Review of Bright Leaf

In 1950, when this film was released, tobacco smoking, mainly involving cigarettes, was considered a necessity by the majority of American men, and minority of women. The advantages were considered to trump various disadvantages, including increasing evidence of significant health risks, such as lung cancer. Thus, the men responsible for inventing a machine that rolled and packaged cigarettes were considered heroes for much reducing the cost of cigarettes. That's what this film is about. Ironically, Patricia Neal, one of the stars would die of lung cancer, and Gary Cooper, another star, would die at the relatively young age of 60 from a cancer that eventually went to his lungs. Many of the movie stars of this era died prematurely of lung cancer, or other maladies, in which smoking was later proven to be a significant risk factor......Revenge is the primary motivation for much of the action. We have Brant Royle's(Gary Cooper) strong motivation to eventually bring local tobacco magnet Major Singleton to his knees for running Brant's family out of the area some years go. Now , Brant returns, ostensibly to settle his uncle's estate, but also with the mind to ruin Singleton, and marry his daughter. He hopes to accomplish this by commercializing a machine that rolls tobacco into cigarettes and packages them, thus making cigarettes much cheaper than the cigars that Singleton champions. After Brant's success, Singleton wants to extract revenge by challenging Brant in a formal duel. Brant declines, citing laws that prohibit such duels, and stating that they are a waste of human life. Singleton calls him a yellow-bellied coward, but Brant won't change his mind. Singleton threatens that he will shoot Brant , in any case. And, he does, but a compromise shot that only wounds Brant. He then retires to his buggy and shoots himself. In effect, Brant won the duel, completing his revenge against Singleton.,,......John Barton(Jeff Corey),who invented the cigarette machine, extracted revenge for Brant's eventual belittling of his role in the company, going to Detroit to take part in the automobile revolution......Most shockingly, Singleton's daughter, Margaret, accepted Brant's marriage proposal mainly to extract revenge for bankrupting her family and being the cause of her father's suicide. She did this by engineering anti-monopoly lawsuits, and by selling the many shares of the company that Brant had entrusted her with. ...... There's the romantic triangle between Margaret, Brant, and Sonia(Lauren Bacall). Sonia was a more lovable person than the aristocratic Margaret. She loaned Brant the money to start his business. However, she suffered the indignity of being the madame of a bordello, disguised as a rooming house. Brant made the wrong choice of social position over love. After Margaret left him, he tried to return to Sonia, but she said that all the things she used to love about him had vanished.......I question why Barton resorted to someone like Brant , with no capital of his own, to commercialize his machine? Surely, there were plenty of wealthy men who could see the financial gain. Also, Brant's choice of con-man Chris Malley(Jack Carson) as a business partner is curious. Chris was a mere patent medicine peddler when Brant met him. He became rather skilled in running parts off the company.......I much enjoyed this obscure gem, shown on the TCM channel........Note that Cooper and Neal had also stared in a film the previous year, and had an ongoing affair......Director Michael Curtiz also had directed the previous acclaimed "Mildred Pierce", the screenplay of which has many similarities to this film.