Yesterday evening my wife and I watched the 1951 movie Storm Warning starring Ginger Rogers, Doris Day, and Ronald Reagan. Prior to watching that picture if you’d said “movie starring Ginger Rogers, Doris Day, and Ronald Reagan” to me, I’d’ve thought “light comedy”. Far from it.
The movie has a Ku Klux Klan theme treated as a fairly conventional Warner Brothers crime drama with strong performances by Ronald Reagan and Ginger Rogers. The cinematography, particularly in the early part of the picture, is actually more reminiscent of late 30s or early 40s cinematography.
Amazingly, there’s nothing about race relations in the picture which got it slammed by critics at the time. The KKK is treated as a criminal gang.
Prior to Ginger Rogers taking the part, Lauren Bacall had rejected it which got her suspended by Warner Brothers. Then they offered it to Joan Crawford who turned it down, laughing, on the grounds that no one would believe that Doris Day was her sister.
It’s a pretty fair movie and it’s certainly an artifact which is what moved us to watch it in the first place. We got it on DVD from Netflix.
