Not that the subject matter of Storm Warning lends itself to music, but isn't it fascinating that Warner Brothers cast two of the best female musical performers in the history of film as the two leads. Sisters even.
For Ginger Rogers this was hardly her first dramatic part, having won an Oscar for Kitty Foyle. But this was Doris Day's first non-singing role and she acquits herself very well.
Ginger gets off a Greyhound Bus in some small southern town where her married younger sister Doris lives with her husband Steve Cochran. In those wee small hours during the graveyard shift, Ginger witnesses a murder committed by several men in white sheets. And lo and behold she recognizes one of them as Doris's husband.
Cochran is the best one in the film, a real boorish lout of a redneck. But Doris loves him although bit by bit she gets disillusioned. Rogers spends the whole film trying to make Doris see Cochran for what he is.
The Ku Klux Klan might have been the Elks in white sheets. No pun intended, but they get quite a white washing here. No mention at all of their racism or hatred of Catholics, Jews, and foreign born of all kinds. Still they are a nasty bunch who have a habit of doing in people who disagree with them.
Ronald Reagan here is a District Attorney who is bland in a very poorly written role. The problem with the Klan was that the various county District Attorneys in the south were more than likely Klan members or who at best just looked the other way. After all these cretins with the hoods were the very voters who put in the District Attorneys. When the Klan was prosecuted, if witnesses were found against it back in those days, it was always done at the federal level by appointed United States Attorneys.
Still Cochran and Day got the deserved best notices for this film which unfortunately defuses the issues it brings up.
For Ginger Rogers this was hardly her first dramatic part, having won an Oscar for Kitty Foyle. But this was Doris Day's first non-singing role and she acquits herself very well.
Ginger gets off a Greyhound Bus in some small southern town where her married younger sister Doris lives with her husband Steve Cochran. In those wee small hours during the graveyard shift, Ginger witnesses a murder committed by several men in white sheets. And lo and behold she recognizes one of them as Doris's husband.
Cochran is the best one in the film, a real boorish lout of a redneck. But Doris loves him although bit by bit she gets disillusioned. Rogers spends the whole film trying to make Doris see Cochran for what he is.
The Ku Klux Klan might have been the Elks in white sheets. No pun intended, but they get quite a white washing here. No mention at all of their racism or hatred of Catholics, Jews, and foreign born of all kinds. Still they are a nasty bunch who have a habit of doing in people who disagree with them.
Ronald Reagan here is a District Attorney who is bland in a very poorly written role. The problem with the Klan was that the various county District Attorneys in the south were more than likely Klan members or who at best just looked the other way. After all these cretins with the hoods were the very voters who put in the District Attorneys. When the Klan was prosecuted, if witnesses were found against it back in those days, it was always done at the federal level by appointed United States Attorneys.
Still Cochran and Day got the deserved best notices for this film which unfortunately defuses the issues it brings up.