (1940), Hitchcock's "Foreign Correspondent" (1940), Korda's "That Hamilton Woman" (1941), took up the cause, but their efforts were not appreciated by the influential isolationist movement.
Writing in the Journal of Austrian-American History, Jacqueline Vansant has argued that the film "takes a bold stand on contemporary issues through its Austrian-American romance."
The Oklahoma dust bowl is the setting for this early 20th century John Wayne neo-western. This remarkable picture is reminiscent more of the Warners Brothers films of the era than something Republic Pictures might have put out. It offers Wayne fans a more introspective character, different than one he usually portrays. Downbeat but inspiring. Well worth a watch.
19 июн 2024
