Steel Town

Steel Town is a nice B film from Universal studios that has John Lund going to work at a steel mill to learn the business from the ground up. He's the son of the boss, but dad has never forgotten his roots. He has Lund boarding with an old friend from his beginning days William Harrigan and his wife Eileen Crowe. Also staying at the house is Ann Sheridan their daughter who slings hash at the local eatery popularized by the factory workers and James Best a young steel factory worker whose dad was killed at the mill in an accident. He's a reminder of what can go wrong if one is not always alert.

Lund has a rival for Sheridan in Howard Duff also a veteran worker at the plant. In a way their rivalry is a whole lot like the rivalry of soldiers for the affections of the girl be left behind in a slew of war pictures. Don't kid yourself, these workers see themselves in as rigorous and occupation as any the military has to offer.

In fact that notion is graphically demonstrated by the cinematography showing the making of steel, how these guys are working near furnaces operating at hundreds of degrees fahrenheit.

Watching Steel Town put me in mind of a story how the fabled Yankee owner Colonel Jacob Ruppert learned the brewery business also from the ground up. Purportedly Ruppert's dad sent his son to work in the factory so as to learn the business from the ground up. His first job was washing the kegs where the beer was to be stored.

All the players get right into their roles, so much so that you cease to think of them as actors and view them in the blue collar roles they are playing. This film above all is a nice tribute to the working people who really made this country great.

John Lund may be in position to inherit the steel mill, but his uncle wants him to learn what goes on from the ground up. So he moves into the home of uncle's one-time fellow puddler William Harrigan. Harrigan's daughter is Ann Sheridan with a strawberry-blonde rinse and, apparently, a given name of 'Red'. Lund is+ working under Miss Sheridan's boyfriend, Howard Duff.

I suppose Lund is supposed to be the hero, his vast wealth irrelevant, his arrogance delightful insouciance, his learning how to shovel into a furnace without burning out his eyes more significant than cramming for a test, then forgetting everything but the diploma. I find Duff's dislike very natural as Lund tries to appropriate his girl, and Miss Sheridan's reverse snobbery until she realizes that it's just as easy to fall in love with a rich man as a poor one. Of course Lund will make good. Of course he'll marry Miss Sheridan. What they'll talk about evenings is a problem that can be resolved in the divorce courts.

As usual, I enjoyed Miss Sheridan, who always is busy doing whatever she is doing at the moment, and dislike Lund, one of the lesser examples of Post-War Leading Man: handsome, stalwart, and utterly interchangeable. With Eileen Crow, Chick Chandler, and a surprisingly natural Nancy Culp as a hash house waitress.

If this film is nothing else, it is an excellent statement/commentary on a working class town in the 1950s. Great use of color for 1952, which was allegedly done to properly feature Ann Sheridan's red hair. Many scenes were filmed at the Kaiser steel plant in Fontana, CA. What the average viewer in the 21st century probably will not know is that the cars used in this movie were manufactured by the Kaiser-Frazer Motor corporation. Of all the aspects of this film, seeing these old cars, a very colorful 1951 Kaiser driven by Lund and a 1951 Henry J (also made by Kaiser) driven by Duff, was a real treat. Not much of a story but excellent social commentary on a period many look back on with rose colored glasses.

Outstanding documentation of the open hearth steel making process! The tour of the mill that Steve Kostane (John Lund) is given is an excellent summary, from raw materials (including coke-making!) into the blast furnace to produce the iron, to steel in the open hearth, to teeming the red-hot ingots and readying them for the rolling mill. There are not many integrated steel mills like this left in the US, and none AFAIK use the open hearth process anymore (today steel is made in the BOF, basic oxygen furnace, or is melted from scrap). BTW, in addition to automaking, Kaiser Steel also had a large shipbuilding division which turned out Liberty ships in WWII.

OK, so while the movie IS a bit cornball, it's a great document in glorious living Technicolor©! It's a shame that it doesn't seem to be commercially available on DVD.

Ann Sheridan, John Lund and Howard Duff are the triangle and they all do well in their roles. The supporting cast is good, especially Nancy Kulp as a waitress coworker of Ann.

The scenes of iron being made are of interest, especially since the film is in technicolor.

Entertaining and appealing. Recommended.