Black Legion is a 1937 American melodrama film, directed by Archie Mayo, with a script by Abem Finkel and William Wister Haines based on an original story by producer Robert Lord. The film stars Humphrey Bogart, Dick Foran, Erin O'Brien-Moore and Ann Sheridan and is a fictionalized story about the real-life Black Legion of the 1930s. It was inspired by the May 1935 murder in Michigan of Charles Poole, a Works Progress Administration worker. Columbia Pictures had previously made Legion of Terror in 1936 based on the same case. Many of the details about the Legion portrayed in Black Legion,... such as the initiation oath and the confessions in the trial scenes, were based on known facts about the actual organization, but because American libel laws had recently been broadened in scope by court rulings, Warner Bros. was forced to underplay some aspects of the group's political activities to avoid legal repercussion. Nevertheless, the Ku Klux Klan sued Warner Bros. for patent infringement for the film's use of a patented Klan insignia, a white cross on a red background with a black square. A judge threw out the case.
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| Release date: | 1937 |
| Directed by: | Archie Mayo, Michael Curtiz |
| Runtime: | 83 Minutes |
| Producer: | Hal B. Wallis, Robert Lord |
| Cinematography: | George Barnes |
| Estimated budget: | $235,000 |