White Bondage (1937) User Reviews

The exploitation of the poor leads to deserved anarchy.

[mark.waltz · 7/10 · 27 September 2018]

It is very apparent from the moment that you see the dour and iron-fisted Virginia Brissac at the beginning of this movie that she is a long lost relative of the wicked witch of the west, an evil spinster who oversees the scales of a cotton weighing station. Her brother (Joe King) is the more civilized seeming head of this sharecropper plantation where houses are lent out to farmers to raise cotton with the promise that the cotton they bring in will be paid for fair and squarely thanks to their hard work. While King and Brissac live in a Tara sized mansion, the farmers live in squalor, and every method is utilized to rip them off, from the altered scales of the cotton weighing machine to the scales inside the general store and even the fees deducted from what they are told their cotton is worth. Mysterious newcomer Gordon Oliver shows up as several of the farmers are ripped off, and it is very apparent that he is out to break up this racket. Oliver befriends the pretty Jean Muir who lives with her grandfather (the always lovable Harry Davenport) who utilizes biblical scripture to warn King of his misdeeds, and when the warehouse with the collected cotton is burnt down, King creates various methods to discredit Oliver, leading to a lynching party and a violent showdown between Muir and Brissac.

In my reviews of various films where the poor and unfortunate are either exploited, enslaved or treated with inhumanity, I have stated that these situations will make the viewer very angry, and indeed, from the very first scene of this film, that anger begins to erupt. There are several plot holes which leads the film away from being truly successful in its mission, and perhaps it is also too short, running just an hour where more detail could have been given in to how this racket began, the anger rising amongst the farmers, and of course, what happens when all is exposed. This was the last contractual film at Warner Brothers for Jean Muir who had the potential of being a huge star and at one time was one of their highest regarded ingenues. While this is definitely a "B" film, it is an important film because of the message it provides, and unlike other stars whose time was fading at the most politically motivated of Hollywood's big five, Muir went out with something she could be proud of. Howard Philips has a major part as one of the local farmers who leads the others to revolt but is briefly manipulated into believing that Oliver is behind all the dirty doings going on. This film has seemed to have slipped through the cracks when the top films of Warner Brothers' golden age are discussed, and hopefully it will have a chance for re-discovery because its message remains timely even 80 years later.

Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose

[theognis-80821 · 7/10 · 2 October 2022]

Besides Native Americans, America was populated in the 17th and 18th centuries by tens of thousands of indentured servants, virtually slaves, sent across the Atlantic in horrific conditions, fatal for nearly half the passengers. The prisons and streets were swept by "transporters" and both children and adults from England, Ireland, and Scotland harvested tobacco and sugar for "masters," who whipped, branded, starved and mutilated their "servants." "White Bondage" seems to refer to this history in its depiction of southern sharecroppers during the Great Depression, worked and robbed by the "planters" year after year. Posses, bloodhounds, shotguns and lynching are part of this familiar story, too familiar for the hopelessly poor. Harry Davenport, the best Hollywood "oldtimer," this side of Charley Grapewin, stars, along with Jean Muir, apparently the sole blacklisted actor, and suave Gordon Oliver, soon to become a successful producer. Although not on "The Grapes of Wrath" level, this engaging melodrama offers, nonetheless, a vivid portrait of class conflict in rural America.

If that ain't enough to hang him for I want to know what is!

[kapelusznik18 · 5/10 · 23 March 2016]

***SPOILERS*** Things have been getting a bit out of hand in cotton country with the greedy an unscrupulous "Cotton King" Trent Talcott, Joseph King, taking advantage of the local sharecroppers in using underhanded tactics in undercutting the prices, by under weighing, of their annual cotton crop. This has undercover newspaper reporter Gordon Oliver, David Graydon, try to expose Talcott and have him forced to pay the sharecroppers all the money that he stole from them. Things don't at first go so easy for Oliver with the local cotton pickers feeling that he in fact is working for Talcott and want no part of him or what he has, in legal help, to offer them.

It's when Oliver strikes up a relationship with local girl Besty Ann Craig, Jean Muir, in helping her fiancée Carl Sanders, Howard Phillips, in getting his true worth of what he toiled and grew in his cotton field that he starts to make a number of in rows in his undercover reporting. This when Oliver finds a storehouse full of cotton that Talcott stole from the local cotton pickers and was about to sell on the open market for as much as three times that he was willing to pay them for it.

****SPOILERS**** Framed by Talcott for almost killing Besty Ann who in fact was knocked out by Talcott's sister Sarah, Virginia Brissac, when she discovered the second set of books he used to gyp the cotton pickers out of their hard earned cash a lynch mob is rustled up by Sanders, that numbered in the hundreds, to string the innocent Gordon Oliver up. It was just in the nick of time that a recovered Besty came to Oliver's rescue and not only prevented his hanging but exposed all the garbage that Talcott was pulling on cotton pickers over the years. That had him as well as his sister Sarah and his henchmen run for the hills from preventing themselves from being lynched by the mad as hell and outraged cotton pickers. In the end not only was Talcott forced by the courts, in order to prevent him serving prison time, to pay back all those he cheated that caused him to not only go bankrupt but go into another business as a cotton picker himself like those he used to take advantage of.

Good Government

[telegonus · 9/10 · 22 December 2002]

White Bondage is a very good little movie from the Depression era concerning an agent from the agriculture department who comes to the aid of tenant farmers in the Deep South. It's surprisingly well acted by a cast of relative unknowns, and directed by Nick Grinde, not the first name that comes to one's mind when thinking of great film-makers. He does a fine job with this movie, though, which, contrary to the belief of many in our time shows that government can be a force for good, and actually help poor people rather than merely take their tax dollars in order to support fat-cat Washington bureaucrats.

A film only Warner Brothers would have made.

[planktonrules · 9/10 · 2 October 2022]

"White Bondage" is a reworking of the script for "Cabin in the Cotton" and it's most unusual because it's actually BETTER than the original film...even if the original starred Bette Davis!

As for the plot, it's a sort of film only Warner Brothers would have made, as they were a studio that favored making films about working class people and real world problems...something many other studios of the day (particularly MGM avoided). It fits in fine with other Warners products of the 30s such as "I Was a Fugitive From a Chain Gang", "Crime School" and "Wild Boys of the Road"...all films intended to address social issues of the day.

This story is set in the rural south and is all about how the local landowners are robbing the poor sharecroppers. Mis-weighing cotton, company stores that charge exorbitant prices and one-sided contracts are all being used in order to squeeze every dime from the sharecroppers...and a newspaper reporter is there undercover to expose the racket. The problem is that the land owner and his family are clever and evil...and most of the sharecroppers are ignorant and poor...and are easily manipulated. How does this happen? And, what becomes of this form of bondage?

I loved this film. It was very well made, the script was right on target and the film is among the best Bs I've ever seen. A very intelligent film that holds up amazingly well today.