#691) Bad Day at Black Rock (1955)

The Plot: There’s a strange occurrence in the small town of Black Rock, California one day in 1945: the train stops there for the first time in four years. Off the train comes John J. Macreedy (Spencer Tracy), a one-armed man looking for someone in the town named Komoko. The townspeople do not take kindly to Macreedy, preventing him at every step from learning anything about Komoko’s whereabouts. Reno Smith (Robert Ryan), who seems to have an unspoken grip on the other townspeople, informs Macreedy that Komoko was sent to a Japanese internment camp during the war, but Macreedy suspects there is more to the story. In a span of roughly 24 hours, secrets will be revealed, prejudices will be confronted, and we find out what exactly makes this such a bad day at Black Rock.

Why It Matters: The NFR states that despite its short runtime, the film “packs a punch”, praising its “standout” cast, as well as its cinematography.

But Does It Really?: “Bad Day at Black Rock” has a lot going for it, but I kept wondering “How did this make the NFR?”, especially in recent years with the NFR making a conscious effort to include movies by more diverse filmmakers, and not just classic studio pictures by White guys. My best guess is that whoever made the argument for this film’s inclusion emphasized its condemnation of anti-Asian and anti-Asian American hate crimes (still depressingly relevant, by the way). I’ll be nice and give “Bad Day” the “minor classic” designation: While nowhere near as iconic a movie as its contemporaries on the list, “Bad Day” is still an engaging movie that delivers its message uniquely and devoid of preachiness. Plus, it’s 81 minutes. You know how much I love a movie that doesn’t waste anybody’s time.

Everybody Gets One: Don McGuire was primarily an actor, but by the early ’50s he was also dabbling in producing and screenwriting. McGuire paid $15,000 (over $170,000 today) to adapt “Bad Time at Honda” into a screenplay, and successfully pitched the idea to producer Dore Schary of MGM. While Schary liked the story (his movies tended to tackle social issues of the day), he had writer Millard Kaufman do another pass at the screenplay. Ultimately, Kaufman got the final screenplay credit for the movie, with McGuire getting an “Adaptation by” credit. Side note: Technically, this is Millard Kaufman’s only NFR movie. He is credited as the screenwriter for “Gun Crazy” but was merely acting as a front for the recently blacklisted Dalton Trumbo.

Title Track: As noted above, the short story the film is based on was called “Bad Time at Honda”. MGM requested a title change to avoid confusion with the recent John Wayne movie “Hondo”. Millard Kaufman suggested the name Black Rock after a real town in Arizona (although the fictional Black Rock of this film is in California).

Seriously, Oscars?: A hit upon release, “Bad Day” received three Oscar nominations: Director, Screenplay, and Lead Actor for Spencer Tracy. Unfortunately, it was a bad night for “Bad Day”, losing all three awards to “Marty” (With the extra irony of Ernest Borgnine beating out his own “Bad Day” co-star for Best Actor).

• Spencer Tracy is one of my favorite actors, so of course I got nothing but praise for him in this movie. Tracy was always the right balance of old-school Hollywood acting and modern Method acting: Natural without calling attention to it. As Macreedy, Tracy is giving a nuanced, disciplined performance; somehow always in control while simultaneously looking like he wandered onto the wrong movie set. Not bad for someone who tried on multiple occasions to back out of making this movie. Side note: Tracy is dressed almost identically to how he’ll be dressed in one of my favorite movies: “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World”, making “Bad Day” look like it could be a prequel.

• And yes, Macreedy is a one-armed man, which Tracy plays by stiffening up his left arm and keeping his hand in his pocket for the whole movie. [Insert Your Own “The Fugitive” One-Armed Man Joke Here. Janssen, Ford, Daly: Dealer’s choice.]
• I was not familiar with the works of Robert Ryan before watching this movie, though he shows up in two NFR westerns I will be covering eventually (“The Naked Spur” and “The Wild Bunch”). As Reno Smith, Ryan is cast as the type of bigoted heavy he always seemed to play in the movies. Rare is the actor who seems like a genuine threat to Spencer Tracy, but Ryan gives Smith the right amount of menace; one of those guys that doesn’t need to do the dirty work himself but can and will if the situation calls for it. I look forward to seeing Ryan’s other NFR performances.

• In addition to Spencer Tracy and Robert Ryan, you get great supporting turns by Walter Brennan as the town doctor and Dean Jagger as the ineffective sheriff, plus early-career Ernest Borgnine and Lee Marvin as two of Smith’s thugs. Marvin in particular gets some good moments as the first townsperson to openly threaten Macreedy. Going toe to toe with Spencer Tracy this early in your career is a gutsy move. In fact, between this and Marvin’s latter intimidating of Jimmy Stewart and John Wayne in “Liberty Valance“, his early acting strategy is the equivalent of shivving the biggest guy in the prison yard.

• Anne Francis doesn’t get a lot to do as the only woman in this movie, but she shares her scenes with Spencer Tracy admirably. Oh well, at least we all have her work in “Forbidden Planet” to look forward to.
• [Semi-spoiler] Funny how the movie has been highlighted for its progressive tolerance of Japanese Americans, and yet the only Japanese people mentioned (Komoko and his son) are never actually seen on screen. Seems a bit backwards, but this is 1955: the mere mention of any non-White characters (and acknowledgement of the bigotry directed at them) is a step forward…I guess.
• In another universe Spencer Tracy would have been a great Lou Grant. I know that has nothing to do with anything, but if “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” was somehow a ’50s workplace comedy, Tracy would have nailed it. I can just hear him saying “You’ve got spunk; I hate spunk.”
• The one downside to all the natural performances in this movie: Mumbling. So much mumbling. Everybody is mumbling. It really says something when the most coherent actor in your movie is Walter Brennan. On a positive note, it’s a testament to everyone’s performances that I was still able to follow what was going on at any given time without resorting to subtitles.
• Spencer Tracy was never really an action star, so it’s fun watching him (or a convincing stunt double) give Ernest Borgnine a near fatal karate chop to the throat. It’s one of the first genuinely surprising moments in the movie for me. Speaking of…

• [Spoilers] That climax really takes things up a notch, with Spencer Tracy MacGyvering a Molotov cocktail and setting Robert Ryan on fire! Didn’t see any of that coming.

Legacy

• Although he had already been directing film for a decade at this point, John Sturges hit his filmmaking stride starting with “Bad Day”. In the ensuing years he would make “Gunfight at the O.K. Corral”, “The Old Man and the Sea” (reuniting with Spencer Tracy), “The Magnificent Seven” (which is on the NFR), and “The Great Escape” (which isn’t). Despite his later achievements, Sturges named “Bad Day at Black Rock” his favorite of his own films.

• “Bad Day at Black Rock” marked Spencer Tracy’s final film as a contract player with MGM after 20 years, opting to spend the rest of his career as a freelance agent. Tracy would, however, briefly return to MGM in 1962 to narrate “How the West Was Won“.
• “Bad Day at Black Rock” still gets referenced every so often in pop culture, though mostly just the title (including by me in a real stretch of a subtitle for my “Pillow Talk” post). There have also been episodes of such TV shows as “Kojak”, “Remington Steele”, and “The X-Files” that take the film’s basic premise of a stranger in a small town with a secret. Ever the movie buff, Remington Steele even calls out the connection in his episode (though he calls it “A Bad Day at Black Rock” and gets the year wrong. But hey, there was no internet back then.)

• And finally, although Don McGuire lost out on a screenplay credit for “Bad Day”, he would go on to write the play “Would I Lie to You?” and successfully got a story credit (and Oscar nomination) on its eventual film version: “Tootsie“.