Alibi Mark

Old-time front row kids will recognize cowboy star Denny Moore as the unfortunate hobo. But no six-guns here. The short's actually a good glimpse of what Roosevelt's New Deal expected from one of its creations, the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC).

The program employed young men, usually urban, to work in rural conservation areas, thus giving them a way out of the crippling 1930's Depression. As an object lesson, the adult leader tells the cadets the story of unemployed Vince Bader (Moore), a young man riding the rails westward. Luckily the hobo soon finds a wallet. But what Vince doesn't know is that the empty leather belonged to a murdered man. So when he's discovered with it by a crowd, he's accused unjustly of murder. Will the angry mob lynch him. For the CCC cadets, Vince's story represents an object lesson in the hazards of what might happen if they drop out of the Corps.

I'm not surprised Warner Bros. produced the short; among Hollywood studios-- they were the one most interested in chronicling Depression Era hardships. Of course, 13-minutes is barely long enough to crystallize a plot, but the short does manage. And in the process, it furnishes a snapshot of New Deal hopes and efforts to confront a crippling calamity. All in all, the lesson remains an interesting little moral even for our own era.

Famed newspaper correspondent Floyd Gibbons appeared in and narrated a series of short subjects for Warner Brothers in the 30s. This particular one has Gibbons at a camp for the Civilian Conservation Corps, one of the most successful of the New Deal programs.

The CCC for our younger readers took a lot of our Depression Era youth and put them in military style camps, but set them to work on our roads and our national parks, repairing and beautifying such. This was a godsend to a lot of young men for whom there was no work in that decade. Not a bad idea for today either. The CCC only went out of business with the start of World War II.

Gibbons tells a story of a young man played by western actor Dennis Moore who was falsely accused of robbery. You'll recognize clips from Warner Brothers classics like Wild Boys Of The Road and I'm A Fugitive From A Chain Gang. Some of you might recognize others.

It's a good short dramatic film.

Alibi Mark (1937)

*** 1/2 (out of 4)

Part of Warner's "Your True Adventure" series, this short tells the story of a down on his luck man (Dennis Moore) who heads west hoping to find work during the Depression. Along his way he stops off in a small town where he finds a wallet and tries to exchange it for some food not knowing it belonged to a man murdered the previous night. This is the first short I've seen from the series so I can't say how good or bad it is overall but I really enjoyed this one here. The drama is pretty good as the innocent man gets picked up by a lynch mob and must try to get out alive. As with other Depression era shorts, this here gives a good detail of what it was like back then and how men did what they could to survive. Moore gives a very good performance in the lead and Floyd Gibbons narrates. The neat thing is that at the end of the film we get to see the real man that the story is based on.