Stand Up and Fight, 1939, is playing on Turner Classic Movies on Thursday, January 14 at 6 p.m. est. Closed captioned.
Cynical Southern gentleman Blake Cantrell (Robert Taylor) is forced to sell his plantation and seek employment with a stagecoach company run by Captain Starkey (Wallace Beery) and owned by lovely Susan (Florence Rice). But is the company actually illegally transporting slaves? And can a leopard, the cavalier Blake, actually change its spots?
I didn’t expect much from this movie, and was thoroughly and positively surprised by the sharp writing and ebullient acting, and contrary to many A-movies of its day its aim is no way an aesthetic ‘arty’ one. Made in 1939, this movie addresses all sorts of controversial issues, and they have a way of taking you by surprise along the way. The movie is really about abolitionism and treats its subject with remarkable subtlety, although why and how the lynch-mob, the one that we encounter in the last third of the film, goes after white man Starkey is never made quite clear. Cantrell’s gradual moral reform is well-explained and plausible, not least because of Taylor’s warmth and humanity in the part. Yes, he is handsome, but here it is almost besides the point. Wallace Beery has a field day with the larger-than-life captain, very cleverly balancing on the edge of buffoonery but with plenty of edge and ambiguity.
See it, it makes a deep impression. Review by Michael Bo from Copenhagen, Denmark for the IMDb.
Candid calisthenics continue with Robert Taylor of “Stand Up and Fight” taking a stance on the baseball diamond.
Left to right: Robert Taylor; Wallace Beery with Mr. Taylor; Mr. Taylor, Mr. Beery and Director Woody vanDyke.
Robert Taylor Actor 
As the reviewer said, surprisingly good movie. I think the lynch mob was composed of Southerners who realized that Beery was primarily taking slaves North to freedom rather than the other way around. Taylor at the beginning is as nice a guy as a slave owner could be, not wanting to break up families & wanting them to be cared for, like children. He does undergo a moral transformation, short of actually becoming an active abolitionist, when the slave who helped to raise him is killed by men trying to return runaways to captivity. The use of the term “piccaninnies” (spelling?) during a slave auction is kind of mind-blowing but I guess it wasn’t shocking in 1939.
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Hi dianne. Doesn’t this movie show how in some ways we have definitely changed for the better? No one would use the word pickaninnies now but I think like other words we don’t use now, it was normal then. It’s very much a “coming of age” movie with the Taylor character evolving from a self-centered rich young man to a man with a strong character and a regard for others, even the slaves. Good to hear from you.
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