Tag Archives: Henry Fonda

The Better Angels of Our Nature

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

On September 25, 1919, a white woman named Agnes Loebeck told police she’d been assaulted by a black man on the streets of Omaha, Nebraska. The next day the cops nabbed a suspect—a 41-year-old packinghouse worker named Will Brown. They took him to the Loebeck home where Agnes ID’d him.

News of the assault spread rapidly. The Loebeck house was soon surrounded by a mob crying for a lynching. Police reinforcements had to be called in. They were finally able to get Will Brown to the jail at the courthouse.

The howls for blood grew louder. A contingent of almost fifty police officers was dispatched to guard the jail.

On Sunday, September 28, a mob started a march to the courthouse. By the time they got there it had grown to an estimated size of 15,000. Looters hit the stores of downtown Omaha, stealing guns and ammo.

Some of the rabble started firing at the courthouse. The cops returned the gunfire. A 16-year-old mob ringleader and a 34-year-old businessman were killed.

Around 8:30 p.m. the crowd set fire to the courthouse. When firemen arrived the mob prevented them from dousing the flames.

Inside the jail Will Brown cried out to the sheriff, “I am innocent! I never did it! My God, I’m innocent!”

The mayor of Omaha, a man named Smith, tried to reason with the mob. Somebody whacked him on the back of the head. He came to with a rope around his neck. Somehow somebody rescued him, though Smith ended up in the hospital.

Then around 11 p.m., with the people inside the courthouse forced out, the ravenous pack got their hands on Will Brown.

They beat him until he was bloody and unconscious, stripped off his clothes, and put a rope around his neck. Will Brown was hoisted into the air from a lamppost and, with his body spinning, the mob used it for target practice.

They tied Brown’s body to a car and dragged it through the streets. In the middle of a prominent intersection they doused Brown’s body with fuel taken from lanterns and set it on fire.

When the fire went out they dragged the remains once more around the streets of Omaha so the crowd could have a look.

Bits of the rope used to hang Will Brown were sold for 10¢ each.

There was a fourteen-year-old boy who witnessed the killing. His father owned a printing plant across the street from the courthouse. They both happened to be there that night.

Later in life that boy, the actor Henry Fonda, would reflect that it was “the most horrendous sight I’ve ever seen.” That’s why Fonda, when he became a movie star, fought hard to make the film version of The Ox-Bow Incident, about mob madness and the lynching of three innocent men.

And why Fonda brought such empathy to a scene from John Ford’s classic Young Mr. Lincoln. It’s my Fourth of July movie recommendation. The film is loosely based on a real murder defense successfully conducted by Lincoln, in what has come to be known as the “Almanac Case.” I say no more, as I want you to get the full enjoyment of the movie.

Here’s the setup. After a prologue covering a bit of Lincoln’s life in New Salem, Illinois, we move to Springfield in 1837 where Lincoln hangs his shingle. At the Independence Day celebration a local man is found stabbed to death. Two sons of a widow are accused and hauled off to jail.

Immediately a lynch mob forms. Lincoln, observing it all, tells the widow he’s now her lawyer. He gets to the jail and faces down the mob. The rest of the film is the famous trial.

It’s one of Fonda’s iconic performances, perfectly nuanced. I must also mention the supporting performance of Alice Brady as the mother of the accused. Brady was an outstanding actress who could bounce between screwball comedy (My Man Godfrey, for which she was nominated as Best Supporting Actress) drama, and musicals. She won a gold statuette for her supporting performance in In Old Chicago. Tragically, Young Mr. Lincoln was her last film, as she died of cancer at the age of 46.

The movie is magnificent hagiography, in the inimitable John Ford style. And what is the purpose of hagiography? To put it in Lincoln’s own words, it is to inspire in us “the better angels of our nature.” In that spirit, let me leave you with a short clip from the movie. Lincoln addresses the mob—and us:


May you have a happy and reflective Fourth of July.

* Source material for this post may be found here and here

Advanced Scene Technique: The Jump Cut

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

A while ago I wrote about the perils of the eating scene, how to rescue them from dullness by injecting a few forms of conflict.

Most of us include restaurant or sitting-down-for-coffee scenes in our books. They are a natural part of life and provide an opportunity to delve a little deeper into relationships. Those relationships can be between friends, family, or potential lovers.

An eating scene can also be a “breather” in an otherwise relentlessly-paced thriller. It helps sometimes to slow down the pace. The trick, of course, is not to make things too slow.

One technique to keep these scenes from bogging down is called the jump cut. This is a screenwriting term referring to a scene that jumps slightly ahead in time while staying in the same location. It’s used to excise irrelevant or otherwise dull material, so only the “good stuff” remains.

John Sandford uses this technique in his thriller Winter Prey. The hero, Lucas Davenport, is an ex-cop now living in Wisconsin. The local cops ask him to to take a look at a murder scene. There he encounters a small-town doctor named Weather Karkinnen. She is smart and straight-talking. Naturally, there’s a bit of a spark between them.

Several chapters later they see each other again. Davenport asks Weather to have dinner with him. She suggests a local joint that offers a wine choice—red or white, with breadsticks on the table. As they walk to the restaurant from the parking lot there is a small interchange of backstory material.

Then we jump cut, via white space, to their getting seated in a booth and exchanging a little more information, but deeper this time, as they are beginning to trust each other. It’s a long conversation that follows, punctuated by jump cuts. After the white space, a new paragraph begins with ALL CAPS. It looks like this:

AND LATER, OVER walleye in beer batter:
“You can’t hold together a heavy duty relationship when you’re in medical school and working to pay for it,” Weather said. He enjoyed watching her work with her knife, taking the walleye apart. Like a surgeon…

 

AFTER A CARAFE of wine: “Do you worry about the people you’ve killed?” She wasn’t joking. No smile this time.
“They were hair balls, every one of them.” …

 

“CARR SEEMS LIKE a decent sort,” Lucas said.
“He is, very decent,” Weather agreed….

 

“YOU DON’T ACT like a doctor,” Lucas said.
“You mean because I gossip and flirt?” …

And so we get through a long restaurant conversation without needless filler. It flows nicely, the conversation getting more intimate as it goes along, so by the end of the chapter we’re pretty sure these two will soon be lovers.

It’s also a nice break in what is essentially a police procedural.

White space on the page is your friend. It helps harried readers hang in there. So when you write a scene that is a long conversation, consider:

  1. Injecting tension by giving the characters different agendas.
  2. Adding conflict by giving at least one of the characters a fear or worry about something (something they don’t want to reveal to the other).
  3. Cutting filler by using the jump cut.

For a hilarious movie example of the jump cut, here is a scene from the Preston Sturges classic, The Lady Eve. Barbara Stanwyck plays a con woman who schemes to marry the straight-laced heir to a fortune, played by Henry Fonda. She doesn’t expect to fall for him, but she does.

But when Fonda discovers her duplicity, he pretends he never loved her, that he was playing her for a sucker. To get revenge, Stanwyck comes back into his life as a woman named “Eve” and wins his heart. They get married. On their honeymoon night, on a train, Stanwyck completes her plan by telling Fonda about a previous marriage when she was sixteen, to a stable boy named Angus. Fonda is shaken, but forgiving … until she starts dropping the names of several other former husbands! (Press play then move your cursor off the clip. Enjoy!)