Heroes for Sale

Heroes for Sale (1933)

*** 1/2 (out of 4)

William A. Wellman directs this hard hitting look about a man (Richard Barthelmess) who stands up during a WW1 battle and becomes a hero but he doesn't get credit for what he did as it goes to someone else. He's injured in the war and soon gets hooked on morphine and this causes him to break up when he returns home but after getting himself cleaned up he eventually gets married to a woman (Loretta Young) but soon the Depression hits and he has another chance of being a hero. This is an extremely powerful film that talks about unknown heroes who never get the credit they deserve because they don't want any credit for doing the right thing. There's a lot of blood and passion running throughout the film so it's rather obvious that this was a big subject for director Wellman. Barthelmess gives a terrific performance as he commands every scene that he's in. Aline MacMahon is great as a family friend as is Robert Barrat as a German trying to cash in on an invention. Young is very good in her small role and has some great chemistry with Barthelmess. The early WW1 scenes contains some great and bloody action as does a riot during the middle of the film, which really caught me off guard with the violence and blood shown. There are countless Pre-Code elements and the look at drug addiction is very nicely done.

Tough film from Warners during the depth of the Depression. Richard Barthelmess is great as the hapless "hero" who endures the misfortunes of WW I and the Depression, addiction and the "red scare." The film also boasts good work from Loretta Young, Aline MacMahon, Gordon Westcott, Charley Grapewin, Berton Churchill, Grant Mitchell, Robert Barrat, and James Murray as the blind solider.

Barthelmess was a major silent star and had a solid career in early talkies in films like THE LAST FLIGHT, THE DAWN PATROL, WEARY RIVER, and others. He also gave one of the all-time great performances in silent film in TOL'ABLE David.

HEROES FOR SALE is terrific because it shows how an ordinary man can beaten by an ordinary life and still be great. As Barthelmess suffers the misfortunes of war and life he seems to grow as a spiritual person. The hypocrisy around him never seems to get to his heart. There's a great scene where Barthelmess is sitting in the rain in a hobo camp when his eyes meet another man's. It's the banker's son (Gordon Westcott) who took the war glory after he thought Barthelmess had been killed. The sanctimonious banker had fired Barthelmess for his morphine addiction, but finally gets caught for stealing from the bank's depositors. The banker and son also did jail time (as Barthelmess did for leading a riot). The ironies of life become full blown there in the rain. A terrific scene.

Barthelmess is wonderful and so is Gordon Westcott (in his best film role). Young and MacMahon are always pleasures to watch.

There's something strange about watching most pre-code WB movies: they don't end so much as they just STOP. It's as if Jack Warner doled out a budget and the director just shut the production down when the film stock quit being delivered. Wild Bill Wellman's a top-notch director knee deep into his socialist fervor period (see WILD BOYS OF THE ROAD as a double bill), Barthemless is a hapless WWI vet who traded heroism for a morphine addiction--- his cowardly platoon commander got the glory and he faces the next 14 years dealing with everything life throws at him. His fortunes ironically change when his cartoon-Red neighbor (played to the usual hilt by Robert Barratt) invents a machine that allows them both to get rich, but Barthemless has gains a deeper social conscious as Barratt loses his. This is really a big budget (for Warners!) soap opera. An uplifting ending is tacked on after Barthemless disappears into the Land of the Hobos. Watchable as an example of early 30's "realism."

After the dawn of sound, Warner Bros. wandered through the early-talkie wilderness trying their hand at Technicolor musicals and revues that largely did not work out. Around 1930 they changed their output to be what we think of when we think about the Warner Bros. of the 1930's - gritty Depression era films that pulled no punches in depicting the hardships of those days. Here Richard Barthelemess is Tom Holmes. Tom's life is a metaphor for just about every social injustice from 1917 through 1933 you can pack into a 70-plus minute film. Through his life we visit the post-war hardships of WWI doughboys including morphine addiction, the double-edged sword of automation, the Red scares and hysteria of the 1920's, and finally the armies of unemployed Depression-era men treated as lepers as they wandered from town to town in search of non-existent jobs.

It's an interesting picture of a bleak world populated with largely unlikable characters such as the socialist who becomes a capitalist as soon as he becomes wealthy and the soldier that stole a wartime honor from Tom only to return home and not stand up for him when Tom really needs him. You do have to overcome some obvious problems in logic to enjoy this film. For one, nobody is as long-suffering as Tom Holmes is in this film, having so much adversity unjustly piled on him and still at heart an optimist. However, the film is a great political precode, and one whose script would not have been possible even a year later with its explicit sarcasm about the American social and economic order.

In under 65 minutes, "Heroes for Sale" deals with drug addiction, Red Squads, automation, the Great Depression and World War I. This movie's time frame covers the end of the Great War to the election of FDR, and makes some very pointed observations about America along the way. There are no stereotypes in this movie, and except for the sanctimonious fadeout, I would have rated this movie a 10. "Heroes for Sale" was the last movie William Wellman directed under contract at Warner Bros. and he did a great job. With the onset of the production code in July, 1934, this movie was buried because of its treatment of drug addiction. "Heroes for Sale" is a top notch movie ahead of its time.