Storm Warning

Ginger Rogers is going to visit her sister, Doris Day, who she hasn't seen in two years. When she gets to the small town at night, she encounters very anti-social people. A cab driver won't give her a ride, and shops are closing like there's a fire to go to. She barely got the clerk at the bus station to check her baggage, before he locked up. She had to walk ten blocks to Doris Day at her place of business, because of that....that cab driver. The roads and sidewalks are quiet and everything is deserted. She's walking in the dark, when she hears noises and fighting. A man runs by her and gets shot in the back. A group of people covered with hoods gather around the body, not seeing her, as she is hiding near by. Two men take off their hoods and she sees them. Then she comes to find out later one of them is her brother-in-law, Doris' husband, played by Steve Cochran. Such is the gist of her dilemma. Should she tell what she's seen of the Ku Klux Klan and Steve or stay out of it? Apparently, everyone else has. Ronald Reagen is the d.a. who's been trying to get the Klan run out of town ever since he's been elected. But no one ever remembers anything, knows anything, or has ever seen anything, which must make it very easy for them. This is a very well made film that shows Ronald Reagen and company at their best. Reagan gives a very understated and effective performance as not only a man of the law trying to do his duty, but as a man trying to get at the truth and trying to get others to see things as they really are. And, never at any time does the viewer feel that Ginger Rogers is out of her element, being in a controversial suspense film and not being in a light comedy/musical. While it's great to see Doris Day in something different than her usual fare, it still feels somewhat strange to see her perky and upbeat character in this sobering tale of hatred and bigotry. I was very impressed with this film, particularly as it neared its dramatic conclusion and how well it all came together, where much is expressed with little to no words. If you've never seen "Storm Warning." then you ought to see this intelligent film, that was ahead of its time. I liked and respected Reagan before I saw this, but after wards I think I've grown even more respect for a man who knew this was a project he wanted to be a part of. This may be only a movie, but as actors make choices as to what films to make, this certainly reveals Reagan and his conscience to stand for what is right. Discover "Storm Warning" and learn today that tomorrow can be better if we stand together against intolerance.

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source: Storm Warning

This film holds up so very well even after fifty years. The searing indictment of smalltown xenophobia and the struggle for truth is the hallmark here. Reagan does well in the role, but Steve Cochran and especially Ginger Rogers really shine here. The closing seconds with the fleeing Klansmen and the crumbling fiery cross coupled with strong orchestral strings leaves a hard hitting message that resonates. This film belongs on DVD as a testament to the ongoing struggle against intolerance, ignorance, and the fear of those things that are different. 1951 - 2001, sadly the need for that continues.

It is often thought that Doris Day broke out of the inane films with "Love Me or Love Me" in 1955. This is not the case. She did a terrific job in 1951's "Storm Warning." In a totally non-singing part, Day did quite well in the role of a woman married to a Klansman, aptly played by Steve Cochran. Day's sister, Ginger Rogers, comes to town to visit only to witness a murder by the Klan. Future President Ronald Reagan turns in a solid performance as the District Attorney who wants Rogers to testify. Naturally, she hesitates because her brother-in-law, Cochran, is involved. As the visiting sister,caught up in this mayhem, Ginger Rogers did fine in also a non-singing or dancing role. This interesting film depicting that the Ku Klux Klan was alive and well was frightening but well made.

Ginger Rogers plays a model who comes to a sleepy southern town to visit her sister. The few citizens she meet in her nocturnal arrival seem either frightened or hostile. On the way to her sister's house, she passes the jail, and witnesses a gang of klansmen killing a helpless man. There's nowhere to go. Her sister (Doris Day) is of no help, her sister's husband (Steve Cochran, excelling again at playing a sleaze-bag) is even worse. Rogers' only ally is the young DA out to snuff the klan. (The DA played with perfection by under-rated actor Ronald Reagan. You'll forget you're watching a President) A creepy, solomn noir classic!

