Abstract
The article discusses the closing shot of Mervyn LeRoy's "I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang" (1932). Cinema doesn't get much bleaker than this savage indictment of the Deep South's prison system, released at the nadir of the Great Depression. How the blackout ending came about is shrouded in the fog of Hollywood lore, but it was not the accident once described, and it hit a raw nerve in the bitter winter of 1932. (Quotes from original text)