The Red Menace
Brief Synopsis
Cast & Crew
R. G. Springsteen
Robert Rockwell
Hanne Axman
Betty Lou Gerson
Barbra Fuller
Shepard Menken
Film Details
Technical Specs
Synopsis
While driving through Arizona, Bill Jones and Nina Petrovka speak fearfully of the people they left behind in California. They then think back to their escape: After returning from the war, GI Bill Jones and his fiancée try to buy a house, but are cheated out of their savings by an unlicensed real estate broker. Bill complains to officials at the Veteran's Service Center, but when they ignore him, he leaves. A man named Jack Tyler, who has overheard Bill's complaint, follows him and offers to buy him a drink. At a local bar, Bill meets Jack's friends, Yvonne Kraus, Irish-American Mollie O'Flaherty, and a Jewish-American poet named Henry Solomon, and receives words of sympathy when he explains that his fiancée left him after they were cheated. Later, Jack visits his friend, black writer Sam Wright, at a newspaper office headed by Communist party leader Earl Partridge, where a reporter has been fired for speaking about the Communist party. Knowing that the reporter will be deported, and thus become a martyr, the party informs the Immigration and Naturalization Service about his Communist activities. Later, while speaking to Bill, Mollie praises the party for its efforts to help Jews and Negroes. The next day, Jack attends a violent protest meeting for disgruntled GIs at the corrupt Hillside Realty Co., accompanied by lovely Russian party leader Nina Petrovka. When party members incite a riot, Bill and Nina flee to an amusement park across the street. While riding the Ferris wheel, Nina explains that she teaches Marxism at the party's headquarters. Some time later, after an Italian-American student named Reachi questions Yvonne's statements, she calls him a "Mussolini-spawned dago," and he is beaten up and humiliated. When party members kill him, Nina begins to question her role in the party. She decides to phone Earl to say that she is ill and will be unable to attend that evening's meeting. Later, when Yvonne sees Bill and Nina leave together, she reports to Partridge. At the same time, parish priest Father O'Leary, who is aware of Mollie's Communist involvement, visits the young woman to praise the United States, the world's "melting pot." At a party meeting, Henry reads a poem he has written suggesting that rather than being completely original in his theories, Marx actually built upon the ideas of other great thinkers. The party leaders are distressed by Henry's statements, and when he refuses to retract them, they force him out of the party. Henry criticizes party officials, who claim to fight racial discrimination, while repeatedly reminding other members of their ethnicity. Even after he has left the party, Henry is repeatedly fired from low paying jobs because the party keeps telling his employers about his Communist activities. Some time later, at the newspaper office, Henry gives Sam a letter to deliver to Mollie in the event of his death. Later, when he tries to stop Partridge from disciplining Mollie for speaking with him, Henry jumps to his death from his high-rise office window. After Sam learns about this, he delivers the note, which begs Mollie to return to church and her mother, and she does. Later, Bill, who has already told Nina that he disagrees with party methods, tells her that they are issuing a card to him the following day, and they decide to escape together. Meanwhile, officers from the Immigration and Naturalization Service interrogate Yvonne until she admits that she is actually a dissident named Greta Bloch, who took Yvonne's place after she was murdered by party officials. Yvonne then becomes hysterical and is taken away. Later, Sam receives a visit from his father, who tells him that their church deacon says that more slaves exist in Communist countries than anyplace else and urges him to come home. Before leaving with his father, Sam writes a brief epitaph praising Henry as a hero. When an official reads his words later, he curses the "African ingrate." Believing that the party is trying to capture them, Bill and Nina flee by car, and after many hours on the road, decide to stop at a police station in Texas. They explain their predicament to the sheriff, who calmly reminds them that they live in a free country and have no reason to run. On their way out, Bill and Nina meet a little boy, who tells them that townsfolk have nicknamed the kindly sheriff "Uncle Sam."
