This odd little film effectively weds comedy and drama and works in practice in a way that you'd never believe if someone just laid out the plot for you on paper.John Garfield takes some chances here with his fan base as he plays a very one-dimensional hood, Goff, who goes for the easy pickings. Rather than go to the big city where he would most probably have to contend with gangsters rougher and smarter than himself, he moves in on a fishing community and chooses to shake down the peace-loving and gentle populace.Thomas Mitchell and John Qualen play pals Jonah Goodwin and Olaf Johnson, who live for the nights they go fishing - they both have day jobs. They comprise most of the comedy and the most touching parts of the drama as they gradually come to realize that the law won't help them get the ruffian Goff out of their lives, and they may just have to take action themselves. With someone like Goff, there is only one action that will work - murder.Ida Lupino plays a rather one-dimensional character herself - Jonah Goodwin's daughter Stella - and as such she is just made for Goff, whom she desperately wants on any terms regardless of what he is doing to her own father. She finds existence in the fishing village boring and is looking for a way out when Goff comes along and sweeps her off her feet by dazzling her with dollars and his devil-may-care attitude. I have to really applaud John Garfield's performance here - he shows not a shred of humanity. Considering he had already built up a reputation as playing sensitive loners, this was quite a chance he was taking.The end pulls punches compared to the story it is based upon, but you have to lay the blame for that at the feet of the censors at the time, not Warner Brothers. Highly recommended.

John Garfield must have felt right back home with this gritty and relevant social drama that was originally on Broadway in 1939 as a Group Theater production. He fits the lead of Goff who's a dirty little protection racket gangster, terrorizing the gentle people who inhabit the Sheepshead Bay area of Brooklyn.What must have annoyed Garfield no end was the ethnic cleansing of the story, the uprooting of all the Jewishness from the original play to the film. Out Of The Fog was originally entitled The Gentle People which was written by Irwin Shaw and ran for 141 performances on Broadway in 1939. If Garfield had not been in Hollywood in 1939 he could easily have been in the lead on Broadway.On Broadway the part was played by Franchot Tone. Garfield fits the role perfectly, but I certainly would love to have seen what Tone did with the part. The Gentle People was hardly the kind of property that his studio MGM would have bought. Over at Leo the Lion Franchot Tone was rarely out of his dinner clothes, it was later when freelanced that he showed he was capable of this kind of role on screen.The parts played by the two older men who are among several of Garfield's 'clients' are John Qualen and Thomas Mitchell. On Broadway they had distinctly Jewish last names and were played by Lee J. Cobb and Sam Jaffe. Garfield approaches these two men who are partners in a fishing boat and offers them 'protection' for $5.00 a week, a special rate because he's liking Mitchell's daughter Ida Lupino.Shaw's play is of course an anti-Nazi allegory, but Warner Brothers decided to take the ethnicity away from the victims. Still the message is comes through loud and clear as Qualen and Mitchell decide that when the law doesn't work, they have to take matters in their own hands. As always the mark of a good play or film is the development of lesser characters like Aline McMahon who is the longstanding perpetually suffering mother with continual aches and pains. Also Eddie Albert who plays Ida's steady reliable beau who looks rather plain next to Garfield's flash. Robert Homans as the Irish cop on the beat who delivers a final summation for the results of the story has some words to the wise. There are times when conventional law enforcement won't do the job.

