The Phenix City Story

 

Moviedrome Introduction

Film Details 

Release Date: 1955

Director: Phil Karson

Stars:

John McIntire as Albert L. Patterson
Richard Kiley as John Patterson

Personal History

Unheard of. Including the City of Phenix.

Current Review

Dated? Yes. Left a lasting impression? Definitely. For one scene which I will include a video from YT of.  The coldest of it is still going around my head days later.

A very odd start - a journalist, the wonderful Clete Roberts interviews real members of a the public, in a way that a solid 1950s square-jawed American man can.

It then enters musical territory, where a song is belted out by a femme fatale in opera gloves. I think they are trying to set the scene that Phenix is a hotbed of illicit gambling, drinking, drugs and prostitution. Your local Wetherspoons on a Saturday night looks far more intimidating.

We then have fairly standard "good guys" stand up against the "bad guys" to stop the lawlessness. Instead of the violence they are subjected to, they use the vote and the rule of law. Until the main man - an attorney general of the state - is murdered in cold blood. Then the National Guard are called in to sort things out.

All pretty much expected.  Except for the coldly delivered overt Alabaman racism. As much use of the N word as in a Tarantino, its the murder of a young black child that really shocks.  For context, the girls father had helped the two hero's escape a beating. A warning needed to be sent to the two heroes to put them off pursuing justice.

Quite something, the way it is so casually detailed.  Of course, the National Guard are only called when a white man is killed. And the African Americans couldn't even vote in the Alabama in the fifties to get rid of the gangsters.

Not that the film mentions this.

Quirky Facts

In the film, John Patterson (Richard Kiley) is depicted as supportive of African-American Zeke Ward (James Edwards) and his family. In real life, following his term as Alabama attorney general (1954-58), Patterson ran for governor in 1958 in an openly racist campaign and won. One of his opponents, George Wallace, had run as a racial moderate and told his friends after the election, "John Patterson out-niggered me, and I'm never gonna be out-niggered again." Four years later, in 1962, Wallace won the governorship of Alabama as an avowed segregationist. I don't think I want to go to Alabama.

The film went into production so quickly that some of the criminals it portrayed were still standing trial while filming was taking place. Contrary to the film's suggestion, many of the key perpetrators of the criminal syndicate received lenient sentences.

TWA had developed a relationship with the film industry early on, and it was not surprising to see one of its airliners featured. The company had offices at major airports to assist production companies with their work.

Quotes

John Patterson: The law came to Phenix City at last. It took my father's death to bring it. It wasn't the kind of law my father fought and died for. But it was the only law the men who killed him could understand. The law with a loaded gun in its hand.

Future Inspiration

I think I am going to leave this one there.