Director
R. G. Springsteen
Cast
Robert Rockwell
Hanne Axman
Betty Lou Gerson
Barbra Fuller
Shepard Menken
Lester Luther
William J. Lally
Lloyd G. Davies
Norman Budd
Leo Cleary
William Martel
Duke Williams
Robert Purcell
Gregg Martell
Kay Riehl
James Harrington
Napoleon Simpson
Royal Raymond
Jimmie Hawkins
Lloyd G. Davies
Marshall Bradford
John Pimley
Jim Hayward
George Taylor
Marilyn Criss Kraft
Bill Free
Gail Bonney
Theodore T. Sackett
Ralph Loretz
Joe Wallace
Arthur Millan
William Hitch
Oscar Weidhaas
Mary Degolyer
Bernie Marcus
Jean Leighton
Harry Scher
Joe Duval
Bill Hudson
Crew
Frank Arrigo
Lynne Burke
T. A. Carman
Albert Demond
Albert Demond
Joan Eremin
Gerald Geraghty
Ira Hoke
Harry Keller
Wilbur Kinnett
C. B. Lawrence
Howard Lydecker
Theodore Lydecker
John Macburnie
Bob Mark
John Mccarthy Jr.
Joe Novak
Adele Palmer
James Redd
Nathan Scott
Howard Smit
Art Vitarelli
Herbert J. Yates
Film Details
Technical Specs
Quotes
Trivia
Notes
The film's working title was Fathoms Deep. According to a New York Times news item dated May 6, 1949, Republic chose this title to disguise the nature of the film's subject matter. The item added that "the producer of the picture will never be officially identified...because his family is vulnerable to 'reprisals.'" While Republic president Herbert J. Yates is credited onscreen as executive producer, no producer credit is listed. Lloyd G. Davies is credited twice in the cast list, first as "Inspector O'Toole" and second as "Lloyd G. Davies, Member of City Council, Los Angeles, California" the narrator. The Red Menace was originally planned by Irving Allen and James S. Burkett as an independent production, according to a notation in the film's file in the MPAA/PCA Collection at the AMPAS Library. A Los Angeles Times item claimed that "fully 500 persons were interviewed for the nine leading parts in the film and its 10 supporting players." Republic purposely chose unknowns for the cast, according to Variety, and many cast members made their screen debuts in the picture. According to a Motion Picture Herald article, the picture was filmed on a closed set, and when word about the story's content was leaked to the press, the Communist paper People's World issued a scathing attack against the film, quoting verbatim from its script. In a May 15, 1949 New York Times article, writer Albert DeMond was quoted as saying, "There are Communists working at the studio, I know....That's how they got the scenario."
A Hollywood Reporter news item noted that to advertise the picture, Republic Studios launched its most extensive promotional campaign to date, calling it "the most impressive exploitation campaign in...the history of the motion picture business." An unidentified, undated news item found in the AMPAS Library stated that because of "disappointing grosses," Republic withdrew The Red Menace from release several months after its opening, and planned to re-edit it significantly and re-issue it under the title Underground Spy. Ads for the film, dated November 1953, indicate that the picture was, in fact, re-released as Underground Spy. According to a May 28, 1949 Motion Picture Herald news item, after the film's release, Yates was given a special commendation by the Senate Fact-Finding Committee on Un-American Activities, which stated "in recognition of the great contribution that has been made by Republic Studios in the fight against those forces who seek to deprive the American people of the freedoms we all cherish so dearly, the Senate Committee does commend Republic Studios and those persons who have so courageously assisted in this production." Shortly after this film's release, RKO released its own anti-Communist film, The Woman on Pier 13, which like The Red Menace, was a box-office flop. According to modern sources, actor Jack Lord had a bit part in The Red Menace, marking his motion picture debut.
Miscellaneous Notes
Released in United States 1982
Released in United States Summer August 1, 1949
Released in United States 1982 (Shown at FILMEX: Los Angeles International Film Exposition (Treasures from the World's Film Archives) March 16 - April 1, 1982.)
Released in United States Summer August 1, 1949
