9/16/08: Big Jim McLain (1952)We don’t want to start any rumors, but it’s 1952 and Hawaii is already crawling with Communist agents. Fortunately, as we’re assured by the narrator of
Big Jim McLain, our own agents are putting Commies on trial in the Hearing Room of the U.S. House Un-American Activities Committee. We’re further assured that the good men of the HUAC are “undaunted by the…slander leveled against them.” The bad news is that we’re watching a sleazeball Economics professor invoking the Fifth Amendment after being asked if he’s now or even been a member of the Communist Party.
John Wayne—as our titular hero—takes over the narrating from here. He’s glaring at the Commie, but McLain’s a fairly mellow HUAC inspector. “My fellow investigator Mal Baxter,” explains McLain, “he hates these people.” That’s bad news for the Commies, since Even Bigger Mal is played by James Arness—and the producers (which include Wayne) must’ve gone out of their way to find an actor who could tower over their leading man.
McLain tries to stay apolitical. He’s in the HUAC offices listening to Mal complaining about missing a good chance to just throttle that Economics professor. “Young, ain’t he?” says a bemused McLain. McLain is more likely to get upset over the insufficient funding that comes with his “bum job.” Things look up when McLain and Baxter are sent on assignment to beautiful Honolulu.
They’ve got a nice hotel room on the beach. There are honeymooners next door, as McLain learns when Baxter tries out their surveillance equipment. “Who do you think you’re working for,” asks McLain, “Dr. Kinsey?” The two agents then visit the USS Arizona before getting to work subpoenaing the local Reds.
McLain and Baxter are working with proud dockworkers who are sick of the Communists infiltrating their union. These patriots have good reason to be concerned. There’s a Commie agent named Sturak who’s developing a plot to paralyze international shipping. Specifically, his cronies “must cause enough dissention to cause a labor stoppage.”
McLain seems more interested in romancing a sweet local nurse. The film spends a lot of time on this charming love story—along with the amazing Veda Ann Borg as a bawdy admirer of McLain’s— while it’s left to Baxter to come to a bad end while pursuing the Commies. As we noted, McLain isn’t a particularly dedicated agent. As he says to Nancy at one point, “We better get out of here before I start talking politics!”
Of course, things get personal once Baxter’s dead. McLain already has a hot tip from an old man who’s embarrassed that his son’s a Commie agent. “I was raised in the land of the pogrom,” explains the distressed immigrant. Even then, Big Jim isn’t a brawler. He reluctantly gets in one fight about halfway through the film, but McLain remains a pacifist even when he finally arrests Sturak and his cronies.
But first, let’s dwell on the gathering that McLain interrupts. Sturak is explaining to a few Commie dupes that they’re all about to be handed over to the authorities. They don’t like it, but Sturak assures them that they’ll all be okay. “We always take care of our own,” he intones, and we’ve all seen how that works. McLain knows he’s dealing with weasels, and that’s why he tries to keep his cool. He doesn’t hit anybody until one Commie invokes the n-word.
And then we’re back to the beginning of the movie, except it’s Sturak invoking the Fifth Amendment from the HUAC hot seat. Honolulu Chief of Police Dan Liu—who’s shown up throughout the film as himself—has a question for McLain: “I wonder how Mal would have felt about this Fifth Amendment?”
“He died for it,” replies McLain. “There are a lot of wonderful things written into the Constitution that were meant for decent, honest citizens. I resent the fact that it can be used and abused by the very people who want to destroy it.”
A few hysterical film critics say this is the scene where screenwriter James Edward Grant—and Wayne, of course—are demanding that the Fifth Amendment be written out of the Constitution. They’re typically wrong. It’s the scene where McLain becomes more resigned than ever to his bum job. It’s also the scene where Grant—and Wayne, of course, and maybe the guy who wrote the original short story—are resigned to the lies that would later be told about their work. Did we mention this was the first film Wayne ever produced?
Make it your own: Big Jim McLain recently got
a nice DVD reissue, with a fine print that shows off how the filmmakers took advantage of the Hawaiian locale. That footage of the pre-memorial USS Arizona is pretty neat, too. There’s not much in the way of additional info, though, which is a shame. It’s a very interesting film—including the fun fact that the German-dubbed version skipped the Commie angle and had Big Jim taking on a different sort of societal menace:
