Social dramas or «message films» expressed powerful lessons, such as the harsh conditions of Southern prison systems in Hell's Highway (1932) and I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang (1932), the plight of wandering groups of young
boys on freight cars during the Depression in William Wellman's Wild Boys of the Road (1933), or the lawlessness of mob rule in Fritz Lang's Fury (1936), or the resourcefulness of lifer prisoner and bird expert Robert Stroud (Burt Lancaster) in John Frankenheimer's Birdman of Alcatraz (1961), or the tale of a framed, unjustly imprisoned journalist (James Cagney) in Each Dawn I Die (19
boys on freight cars
during the
Depression in William Wellman's Wild
Boys of the Road (1933), or the lawlessness of mob rule in Fritz Lang's Fury (1936), or the resourcefulness of lifer prisoner and bird expert Robert Stroud (Burt Lancaster) in John Frankenheimer's Birdman of Alcatraz (1961), or the tale of a framed, unjustly imprisoned journalist (James Cagney) in Each Dawn I Die (19
Boys of the Road (1933), or the lawlessness of mob rule in Fritz Lang's Fury (1936), or the resourcefulness of lifer prisoner and bird expert Robert Stroud (Burt Lancaster) in John Frankenheimer's Birdman of Alcatraz (1961), or the tale of a framed, unjustly imprisoned journalist (James Cagney) in Each Dawn I Die (1939).
Each decade is illuminated by endearingly eccentric characters: an anorexic waitress falls for a wealthy college
boy in the jazz age... an exuberant young nurse questions science
during the
Depression... a homely seamstress designs a scandalous dress in the 1950s.
Born into a poor family in Wilkes - Barre, Pennsylvania, Kline was educated in a school for fatherless
boys — his father having committed suicide in 1917 — and went on to study painting in Boston and then in London.He returned to the States after marrying, made «jazz murals» and found employment as a graphic artist for the WPA
during the
Depression, settling in downtown New York City in 1939, quite down on his luck.