Let me get my major problem with this generally excellent movie out of the way first: It treats a touchy issue -- the Ku Klux Klan. But it gives no real idea of what the Klan does. It has no black performers that I can recall and gives no sense of taking place in the South. The accents tend toward New England or New York City. That side, it is a superb, strangely neglected picture. It opens with a brilliant shot of a bus's headlights bearing down on us. Then we see the bus stopping, people disembarking for a stopover. One of these people is Ginger Rogers. Her body is in great shape but she has aged in a peculiarly tough manner. Can we believe that she is a dress model from Manhattan? Yes, though probably in the garment district rather than at any posh shop. Ginger has stopped on her way to a business meeting to visit her younger sister in the sticks. The sister is played very well by Doris Day, who doesn't sing and is married to Steve Cochrane. Cochrane probably does the best acting in the movie. He was born to this sort of role and he's beautifully cast as basically decent man who just happens to be a weak-willed Klan member who's participated in a milling. (We see that at the start, as Rogers sees it. I'm giving nothing away.) The story is very, very similar to that of "A Streetcar Named Desire." We have the older, more worldly unmarried woman visiting her naive sister and her blue-collar brother-in-law. The sister sees something bad in the brother-in-law; the sister refuses to believe her. Some later scenes also mirror "Streetcar" but saying more would give away too much. I'd seen this on TV a couple times in the 1970s but it still packed a wallop. If you haven't ever seen it, you're in for a real treat. Not a pleasant one, like ice cream, but if you like hard-boiled movies, you've got one here.

Ginger Rogers is cast as a model (a very OLD model) on her way to see her sister (Doris Day) and her new husband (Steve Cochran). After arriving in the town, she wanders upon an ugly scene--a crowd of Klansmen taking a prisoner from the local jail and killing him vigilante-style in the street. In addition, she sees the identities of two of the men! Following the murder, the county prosecutor (Ronald Reagan) investigates but finds nothing but silence. It's obvious the 'nice' townsfolk participated and many know their identities--but no one is willing to talk. When he learns that Rogers saw the killing, he's excited to finally have a witness--but keeping her alive for the trial may not be easy--especially after her brother-in-law learns that she saw HIM at the killing! A lot more follows--and I won't say more because it could spoil the suspense. In many ways, this is a taut and excellent drama. BUT, it also pulls some of its punches. It's VERY strange that there are no black folks as characters in the film--not even as the victim. Now I am NOT saying the KKK didn't sometimes kill whites, but this was the exception to the rule and completely negates the whole racism angle. It's sad, but the film seemed to want to play it safe by playing it that way. However, while Hollywood was very hesitant to address race, 1949 (when the film was made--though they held it for a bit before release) was a good year with wonderful race films like "Pinky" and "Intruder in the Dust" also coming from rival studios, Twentieth-Century Fox and MGM. Fortunately, the film does manage to rise above this due to an exciting script--especially at the end (which is top-notch). Because of this and a few excellent performances (particularly for Reagan), it's well worth your time.

The lasting impression left by Storm Warning – a melodrama about the stranglehold the Ku Klux Klan wields over a small town – is that the cast contains not a single black face. (Perhaps in 1951 the only safe way to register outrage was to point out that the Klan killed white folks, too; the time was, after all, the late morning of McCarthyism, when the Civil Rights movement was widely thought to be Communist-inspired.) Unfortunately, Storm Warning contains little more plausibility than it does courage. On a swing through her territory, dress-line model Ginger Rogers blows into a southern or border town on a Greyhound Bus to visit her sister (Doris Day). She arrives late at night and finds the townspeople strangely hostile and the town swiftly going dark, whereupon she witnesses the murder of an undercover journalist at the hands of a hooded, sheeted mob. When she seeks out her sister for solace and help, she discovers that her brother-in-law (beetle-browed Steve Cochran) was a member of the murderous rabble. She's persuaded to keep mum until a crusading District Attorney (Ronald Reagan, still a Democrat) changes her mind. But she knows too much for the Klan to let her testify.... Rogers, another star determined to push her career forward despite hardening looks, behaves without even the most instinctive ploys of self-preservation; she stares Cochran down with such a look of loathing that it's a wonder he didn't turn to stone. Cochran, in turn, plays Hollywood's idea of po' white trash, pusillanimous and tongue-tied; Day supplies the distaff version, slow-witted and submissive. Which leaves the heroics pretty much to Reagan, who may have mistaken the movie for a Western: He strides into the midst of a midnight rally and addresses the hooded conspirators by name; each, consequently, melts away. Nonetheless, the movie proves far from a total loss. The night streets, with their bus depot, diner and 'entertainment center' – a bowling alley and bar – tell their own story about the kind of town where the Klan can gain a foothold. The plot, too, takes a surprisingly dark turn. And the film's final image is a memorable one: the embers of a fiery cross topple to the ground, like the ashes of a cigarette left heedlessly to burn.

