User Reviews

Of all the "B" films that Dwan directed at Fox, I find this one as the most interesting – and it's interesting in all facets of its production, namely script, cast and direction.

Script first: It's rare to find a Hollywood movie of the 1930's that looks at so-called "coloreds" sympathetically and not only makes such a woman a major protagonist in a screenplay but the most sympathetic player in the cast. True, the film's realistic approach is a trifle vitiated by the script's melodramatic turnings in the central part of the narrative, but it comes across with considerable punch just the same. This is partly due to the casting of Fredi Washington who delivers a performance of both depth and restraint, of warmth and sincerity, and of heartening naturalness. Although the outcome is obvious, we feel for her every inch of the way.

Claire Trevor also delivers one of her best performances as a breezy, self-assured and somewhat callous sob sister, who goes around digging the dirt. She cleverly outsmarts her fellow reporters in some bitingly amusing episodes.

The rest of the players are equally adept: Eddie Anderson ("Rochester") handles a rare dramatic role – even if somewhat handicapped by a cotton wool disguise. Although Sally Blane does not come into the action until late in the piece, she makes her scenes effective. Bill Robinson, of course, is as personable as ever and the screenplay writers have seen to it that he has plenty of opportunities to do his stuff.

Now for the direction – it's a masterpiece. The whole film whizzes along at a crackerjack pace via fast dialogue delivery and inspired camera movement such as the enormous tracking shot with Claire Trevor as she walks through the so-called "colored quarter". In the same sequence, Bill Robinson is cleverly introduced with a tracking shot of his dancing feet. Sally Blane is also brought to our instant attention in a dramatic fashion when the camera swoops down from a chandelier at a society ball. I also liked the way the camera zooms in on the mirror to point out Hopton's subterfuge in the card game, and the dolly back from the winnings to reveal that Trevor has got her revenge.

Some of the action scenes are also really memorable, such as shooting through the bars of the prison gate as the spotlight picks out Douglas Fowley and tracks to the right as he attempts to shoot it out – and its all done in one dramatic take. By contrast, the chase is brilliantly put over in a different style with lots of short takes briskly edited to give it a powerful impact.

As usual in Fox "B" features of the 1930s, production values are astonishingly lavish, featuring vast studio sets crammed with dozens and dozens of extras. There's also expensive night-for-night location shooting with lots of extra players who had to be paid double money!

Wagner's photography looks really polished. Trevor looks ravishing in this one. Even though her costumes are not particularly attractive, her make-up and hair style are both superb.

Sally Blane is outfitted more attractively than usual (appropriate for her wealth), but her features are not nearly as lovingly photographed.

Robinson's feet do their remarkable dancing, without of course benefit of music – it would have been a distraction.

I could go on and on, pointing out other features such as that Bangs makes a really memorable villain and that Dwan's direction here with its brilliant use of overlapping dialogue deserves more recognition, but even Dwan's admirers never bothered with this film when Dwan was acclaimed as a Hollywood master for works that were not a quarter as brilliant in the late fifties and early sixties

About as eventfully varied as any 67-minute movie you'll ever see, Allan Dwan's One Mile from Heaven has Claire Trevor as Tex, a reporter who takes an unplanned trip to Harlem and then starts fixating on Sunny, the Shirley Temple-lookalike daughter of Flora, a Black mother (Fredi Washington). Tex instigates a juvenile court proceeding to investigate Sunny's parentage, and the newspaper coverage of the case triggers a long-dormant history involving a convict father and a now well-connected mother who believed her child to be dead. The film is a fascinating melange of the progressive and patronizing: to take just a couple of examples, the Black community exhibits a distinct lack of rancour toward Tex's meddling, accepting her actions mainly as the natural excesses of a newspaper woman and downplaying the obvious element of race-based prurience; the narrative ultimately works its way to a sort of proposed co-parenting arrangement, but one in which Flora will plainly only be marginalized over time, given the vast disparity in economic power and social connection. The film generally views Black culture in terms of prettified otherness: the depiction of Harlem, with its teeming streets and hoards of kids running outside to watch the dancing neighbourhood policeman (Bill Robinson), seems to place it as close to toytown as to heaven (Washington's inherent dignity and gravity make her a general exception to such trivialization). Still, Dwan avoids the worst potential pitfalls, and at times appears to be grasping for something genuinely and idealistically radical; Robinson's dance numbers are valuable on their own terms, and if it's hard to see his persona as that of a beat cop, it's notable that he's not merely a comic relief, but is treated as a credible and considerate moderating presence. On top of all that, the film includes strands of screwball comedy (mainly involving Tex continually getting the best of rival reporters) and of gangster melodrama, all melded together with no-nonsense efficiency and know-how.