Bad Day at Black Rock

Not to be confused with Bad Day in Blackrock. For the Supernatural episode, see "Bad Day at Black Rock" (Supernatural).

Bad Day at Black Rock is a 1955 American film noir neo-Western film directed by John Sturges with screenplay by Millard Kaufman. It stars Spencer Tracy and Robert Ryan with support from Anne Francis, Dean Jagger, Walter Brennan, John Ericson, Ernest Borgnine and Lee Marvin. The film is a crime drama set in 1945 that contains elements of the revisionist Western genre. In the plot, a one-armed stranger (Tracy) comes to a small desert town and uncovers an evil secret that has corrupted the entire community.

Bad Day at Black Rock
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	John Sturges
Screenplay by	Millard Kaufman Don McGuire (adaptation)
Based on	"Bad Time at Honda" 1947 short story in The American Magazine by Howard Breslin
Produced by	Dore Schary
Starring	Spencer Tracy Robert Ryan Anne Francis Dean Jagger Walter Brennan John Ericson Ernest Borgnine Lee Marvin
Cinematography	William C. Mellor
Edited by	Newell P. Kimlin
Music by	André Previn
Distributed by	Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Release date	January 7, 1955 (1955-01-07) (United States)
Running time	81 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$1,288,000[1][2]
Box office	$3,788,000[1]

The film is based on a short story called "Bad Time at Honda" by Howard Breslin, published by The American Magazine in January 1947. Filming began in July 1954, and the movie went on national release in January 1955. It was a box-office success and was nominated for three Academy Awards in 1956. In 2018, it was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".^[3][4]

Plot

In late 1945, one-armed John Macreedy gets off a train at Black Rock, an isolated California desert hamlet. The residents are suspicious, as this is the first time in four years that the streamliner express train has stopped at the tiny flag stop station. After Macreedy inquires after a man named Komoko, several local men become hostile. Hastings, the telegraph agent, tells him there are no taxis; the hotel desk clerk, Pete Wirth, claims he has no vacant rooms; and Hector David threatens him. Later, Reno Smith informs Macreedy that Komoko, a Japanese-American, was interned during World War II.

Sheriff Tim Horn, the alcoholic lawman, is no help finding Komoko. The veterinarian and undertaker, Doc Velie, advises Macreedy to leave town immediately, but lets slip that Komoko is dead. Pete's sister, Liz, rents a Jeep to Macreedy. Driving to nearby Adobe Flat, he finds a homestead burned to the ground and wildflowers growing in the field. On the drive back, Coley Trimble tries to run Macreedy off the road. He tries to leave town, but Liz refuses to rent him the Jeep again, having been confronted by Smith. Asked by Smith about his missing left arm, Macreedy says he lost it fighting in Italy. Macreedy then postulates that the wildflowers at the Komoko place indicate a body is buried there. Smith reveals that he is virulently anti-Japanese; he tried to enlist the day after the Pearl Harbor attack but failed the physical.

Macreedy tries to telephone the state police, but Pete refuses to put the call through. Doc Velie admits that something terrible happened four years ago, but Smith has everyone too terrified to speak up. Velie offers his hearse to Macreedy to leave town, but Hector disables it by yanking out the cables. Writing a telegram to the California police to summon help, Macreedy gives it to Hastings.

At the diner, Trimble provokes a fight with Macreedy. Despite having only one arm, Macreedy easily throws him to the ground using martial arts. Confronting Smith, Macreedy accuses him of killing Komoko with the complicity of others. Hastings arrives and tries to give Smith a piece of paper. Snatching the paper, Macreedy finds his unsent telegram draft. Telling Hastings he has broken the law, Macreedy and Velie demand that Horn take action. Horn stands up to arrest Hastings, but Smith pulls the sheriff's badge off Horn's shirt and pins it on Hector, who casually tears up the telegram.

After Smith and Hector leave, Macreedy declares that the loss of his arm had left him wallowing in self-pity, but Trimble's attempt to kill him has reinvigorated him. Komoko's son died in combat while saving his life, and Macreedy came to Black Rock to give Komoko his son's medal. Here he learned that Smith leased farmland to the elder Komoko that Smith was sure had no water, but the resourceful Komoko dug a well and found water. When Smith was rejected for military service after Pearl Harbor, he and the other men began drinking, and decided to harass the Japanese Komoko. The old man barricaded himself inside his home, but the men set it on fire. When Komoko emerged ablaze, Smith shot and killed him.