(Some Spoilers) Petty shake-down artist Howard Goff, John Garfield, has everyone on the Sheepshead Bay docks terrorized in paying him protection money to keep their boats from having an unfortunate accident, like Goff setting them on fire. Getting old man Johnah Goodwin, Thomas Mitchell, and his partner Olaf Johnson, John Qualen, to pay him a $5.00 in weekly protection fee wasn't enough for the arrogant and greedy Goff. He also wanted Jonah's pretty daughter Stella, Ida Lupino, as well to be his woman and that got under the skin of Stella's long time boyfriend George, Eddie Albert, who's been waiting for years, until he saved up enough money as a fish auctioneer,to marry her.Stella for her part kind of liked the "I take whatever I want" attitude of Goff as well as his taking her out to fancy night-clubs to dance and dink the night away with him. She completely overlooked that he was shaking down her father and even worked him over with a rubber hose when he dared to go to the police for help. Goff has both Jonah and his wimpy friend and partner Olaf over a barrel in having them sign a $1,000 loan, that Goff never loaned them, to cover his weekly shakedowns of them them. The two come to the one and only conclusion that they could come up with in getting Goff out of their lives. That's to do to him what he's always threatening to do to them. Rub out the thieving good for nothing swine and do it in a way that it looks accidental!Based on the Irwin Shaw play "The Gentle People" the movie shows what was meant by the biblical saying that "The meek shall inherit the earth". Where in this case it's their fishing boats on the Sheepshead Bay docks. Goff a one man protection racket took what he wanted and feared no one not even the cops. Who in the movie was a 63 year-old arthritic looking officer Magruder, Robert Homans. Magruder in the movie is seen having trouble running, as well as walking, and was in danger of slipping on the already slippery docks.It's when both Jonah and Olaf went to the police for help and all they got for it was laughs from the judge Jonah & Olaf came to the bitter conclusion that they'll have to take the law into heir own hands to put an end to Goff's reign of terror against them and their fellow fishermen. Fortunately for them it was fate that intervened in their favor and took care of Goff, in a very unusual way, that kept Jonah & Olaf lifelong law abiding citizens from breaking the law to do it.Stella who was playing her deeply in love with her and not that bright boyfriend George for a sucker didn't at all come out smelling like a rose, or violet, in the movie. Even though George always forgave her every time that she screwed, figuratively not literally, him in two-timing George for Goff. The ending got me a little wheezy in George taking Stella back and at the same time George being such a jerk that he as much didn't feel that he was at all betrayed. In that Stella who already screwed him once would screw him a second or third or forth time as well!

"Out of the Fog." The classic title for a noir, which this is not. Instead it's basically a stagy story of two quiet elderly men (John Qualen and Thomas Mitchell) who enjoy taking their outboard motor boat out of Sheepshead Bay for night-time fishing. Mitchell has a nagging wife (Aline McMahon) and a bored, impatient daughter (Ida Lupino) who works for the phone company. Both men have dreams of getting away from it all, buying a large boat and getting out into the Gulf stream, where it's always daylight. (Here, it's always night, and always foggy.) Enter the small-time extortionist, John Garfield, who hits the two guys up for five dollars a week for "protection" of their small boat. Garfield also begins squiring around Ida Lupino, throwing his money around, bringing her orchids ("five dollars for flowers that don't smell") and alienating her from her honest boyfriend, Eddie Albert. Garfield learns from Lupino that Mitchell has saved up $190 towards that big fishing boat, and he extorts that too.Mitchell and Quaylen plot Garfield's death in a Russian spritz bad in Brooklyn, while Kropotkin, George Tobias, carries on cheerfully and endlessly in the background about how he's just become "a bankrupt." In the end, neither Mitchell nor Qualen can murder the guy, who falls overboard and dies accidentally, conveniently leaving behind his wallet full of ill-gotten dough.The play was written by Irwin Shaw, who has left a legacy of some neat short stories and novels. (Read "The Girls in Their Summer Dresses" at once.) Many of the cast and crew came from the Group Theater, a fashionable leftist organization at the time, but if anyone can sniff out a hint of communism here he must be a bloodhound or a paranoid. In the play, the two old guys managed to actually murder the thoroughly obnoxious Garfield but in the film the code wouldn't permit it.Nobody will win any medals for this production but it's tightly written and professionally acted. Or -- let's put it this way -- if you liked Sidney Kingsley's "Dead End," you ought to enjoy this one. It even has one of the Dead End Kids in it, playing a waiter.Particularly enjoyable is the brief scene in the Russian bath, with George Tobias, whose monologue is really pretty funny, and its boisterous comedy is refreshing in this rather quiet, low-key tale of crime and adaptation.