Dust Be My Destiny *** (1939, John Garfield, Priscilla Lane) – Classic Movie Review 12,533

Jerome Odlum’s novel Dust Be My Destiny is filmed in 1939 as the exciting film noir crime drama Dust Be My Destiny starring a near sensational John Garfield as a man who gets into desperate trouble after being sentenced to a work farm.

Director Lewis Seiler’s 1939 Warner Bros film noir crime drama Dust Be My Destiny stars John Garfield and Priscilla Lane.

Oh dear, poor John Garfield! His character Joe Bell is just freed from jail for a crime he didn’t commit when he’s arrested for vagrancy, sent to a farm to work, and there accused of killing the hard-boozing foreman (Stanley Ridges), the stepfather of Mabel Alden (Lane), who has fallen for Garfield. Ridges has found out about the couple, and hits Lane, leading Garfield to slug Ridges, who promptly and inconveniently dies of a heart attack. The duo then go on the run, fast.

Despite this much-trodden innocent-on-the-road-to-ruin plot based on Jerome Odlum’s 1939 novel, Robert Rossen and Seton I Miller (uncredited) have written a quality script, and director Seiler turns in a tense, exciting movie, getting top-class performances from all involved, with Garfield pretty well near sensational in his portrait of an honest but bitter loser, and Lane always good company.

American writer Jerome Odlum (August 6, 1905 – March 2, 1954) served a term in prison for forgery, and later became a reporter and then managing editor of The Minneapolis News. Odlum became a screenwriter after he published the novel Each Dawn I Die in 1938 and it was adapted to the James Cagney film Each Dawn I Die in 1939. He provided the ‘idea’ for Warner Bros’ very similar film I Was Framed (1942).

Odlum’s 1941 novel Nine Lives Are Not Enough was filmed in 1941 as Nine Lives Are Not Enough starring Ronald Reagan as a reporter trying to solve a series of boarding house murders.

The cast are John Garfield as Joe Bell, Priscilla Lane as Mabel Alden, Alan Hale Sr as Mike Leonard, Frank McHugh as Caruthers, Billy Halop as Hank Glenn, Bobby Jordan as Jimmy Glenn, Charley Grapewin as Pop, Henry Armetta as Nick Spelucci, Stanley Ridges as Charles Garreth, John Litel as the Prosecutor, Moroni Olsen as Slim Jones, Victor Kilian, Frank Jaquet, Ferike Boros, Marc Lawrence, Arthur Aylesworth, William B Davidson, George Irving, Ward Bond, Gertrude Astor, Wade Botelier, Sidney Bracey, Yakima Canutt, Eddy Chandler, Spencer Charters, Cliff Clark, Chester Clute, Edgar Dearing, Creighton Hale, Charles Halton, John Hamilton, William Hopper, Eddie Kane, Jack Mower, Frank Orth, John Sheehan, Lee Shumway, Dick Wessel, Tom Wilson, and Maris Wrixon.

© Derek Winnert 2023 – Classic Movie Review 12,533

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