STAR WITNESS (1931) B/W 68m dir: William A. Wellman

w/Walter Huston, Frances Starr, Grant Mitchell, Sally Blane, Ralph Ince, Edward J. Nugent, Dickie Moore, Nat Pendleton, George Ernest, Russell Hopton, Charles "Chic" Sale

From Crime Movies: An Illustrated History by Carlos Clarens: "In May 1931, Jack L. Warner had announced that his studio [Warner Bros.] would stop producing gangster pictures; that, as a matter of fact, he had not allowed his fifteen-year-old son to watch any of them. Behind this sudden policy reversal, one divines [Warner Bros.' general production chief Darryl F.] Zanuck about to get the jump on the other studios by launching the next vogue --- the social consciousness film. To corroborate Warner's claim of going straight, William Wellman began shooting Star Witness a month later, and the picture, a sort of rebuttal to The Public Enemy, was released by August.

"The story (by Lucien Hubbard, a Zanuck-appointed studio supervisor) brings the threat of violence into the lives of a middle-class American family which has witnessed an underworld slaying. The family might identify the culprit as mobster Maxie Campo (Ralph Ince), but all are intimidated into silence, with the exception of visiting Grandfather Summerville (Charles Sale, a vaudeville monologuist who specialized in Americana), a veteran of the Civil War. At a symbolic level, Grandpa stood for an older, idealistic America, unswerving in the performance of its duty, simple and courageous and wise. His demiurgical qualities are suggested, for instance, when he locates his abducted grandchild (Dickie Moore) through the poetic expedient of playing 'Yankee Doodle Dandy' on his tin whistle during a citywide quest. The lovable old codger also delivers a speech or two about the loss of the old Union spirit and the perils of allowing foreigners to run the country. Star Witness vividly came to terms with its 'America for Americans' theme; there was a montage of scenes showing the police raiding premises and breaking down doors to round up suspects, a purge of what looks like the Lower East Side. Grandpa's testimony sends Campo to the chair in the most economical of denouements: as Grandpa takes the oath in court, there is a cut to the headline announcing the execution. His civic mission accomplished, Grandpa returns to the old-folks home. Driving in an open wagon alongside a Civil War cemetery, he muses that soon he should be joining his fallen comrades as part of the inviolate American past. The viewer is left to wonder what is to become of the nation when men like Grandpa are no more."