Let Us Live

Cab driver Brick Tennant (Henry Fonda) is a righteous man. He plans to marry his lovely waitress Mary Roberts (Maureen O'Sullivan). His friend Joe Linden is down on his luck and Brick gives him a job driving his newly purchased cab. A criminal gang uses a cab to rob a cinema. A man is killed. The police round up the cab drivers around town. Brick and Joe get mistakenly picked in a lineup. Mary is Brick's alibi but the police doesn't believe her. The men are convicted with only the eye witnesses' testimonies despite Brick's faith in the system. Mary vows to find the real robbers and exonerate her beloved.

This is based on a story about a real trial. It's actually a very harrow tale of the wrongly convicted. It may come off as melodramatic especially with the coincidences needed to get to a happy ending. Some of it is written melodramatically. Holding it together is Henry Fonda's boy scout nature and Maureen O'Sullivan relentless conviction. The two Hollywood legends add the needed gravitas to the pulpy material. It's a little over an hour. It's a short theatrical movie. It's a B-movie but it has the power of an A-movie.

LET US LIVE (Columbia, 1939), directed by John Brahm, based upon the story by Joseph E. Dinneen, is an underrated melodrama starring Maureen O'Sullivan and Henry Fonda for the first and only time. Being one of many social dramas involving an innocent man, in this instance, two honorable citizens sent to prison for a crime for which they are innocent, LET US LIVE certainly falls into the class of earlier, yet stronger efforts of FURY (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1936) starring Sylvia Sidney and Spencer Tracy, and THEY WON'T FORGET (Warners, 1937) featuring Gloria Dickson and Edward Norris. Even the similar titled, YOU ONLY LIVE ONCE (United Artists, 1937) where Sylvia Sidney and Henry Fonda star as victims of circumstance, LET US LIVE falls closely to the category of MGM's FURY, but without touches of mob violence and Fritz Lang's dark and tense direction.

As with FURY, LET US LIVE starts off with amusing moments, character introduction and plot development before getting to the purpose of its title. Set in the town of Springdale, Mary Roberts (Maureen O'Sullivan), a cashier at a local luncheonette, is engaged to marry John J. "Brick" Tennant (Henry Fonda), an ambitious young taxi driver. Prior to their upcoming wedding, Brick buys his own taxi as a start for his new business, Tennant Transportation Cab Company. Because his friend, Joe Lindon (Alan Baxter), is out of work with no place to go, Brick not only offers him his apartment as a place to stay but a job working for him driving his taxi during his off hours. The next day, Brick takes Mary to church, awaiting outside during her time of prayer for her deceased mother. Nearby, a crime is being committed where a watchman is killed in front of witnesses. Three robbers, one of them named Joe (George Lynn), escape in a high speed taxi passing the church. As the chief of police (Henry Kolker) cracks down to solve the latest crime problem, various cab drivers are investigated and questioned, but only Brick and Joe are arrested and identified in a police lineup by key witnesses as the robbers. Regardless of Mary's testimony on the witness stand, the jury finds Joe and Brick guilty, with the judge passing sentence for prison time and execution. It's now up to Mary, with the help of Police Lieutenant Everett (Ralph Bellamy), to work tirelessly proving the innocence of condemned two men before it's too late.

Other members of the cast include Stanley Ridges (District Attorney); George Douglas (Ed Walsh); Philip Trent (Frank Burke); Martin Spellman (Jimmy Dugan); Charles Lane, Clarence Wilson, Harry Holman and Ray Walker.

Although John Braham is no Fritz Lang nor master of suspense, Alfred Hitchcock, this virtually unknown or forgotten director does provide some good touches of camera angles and dark visuals usually associated with themes of this category. The transformation of Fonda's character during the latter half of the story is realistically done. Of all the Fonda films in his entire career, LET US LIVE happens to be his shortest in length (66 minutes). With situations depicted that could happen to anybody, Fonda would play an innocent man wrongly accused and convicted once more, to better advantage, under Alfred Hitchcock's direction in THE WRONG MAN (Warner Brothers, 1957), another fact-based story. While the Mary role might have been played in the usual manner of Sylvia Sidney, who specialized in these character types through much of the 1930s, Maureen O'Sullivan demonstrates her ability in heavy dramatics, showing she's not just plain Jane from the popular "Tarzan" adventure series she did on her home base for MGM (1932-1942). Alan Baxter, who began his film career playing a tough hood, breaks away from such type-casting this time around, while Ralph Bellamy assumes the arm of the law rather than the guy who loses the girl as he so often did starting with the comedy, THE AWFUL TRUTH (Columbia, 1937) starring Irene Dunne and Cary Grant, for which he was nominated as Best Supporting Actor.

