Friday, October 15, 2010

Red Salute Redux



The world's sick! And you're going to be asked to pay the doctor's bill!

Critical reaction to The Red Salute AKA Her Uncle Sam:
Red Salute Opens in Circle Theater Today
W. Ward Marsh, Cleveland Plain Dealer, January 2, 1936

‘Red Salute’ annoyed me and heckled me and generally irritated me so much with its childish flag-waving and jeering at the “the other side” that I did not find it wholly entertaining. Just when it settled down to the business of entertaining that old devil ridicule would pop up and wreck what might easily have been a worthy successor to “It Happened One Night.”

It does have some very funny scenes … but it also has this mawkish and bigoted defense of an America which is not the kind of country the true patriot wants.


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Red Salute
Isi Newborn, Cleveland Press, January 3, 1936

Its manner of ridicule is so shallow and naive that it depicts radicals as simpletons, making the argument against them seem weak.

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15 Students Picket Theater, Call Film Unfair to Youth
Cleveland Plain Dealer, January 3, 1936
“The Red Salute grossly misrepresents student organizations and radical youth movements.”


The Young People’s Socialist League of Cleveland, the Young Circle League, and the combined American Student Unions of Western Reserve University, Glenville High School and John Adams High School.

Statement: “‘The Red Salute’ is a flag-waving tissue of lies and distorts the real aims of the college radical youth movement; it teaches war; it opposes free speech.”

Executive manager of theater, David Marmorstein: “The picture is good entertainment.”
Film is available for free streaming in an incomplete form here.

Original Red Salute post.

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