I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (film)

• Release Date: 1932
• Director(s): Mervyn LeRoy
• Writer(s): Howard J. Green; Brown Holmes
• Principal Actors and Roles: Paul Muni (James Allen); Glenda Farrell (Marie); Helen Vinson (Helen)
• Book / Story Film Based On: I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang! by Robert Elliot Burns

I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang is a dark and realistically gritty indictment of the barbaric prison system in place in the South at the time of the movie’s release. It is a sparse film based on the true experiences of Robert Elliott Burns, who serialized his nightmare in True Detective Mysteries in 1931 and subsequently compiled his tale in a novel, I Am a Fugitive From a Georgia Chain Gang.

Burns returned from World War I in 1919 to discover he no longer had a job. He was a drifter in 1922 when he and two other homeless men robbed $5.80 from a grocery store. He was sentenced to six to ten years of hard labor on a Georgia chain gang. A few months later, Burns escaped.

He lived for seven years in Chicago, where he was highly respected as a writer and public speaker. His first wife betrayed him to the authorities, and he voluntarily returned to Georgia to turn himself in. He had been told he would receive a full pardon if he served 90 days, but the state reneged on the deal. Burns was sent back to the chain gang to serve out his full term. After a year, Burns once again escaped. He became a tax consultant in New Jersey and wrote the articles about his experiences on the chain gang that led to the movie.

The movie’s release led to an uproar in the South, especially Georgia. The governor of New Jersey refused to extradite Burns. The film was not shown in Georgia. But its effect was powerful, and the brutal chain-gang system was reformed. Just five years after the film’s release, the system was dismantled in Georgia. However, it was not until 1945 that Burns’ sentence was finally commuted to time served, meaning he could finally travel again in Georgia without fear of arrest.

Plot

World War I has ended, and the men have returned to civilian life. For Sergeant James Allen, this is less than a blessing. His experiences during the war have made it difficult for him to resume his former life. He is finding his tedious job as an office clerk unbearable, which leads to conflict with his family—they feel he should be grateful for the employment. When he declares his desire to become an engineer, his family is furious.

Eventually Allen hits the road, looking for a project to join. However, in the post-war years there is an overabundance of unskilled laborers and Allen is unable to find work of any kind. Broke, footloose, and hungry, he finds himself caught up in a robbery, arrested, convicted, and sent off to a chain gang for ten years.

The dehumanizing brutality of the chain gang becomes ever more oppressive, and Allen finally escapes to Chicago. He finds success in construction in the city and becomes romantically involved with Marie, the owner of the boardinghouse where he lives. She learns his dark secret and blackmails him, forcing him into an unhappy marriage.

Allen subsequently meets and falls in love with Helen, but when he asks Marie for a divorce, she reveals his identity to authorities. Offered a pardon if he turns himself in, Allen agrees but soon learns that the authorities were bargaining in bad faith. Again he flees from the chain gang.

He manages to find Helen again and in the darkness of the city street tells her goodbye forever. In one of the best-known scenes in movies, he backs way from his true love as she asks if he can tell her where he’s going, if he will write, if he needs money. To every question he shakes his head, moving ever deeper into darkness. In the end Helen implores him to take money, saying "But you must, Jim. How do you live?" Now completely invisible in the darkness, Allen delivers the film’s famous last line: "I steal."

Significance

Released at the depth of the Great Depression, I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang helped set a socially conscious tone at Warner Bros. It was probably the grittiest and most realistic of several films the studio released that dealt with social ills afflicting ordinary people in the early 1930s. It resonated powerfully at the time and across the years, creating a model for chain-gang movies that addressed unjust treatment of petty criminals, from The Defiant Ones in 1958 to Cool Hand Luke in 1967.

The movie was certainly controversial when it was released, and it had an immediate impact on its audience in 1932. At the beginning of 1933, Robert Elliott Burns, on whose life the movie was based, was able to appeal his Georgia sentence. Other chain-gang prisoners were able to do the same. And the movie definitely struck nerves nationwide. While its impact on the "convict lease" chain-gang system in the American South is impossible to measure, it clearly helped raise public awareness of the issue. Federal law ended the chain-gang system for forced labor in 1937, although in practice it continued for decades longer.

Cinematically, I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang set a new standard for economical storytelling. It is just ninety minutes long, and it never deviates from the central story of its main character. No subplots are developed, and no scenes digress from James Allen’s narrative. The final scene, of Allen fading away into complete darkness, was a powerful metaphor that has been duplicated innumerable times ever since. Its use of an individual’s personal story as a means to deliver a message about a pressing societal issue has also been mimicked in numerous films since its release.

The movie received three Academy Award nominations but did not win in any of the categories. The National Board of Review of Motion Pictures, however, named I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang the best picture of 1932. In 1991 it was added to the National Film Registry at the Library of Congress.

Awards and nominations

Nominated

• Academy Award (1932/1933) Best Picture
• Academy Award (1933) Best Actor: Paul Muni
• Academy Award (1932/1933) Best Sound Recording

Bibliography

DiLeo, John. "I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang" (1932): Warner Brothers and Social Concern. Milltown: Hansen/Amazon Digital, 2011. Electronic.

Doherty, Thomas. Pre-Code Hollywood: Sex, Immorality, and Insurrection in American Cinema, 1930–1934. New York: Columbia U, 1999. Print.

Mintz, Steven and Randy W. Roberts, eds. Hollywood’s America: Twentieth Century America Through Film. Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010. Print.

Petersen, Anne Helen. Scandals of Classic Hollywood. Sex, Deviance, and Drama from the Golden Age of Cinema. New York: Plume, 2014. Print.

Schickel, Richard. Keepers: The Greatest Films—and Personal Favorites—of a Moviegoing Lifetime. New York: Knopf, 2015. Print.

Surette, Ray. Media, Crime, and Criminal Justice. Boston: Cengage, 2014. Print, Electronic.