Not as well known as Fonda's 1939 20th Century-Fox releases of JESSE JAMES, YOUNG MR. LINCOLN and DRUMS ALONG THE MOHAWK, overlooking some lack of logic an/or unbelievable coincidences, LET US LIVE is certainly fast moving, to the point, and holds interest throughout. Aside from numerable cable television broadcasts in past years, Cinemax (1987); Turner Classic Movies and GET-TV (with commercial breaks), LET US LIVE is also available on DVD.(***)

Depression Era flick based on true story, but scaled down due to political pressure on Columbia studio (IMDB). O'Sullivan and Fonda are an all-American couple looking to marry. But then Fonda's mistakenly identified as one of three robber-killers, and sentenced to death. However, the deeply committed O'Sullivan refuses to give up and eventually enlists cop Bellamy to help. So, can they prove Fonda's innocence before his execution date.

The subtext pits "little people" like the leads against an unfeeling city bureaucracy more concerned with procedure than justice. Then too, eye-witness testimony is shown as faulty, along with miles of inflexible red-tape. The plight of ordinary folks is further suggested by the dumping of edible food the hungry need in order to drive up wholesale market prices, a not uncommon practice of the time. On the other hand, reference is made to FHA home loans as part of the New Deal's effort to ameliorate conditions. Fonda and O'Sullivan had planned their future around such a home loan. Much of this subtext, I believe, reflects common feelings of the time.

Acting-wise, O'Sullivan gets to run a gamut of emotions from dreamy eyed lover to wild-eyed desperation. That dreamy eyed first part where the couple plans their conventional future pulls us effectively into their later plight. Note, however, that the countdown to execution is not exploited in the fashion of similar crime films. The one real stretch is cop Bellamy risking his career by taking up O'Sullivan's cause. It does however show the potential feeling side to an impersonal bureaucracy, which probably helped assuage Columbia's censorship battle with Massachusetts, the locale of the actual occurrence.

Despite the obscurity, it's an interesting little film (68-minutes) that makes me wonder what the intended version would have been like.

This is a dark tale about two likable people. Well, three, if we count Ralph Bellamy: He is tossed at us in medias res and is not convincing as a police lieutenant.

The young lovers are Maureen O'Sullivan and Henry Fonda. He drives a cab. She works in a restaurant. He wants them to marry and is planning to buy a cab and maybe a few, to start a fleet.

Two decades before he starred in the Hitchcock film of this name, though, he is the wrong man. Not for the adoring (and lovely) O' Sullivan. No, he is erroneously arrested for a robbery -- and falsely identified by a pack of jackals who'd been at the crime scene.

One thing I noticed is the response O'Sullivan has when he takes her to look at some nice little homes. She's thrilled and grateful. It's amusing to contrast this to the scornful way the Audrey Totter character acts when Richard Basehart, her unwisely adoring husband in "Tension," takes her to see a little house in the suburbs he's picked out for them.

Lucien Ballard was a marvelous cinematographer -- here and always. This movie has the feel of German Expressionism, which includes a Weill-like musical score. But I'm not sure how much of the Expressionism is intended and how much is a matter of budget: For example, there are several scenes in which snow falls. The snow has a highly unreal look. It really LOOKS like soap flakes. And in an early scene when O'Sullivan humors a drunk at the restaurant where she works, the other diners laugh in the oddest way: We're meant to feel they take it in a goodhearted manner. But it sounds for all the world like a laugh track or the audience at a vaudeville show.

The change in Fonda is very impressive. I really empathized with his feeling at the start that everything is going his way; that the world is a wonderful place to be. If this were a musical comedy, a song to that effect would have followed. But Fonda didn't make musicals. It's pretty clear that he's going to be disabused of this notion; I've been there too. And he is indeed.

Maureen O'Sullivan and Henry Fonda star in "Let Us Live," a 1939 film also starring Ralph Bellamy. Fonda plays a cab driver engaged to O'Sullivan. He and the friend who is staying with him are arrested for a robbery/murder after being identified by witnesses in a lineup. They are convicted at trial and sentenced to death.

It falls to the investigating detective on the case (Bellamy) and O'Sullivan to work to clear the two men. Meanwhile, the two innocent men rot in jail with the clock ticking quickly toward execution.

This has to be the fastest trip to the gas chamber in history - we've all read the stories of people languishing on death row for 18 years. It seems like these guys only had a couple of weeks before their execution date.

The idea behind this film, though, is solid: The police believe they have the perpetrators, the DA doesn't want anything rocking the boat (even a similar robbery while the two men were in prison), and refuses to stay the executions.

I can never get over how much Jane Fonda looks like her dad when I see Fonda in early films. He gives an excellent performance here, that of a bitter, angry man convicted of something he didn't do. I always felt that Fonda as an actor became more internalized as he aged - I prefer the more emotional performances of his. O'Sullivan is energetic and determined as his fiancée, and Bellamy is good in the supporting role.

A dark, sobering film about the dangers of rushing to judgment.