Doc and Pete enlist Liz to help Macreedy escape under cover of darkness. Pete and Doc lure away Hector, who is standing guard outside the hotel, knocking him unconscious. When Liz drives Macreedy out of town but stops at Adobe Flat, Macreedy realizes he has been set up. Smith shoots at him, but Macreedy shelters behind the Jeep. Liz rushes to Smith despite Macreedy's warning. Telling Liz that she and the rest of his accomplices must die, Smith shoots her in the back as she flees.

Finding a bottle, Macreedy fills it with gasoline from the Jeep. When Smith climbs down for a better shot, Macreedy throws the Molotov cocktail, setting Smith on fire. Macreedy drives back to town with Smith's and Liz's bodies. The state police are called and arrests are made. As Macreedy is leaving, Velie requests Komoko's medal to help Black Rock heal. Macreedy gives it to him before boarding the train.

Cast

Macreedy (Spencer Tracy) is told by Wirth (John Ericson) that no hotel rooms are available.

• Spencer Tracy as John J. Macreedy
• Robert Ryan as Reno Smith
• Anne Francis as Liz Wirth
• Dean Jagger as Sheriff Tim Horn
• Walter Brennan as Doc Velie
• John Ericson as Pete Wirth
• Ernest Borgnine as Coley Trimble
• Lee Marvin as Hector David
• Russell Collins as Mr Hastings
• Walter Sande as Sam, the diner owner

The small cast includes three past and two future Academy Award winners; one past Academy Award nominee; and one future Golden Globe winner. Brennan (1936, 1938, 1940), Jagger (1950) and Tracy (1938, 1939) had all won Academy Awards.^[5][6][7] Ryan (1948) had been nominated for one.^[8] In subsequent years, Borgnine (1956) and Marvin (1965) both won Academy Awards;^[9][10] and Francis (1965) won a Golden Globe.^[11]

Production

Robert Fawcett illustrated The American Magazine printing of "Bad Time at Honda", a 1947 short story by Howard Breslin that was adapted for the film.

Bad Day at Black Rock originated as a short story by Howard Breslin with full-color illustrations by Robert Fawcett.^[12] Titled "Bad Time at Honda", it was published by The American Magazine in January 1947.^[13][14] It was adapted into a script by Don McGuire and pitched to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer production head Dore Schary, who was known for championing films that addressed social problems. Schary had previously produced Go for Broke! (1951), based on the exploits of the segregated Japanese-American 442nd Regimental Combat Team.^[14][15] Breslin novelized the script, using the pseudonym Michael Niall. His book was published in 1954 by Fawcett Publications.^[16][17]

Schary acquired the film rights for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, but he hired Millard Kaufman to rewrite McGuire's script. The producers were worried about the title because "Bad Time at Honda" was similar to Hondo, recently made with John Wayne. Kaufman suggested changing the name of the town to Black Rock, after a real town in Arizona. Kaufman finished the script in fall 1953.^[14]

Although Spencer Tracy was 54 and much older than the platoon leader in the original story, Schary wanted Tracy to play the lead role.^[18] John Sturges was hired as director in June 1954, and shooting began the following month near Lone Pine, California, where the small town set had been quickly constructed.^[14] Just before shooting began, an indecisive Tracy tried to back out of the picture. Schary made clear that he was willing to sue the actor if he quit the film. Bad Day at Black Rock was Tracy's final film for MGM, with the exception of How the West Was Won (1963), for which he supplied the narration.^[19]

Budget for the film was $1.3 million and it was shot in color using Cinemascope because Schary thought that widescreen would emphasize the menace of the isolated town. Temperatures on location were over 100 °F (38 °C). On August 9, the cast and crew relocated to the MGM studio lot in Culver City. André Previn was hired to write the score.^[14]

