John Garfield must have felt right back home with this gritty and relevant social drama that was originally on Broadway in 1939 as a Group Theater production. He fits the lead of Goff who's a dirty little protection racket gangster, terrorizing the gentle people who inhabit the Sheepshead Bay area of Brooklyn.
What must have annoyed Garfield no end was the ethnic cleansing of the story, the uprooting of all the Jewishness from the original play to the film. Out Of The Fog was originally entitled The Gentle People which was written by Irwin Shaw and ran for 141 performances on Broadway in 1939. If Garfield had not been in Hollywood in 1939 he could easily have been in the lead on Broadway.
On Broadway the part was played by Franchot Tone. Garfield fits the role perfectly, but I certainly would love to have seen what Tone did with the part. The Gentle People was hardly the kind of property that his studio MGM would have bought. Over at Leo the Lion Franchot Tone was rarely out of his dinner clothes, it was later when freelanced that he showed he was capable of this kind of role on screen.
The parts played by the two older men who are among several of Garfield's 'clients' are John Qualen and Thomas Mitchell. On Broadway they had distinctly Jewish last names and were played by Lee J. Cobb and Sam Jaffe. Garfield approaches these two men who are partners in a fishing boat and offers them 'protection' for $5.00 a week, a special rate because he's liking Mitchell's daughter Ida Lupino.
Shaw's play is of course an anti-Nazi allegory, but Warner Brothers decided to take the ethnicity away from the victims. Still the message is comes through loud and clear as Qualen and Mitchell decide that when the law doesn't work, they have to take matters in their own hands.
As always the mark of a good play or film is the development of lesser characters like Aline McMahon who is the longstanding perpetually suffering mother with continual aches and pains. Also Eddie Albert who plays Ida's steady reliable beau who looks rather plain next to Garfield's flash.
Robert Homans as the Irish cop on the beat who delivers a final summation for the results of the story has some words to the wise. There are times when conventional law enforcement won't do the job.
