BIG JIM McLAIN: Big John kicks some commie butt!

John Wayne was never shy about wearing his heart on his sleeve. He was never going to be mistaken for one of those liberal lefty Hollywood types who dared to question the motives and morals of the American Way. But rarely did he display his politics quite as nakedly as in 1952's BIG JIM McLAIN. Here he doesn't just wear his heart on his sleeve - his heart is the sleeve and most of the rest of the shirt as well!

Big Jim (Wayne) is an investigator for HUAC - the House UnAmerican Activtities Committee. HUAC had come into it's own in the second half of the 1940s as the US Congress' primary tool in rooting out American born communist subversives who were working on behalf of Moscow to bring about the downfall of capitalism. Often confused with Senator Joe McCarthy's anti-communist witch-hunt of the early 1950s, HUAC actually got there before him, and the committee's probing of communists in Hollywood in the latter 40s started rolling the bandwagon which McCarthy jumped aboard in 1950 and then hijacked to whip-up anti-communist hysteria in the USA with wild claims of Reds under almost every bed.
There's no room for baseless accusations or irrational hysteria in Big Jim's world. He and fellow investigator Mal Baxter (James Arness) remain scrupulously law-abiding and polite, even as the stinkin' pinko university professors they know beyond a doubt are redder than a red rose walk free after invoking their fifth amendment right against self incrimination while testifying before the heroic HUAC committee members (woodenly playing themselves). 
But things start turning ever so slightly dirty when Jim and Mal are sent to Hawaii to investigate a commie spy ring. Big Jim's forced to take time out from romancing a doctor's receptionist (Nancy Olson) to punch one of the conspirators on the nose after he insults a lady of dubious morals, who is nonetheless worthy of protection because she's red white and blue through and through.
The whole film is an unashamedly simplistic exercise in flagwaving which bears only the slightest relationship to the reality of HUAC's work. But it's also a fascinating artifact of a time not so long ago when the nation which prides itself on being the personification of freedom and democracy allowed itself to be plunged into a nightmare of fear, betrayal and ruined careers by the increasingly ludicrous claims of McCarthy and his HUAC associates.  BIG JIM McLAIN plays now as a far-fetched yarn but back in 1952 Wayne and Warner Bros were deadly serious about alerting Americans to the threat posed by the supposed traitors in their midst.
Even without the right wing politics BIG JIM McLAIN is far from Wayne's finest cinematic moment. There's really not enough storyline to fill the 90 minute running time so it's padded out with a couple of excruciatingly unfunny and pointless comic scenes, some excruciatingly bad acting by the real life Police Chief of Honolulu, and same painfully sappy mugging by Wayne attempting to portray bashfulness in his courtship of Nancy. 
Genuine modesty was never his strong point.

GOODBYE MY FANCY: Joan Crawford as a premature anti anti-communist

GOODBYE MY FANCY offers many guilty pleasures, and most of them are clearly visible on the surface.  
There's Joan Crawford emoting with the intensity of an open fire hydrant on a hot summer's day, and the corny dialogue breathlessly delivered by an overacting supporting cast in what may simply be a defence mechanism to avoid being blown off-screen by their leading actress.
It's second rate melodrama at it's finest. Scenery-chewing, predictable and fun.
What's surprising is the story's politically subversive undertones.
Crawford stars as the improbably named Agatha Reed, a hard charging US Congresswoman with bigger balls than all of her male colleagues put together. Invited back to her alma mater to be awarded an honorary degree she stirs up a hornet's nest by insisting that the school screen a film of her speech warning of the dangers of imposing limits on the right to free speech.
Having (equally improbably) witnessed the horrors of Naziism at firsthand while serving as a war correspondent on the frontlines of the battle to liberate Europe, it's a subject she's passionate about. 
But the film's message doesn't sit well with Claude Griswold, the domineering chair of the school's board of trustees. He doesn't believe the all-female undergraduate body should be exposed to such depressing and disagreeable ideas and images as book-burning,  the enslavement of educators, and the murder of opponents to the Nazi philosophy. He orders the college president, James Merrill (Robert Young) to cancel the screening or risk of losing his job.
Young just happens to be Agatha's college boyfriend, and while the flame still burns bright within his heart, it's no match for his sense of self-preservation. She's appalled to discover the love of her life has traded his principles for appeasement. By conceding to Griswold over the film he believes he'll be better placed to win other battles over the school's future, and is deaf to the Congresswoman's argument that his stance is indefensible at a time when the USA is fighting for freedom from tyranny abroad.

That 'time' was 1951 and when Warner Bros released GOODBYE MY FANCY in May of that year the Cold War with communism was in the deep freeze. UN troops, under American command, were engaged in heavy fighting with communist forces in Korea, the Rosenbergs were on trial for passing atomic secrets to the Soviets, and Senator Joseph McCarthy was whipping up anti-communist hysteria with his wild claims of reds under every American bed. It was a time when patriotism was measured by a willingness to denounce friends, colleagues and neighbours who displayed liberal tendencies, or who had supported anti-fascist causes two decades earlier when the left wing was the only wing warning of the danger of Naziism.
In this light it seems incredible that a Stars and Stripes hugging studio like Warner Bros would risk incurring the wrath of the right by challenging the prevailing philosophy so blatantly. Studio boss Jack Warner was a bully who liked to think of himself as a scrappy fighter who stood up to bullies but he was no friend of those accused of attempting to undermine the United States from within. 
Careers had already been ruined on less evidence of liberalism than this Warner Bros production was offering up in the guise of overheated melodrama.
Brave, brash and bad, GOODBYE MY FANCY has something for everyone from drag queens to Cold war scholars.