Although the film is essentially a crime drama set in 1945, it is recognized as a neo-Western, with strong links to the revisionist Western genre.^[20] The premiere was at Loew's 72nd Street Theatre in New York City on December 8, 1954. The film was released nationally in January 1955.^[14] According to MGM records, it earned US$1,966,000 in the US and Canada, and $1,822,000 elsewhere, making the studio a profit of $947,000.^[1]

The plot of the movie—a small western desert town hiding a guilty secret, or protecting a local person from outside law enforcement officers—reappeared in US television crime shows. Detective and crime series as diverse as Cannon, Kojak, The A-Team and Remington Steele, among others, each had an episode similar to the plot of Bad Day at Black Rock. In the case of Kojak and Remington Steele, the film is actually mentioned in the dialogue of the episodes.^{[original research?][citation needed]}

Themes

Film historian Stuart M. Kaminsky, in American Film Genres (1985), contrasts the ideology that guides Spencer Tracy's McCreedy, with the key motivating factor in samurai tradition:

There is a crucial difference between Tracy and a samurai hero. Tracy is very much interested in preserving his own life. He wants to bring about justice, but he will escape without providing it if he must. Duty to a cause is the guiding principle for a samurai...Death is not relevant; it is, in fact, ennobling if it comes in the service of one's lord. The Western hero has a great sense of self; the samurai has a great sense of subordination of self.^[21]

Although essentially a crime drama with revisionist Western overtones, the film is one of the first to recognize discrimination against Japanese Americans in World War II. No Japanese American characters are portrayed, although Komoko and his son, both dead, are central to the plot. In her 1991 documentary film History and Memory: For Akiko and Takashige, Rea Tajiri uses footage from Bad Day at Black Rock to illustrate prevailing attitudes toward the Japanese. Tajiri's family were among those interned after the attack on Pearl Harbor.^[14]

John Streamas describes the film as an indictment of both racism and McCarthyism. He comments on the unusual means of denunciation that it employs, because with no Japanese-American characters in the story, there is no liberation of an oppressed victim. Instead, the plot delivers justice for the victim of a murder that occurred four years earlier.^[22]

Reception

Critical response

When Bad Day at Black Rock was released, the reviews were almost universally positive, with, for example, John O'Hara in Collier's hailing it as "one of the finest motion pictures ever made".^[14] Many reviewers noted the film's Western-like elements, comparing it favorably with High Noon, and cinematographer William C. Mellor was widely praised for his use of widescreen.^[14]

Film critic Bosley Crowther of The New York Times wrote, "Slowly, through a process of guarded discourse, which director John Sturges has built up by patient, methodical pacing, an eerie light begins to glimmer."^[23] At the end of 1955, The New York Times included the film in its best ten of the year.^[24]

Despite a storyline that she called "crudely melodramatic", Pauline Kael of The New Yorker heaped praise on the film for its direction and cinematography, calling it "a very superior example of motion picture craftsmanship".^[25] In 2017, critic Bilge Ebiri considered it to be "one of the greatest films ever made."^[26]

Variety magazine's reviewer wrote, "Considerable excitement is whipped up in this suspense drama, and fans who go for tight action will find it entirely satisfactory. Besides telling a yarn of tense suspense, the picture is concerned with a social message on civic complacency."^[27]

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 97% of 33 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 8.2/10.^[28]

Accolades

Award	Category	Nominee(s)	Result	Ref.
Academy Awards	Best Director	John Sturges	Nominated	[29]
	Best Actor	Spencer Tracy	Nominated[a]
	Best Screenplay	Millard Kaufman	Nominated
Boston Society of Film Critics Awards	Special Commendation		Won	[30]
British Academy Film Awards	Best Film from any Source		Nominated	[31]
	United Nations Award		Nominated
Cannes Film Festival	Palme d'Or	John Sturges	Nominated	[32] [33]
	Best Actor	Spencer Tracy	Won[b]
Directors Guild of America Awards	Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Motion Pictures	John Sturges	Nominated	[34]
National Board of Review Awards	Top Ten Films		4th place	[35]
National Film Preservation Board	National Film Registry		Inducted	[3]
Writers Guild of America Awards	Best Written American Drama	Millard Kaufman	Nominated	[36]

Notes

1. The award was won by co-star Ernest Borgnine for his performance in Marty.
2. Tied with the ensemble cast of A Big Family.