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.

***
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.

***
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.

The Red Salute

"True! Timely! Terrific! See the effect RED teachings have on the youth of today!"

The Circle Theater was located at Doan's Corners, the area at Euclid Avenue and 105th & 107th Streets. Originally the Hoffman Theatre, Loew's assumed management of this 2,000 space and converted it from a live theater to a movie house. Bought by Max Marmostein in 1935, he made it a space for live performances and film.

In 1936 there was a showing of The Red Salute, which attracted the kind of protests this movie also found in other large cities. Starring Barbara Stanwyck, this anti-Communist "screwball comedy" really pissed off left-leaning college students at Western Reserve University. An army brat (Stanwyck) is in love with a Commie agitator, so her father, a General, arranges to have her kidnapped (by an aunt) to Mexico where she falls in with an AWOL soldier (Robert Young) but after returning to the States she reunites with the Communist boyfriend. However, in the end the dopey dogface convinces her that a) Democracy rules in spite of b) comparing Democracy to Communism is like comparing Christianity to Vegetarianism.

This area that was Doan's Corners has, of course, been swallowed by the Cleveland Clinic. Interestingly, I once performed I Hate This at the W.O. Walker Rehabilitation Center, which stands in virtually the same location.

Sources:
Red Scare Filmography
Encyclopedia of Cleveland History