Storm Warning (1951)

Director:

Stuart Heisler

Writers:

Daniel Fuchs (written by) and
Richard Brooks (written by)

Release Date:

10 February 1951 (USA)

Genre:

Drama | Film-Noir

Tagline:

Unmasked by Warner Brothers!

Plot:

Marsha Mitchell, a traveling dress model, stops in a southern town to see her sister who has married a Ku Klux Klansman...

Plot Keywords:

Murder | District Attorney | Beautiful Woman | Christmas | Sexual Assault

Cast

  (Complete credited cast)

Ginger Rogers	...	Marsha Mitchell
Ronald Reagan	...	Burt Rainey
Doris Day	...	Lucy Rice
Steve Cochran	...	Hank Rice
Hugh Sanders	...	Charlie Barr
Lloyd Gough	...	Cliff Rummel
Raymond Greenleaf	...	Faulkner
Ned Glass	...	George Athens
Paul E. Burns	...	Frank Hauser, Baggage Man
Walter Baldwin	...	Coroner Bledsoe
Lynn Whitney	...	Cora Athens
Stuart Randall	...	Walt Walters
Sean McClory	...	Shore

Also Known As:

Storm Center (USA) (working title)

Runtime:

93 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (RCA Sound System)

Certification:

USA:Approved (certificate #14344) | Finland:S | Sweden:15

Filming Locations:

Corona, California, USA

Company:

Warner Bros. Pictures

Trivia:

Joan Crawford was asked by studio boss Jack L. Warner to play Doris Day's sister in the film, Joan declined saying "Come on, Jack. No one would ever believe that I would have Doris Day for a sister!"

Goofs:

Plot holes: A character is murdered by the KKK after 10pm one evening. An autopsy is performed, witnesses interviewed and a coroner's inquest is held - all by the following afternoon, hardly twelve hours after crime was committed.

Quotes:

Burt Rainey: Hear that yellin' out there? That's the Klan! They just found out that law and order can't touch them. You did that when you let them off! They're runnin' wild! They're gonna rip up the old laws and make new ones! They're gonna do every rotten thing they can think of doing!

Taking On The KKK

Not that the subject matter of Storm Warning lends itself to music, but isn't it fascinating that Warner Brothers cast two of the best female musical performers in the history of film as the two leads. Sisters even.

For Ginger Rogers this was hardly her first dramatic part, having won an Oscar for Kitty Foyle. But this was Doris Day's first non-singing role and she acquits herself very well.

Ginger gets off a Greyhound Bus in some small southern town where her married younger sister Doris lives with her husband Steve Cochran. In those wee small hours during the graveyard shift, Ginger witnesses a murder committed by several men in white sheets. And lo and behold she recognizes one of them as Doris's husband.

Cochran is the best one in the film, a real boorish lout of a redneck. But Doris loves him although bit by bit she gets disillusioned. Rogers spends the whole film trying to make Doris see Cochran for what he is.

The Ku Klux Klan might have been the Elks in white sheets. No pun intended, but they get quite a white washing here. No mention at all of their racism or hatred of Catholics, Jews, and foreign born of all kinds. Still they are a nasty bunch who have a habit of doing in people who disagree with them.

Ronald Reagan here is a District Attorney who is bland in a very poorly written role. The problem with the Klan was that the various county District Attorneys in the south were more than likely Klan members or who at best just looked the other way. After all these cretins with the hoods were the very voters who put in the District Attorneys. When the Klan was prosecuted, if witnesses were found against it back in those days, it was always done at the federal level by appointed United States Attorneys.

Still Cochran and Day got the deserved best notices for this film which unfortunately defuses the issues it brings up.