A tough family reunion in the small Southern town of Rock Point for sophisticated dress model Marsha Mitchell, in the 1951 thriller "Storm Warning." Before even joining her younger sister for the first time in two years, and meeting her new brother-in-law, Marsha witnesses the beating and shooting murder of an investigative reporter at the hands of the Ku Klux Klan. And later, she realizes that her sister Lucy's husband, Hank Rice, was one of the members at that KKK lynching! What's the poor gal to do...especially when nice-guy county prosecutor Burt Rainey is pressing her to play witness at the indictment? Anyway, that's the setup for what turns out to be a surprisingly tough and gritty suspenser, bolstered by a quartet of excellent performances by the film's stars: Ginger Rogers as Marsha, Doris Day and Steve Cochran as her family, and Ronald Reagan as the crusading prosecutor. At the time "Storm Warning" was made, films depicting the activities of the Ku Klux Klan were not exactly common. "The Birth of a Nation" (1915) had shown the group in a notoriously favorable light, while the 1936 picture "Black Legion," starring Humphrey Bogart, had fudged the issue a bit by calling the hooded vigilantes the Black Legion, despite presenting them as thugs. "Storm Warning" pulls no punches, and to its great credit presents us with a KKK comprised of bigoted average Joes; cowards and blustering bullies hiding behind their cowls and sheets. The film was directed by veteran Stuart Heisler, who had previously worked on such marvelous entertainments as the Susan Hayward vehicles "Smash-up" and "Tulsa" and the minor Bogey films "Tokyo Joe" and "Chain Lightning," as well as with Bette Davis on "The Star." Heisler keeps this picture moving nicely, and fills his screen with constant motion while adding almost noirish elements to his thriller (witness Ginger's nighttime walk right before the lynching; truly, the essence of noir!). As for those previously mentioned performances, Doris is just fine in this early dramatic role (indeed, the story goes that her thesping here paved the way for her to appear in Hitchcock's 1956 classic "The Man Who Knew Too Much"); Cochran (so memorable a few years earlier in "White Heat") offers a perfect portrayal of a truly dangerous dimwit (just note how silkily but stupidly threatening he appears when he says to Marsha, "...a girl's figure's her fortune; you sure got your money invested in the right places!"); and Reagan, here in one of his finest hours, and shortly before appearing in the unjustly maligned "Bedtime for Bonzo," is very likable and appealing, despite what you might feel about his performance as U.S. president three decades later. And Ginger? She is just outstanding, in what might be her grimmest and nastiest moments on film. Viewers may be somewhat aghast as they watch the beloved singer/dancer/comedienne get brutally raped, punched in the face, kidnapped, and subjected to a flogging at a KKK midnight convocation, in the shadow, of course, of a huge burning cross. No moonlit waltzing here, that's for sure; more like a moonlit whipping! Turns out that Ginger could get noirish with the best of them; later that decade, she would appear with Edward G. Robinson in another noirish picture, "Tight Spot," in which she would again face the conundrum: to testify or not to testify. Very much the moral glue that holds the picture together, her character goes from big-city girl, to stunned outsider, to sacrificing sister, to abused victim, to steely avenger, all in the course of 93 minutes. She may not get to do The Picolino in this film, but she sure does manage to get herself into quite a pickle!