James Allen

James Allen is the titular protagonist of the 1932 classic crime film I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang. He's based on the real life World War I veteran Robert Elliott Burns who got involved with a Georgia chain gang and was sentenced to prison for a petty crime.
He was portrayed by Paul Muni.
== Biography ==
Prior to fighting in the war, James had an old factory job where he worked for Mr. Parker at a shoe factory. Then a few years would pass and he would take part in fighting World War I were he would became a war sergeant and lead a troop called the "Sunset Division". Not much is known about his actual contributions to the war though. After the war ended, James and his troop would return home from the war on a troop ship that docks in New York. For his future, Allen is planning on using his military's technical training to get a construction job of some kind, to put his engineering skills to good use. One of the soldiers remarks they'd be reading about him in the newspapers, foreshadowing a future event. Allen doesn't want to return to his "old grind" in a factory job.
After a triumphant parade of marching GI's in the city, he travels by train to his small hometown of Lynndale, where his mother, his possible girlfriend Alice, and older brother Rev. Clint Allen are waiting to embrace him. James' old boss Mr. Parker also is there promising to restore Jim's old factory job. Later in the Allen home, James' brother sits down and wants to hear about his actions in the war. But his single-minded concern is to have Jim accept Parker's guarantee of a job offer to take up where he left off. Since he wanted to build bridges as a master engineer instead of returning to his unexciting, clerical job in a shoe factory, Jim explains that the war had changed him, and wanted to have a worthwhile job, although his brother and mother continue to insist he returns to his job.
To appease them and follow their pre-determined plan, Jim starts work at the Parker Manufacturing Company the next day. The day begins in the shipping room, where Jim is positioned by a window to check the flow of shipments. Instead of seriously concentrating on his work, Jim watches as a bridge is being built in the distance, and takes long lunch breaks wondering around the new bridge. 
Over dinner one evening, Jim's brother mentions Mr. Parker's disappointment over his job performance. But independent, freedom-loving Jim can't concentrate on the job and wants out to go "somewhere, anywhere...just where I can do what I want to". His mother encourages him to follow his heart if that will make him happy.
Jim's travels by train from the Mid-Atlantic states to New England to New Orleans the Western States find construction work. But he's never able to find a job due to various causes, (being laid off, no jobs being available). Eventually, he drives a truck in a lumbering company - his "first job in four months." But the job is short-lived and he must again hit the road. Appearing increasingly like a transient, penniless bum, he travels by rail to the St. Louis area. In a pawn shop, he offers to give up his Belgian Croix de Guerre, but the owner already has a drawer case full of medals from other unemployed, vagrant veterans. Spiraling downward, he now walks the railroad ties with his dusty shoes in Georgia, where he beds down in a flophouse.
A fellow drifter-tramp named Pete, who is playing solitaire, proposes going to a lunch-wagon/diner for a handout of hamburgers. Hungry and destitute, Allen attempts the offer. 
Pete persuades the reluctant cook in the empty diner to toss two greasy hamburgers (covered with onions) on the grill. And then to Jim's surprise, Pete suddenly pulls a gun on the cook. At gunpoint, he also orders Allen to steal money from the register. The unwilling accomplice stuffs $5 dollars from the till into his pocket, as Pete rips out the phone lines and tells the cook not to start yelling for the police. But the police have already been alerted and kill the gunman. Allen panics and flees out the side door, and is implicated when caught with the cash, although he pleads with them saying he was framed.
Unfortunately in court, he is dealt a harsh punishment from the Judge. Since the money was found on him, and he attempted to escape making him more suspicious. Georgia state laws, claimed Allen was sentenced to prison at hard labor for ten years for the $5 robbery. Wearing the horizontally-striped uniform of a prisoner on a chain gang, he is assigned to hard labor in County Camp No. 2 - a primitive, forbidding labor camp with armed guards and a stockade.
Late in the early day, Allen and about fifty other prisoners are waken up at 4:20 AM as they are ordered to "pick 'em up" and "pull 'em through" - a noisy, chain-clinking routine. (The inmates on each side are bound and linked together by a chain that is pulled along the row of bunks and out of the dormitory. Each of them must dangle their legs over the end of the bunk, and wait for the chains to be pulled through the ring attached to their leg chains.) Unaware of the rules, Allen is abused by one of the guards for not obeying. The prisoners then listlessly shuffle into an adjoining room where a meal of tasteless, abominable food is offered (grease, fried dough, pig fat, and sorghum). After the "meal", the men are marched out and herded onto open-bed trucks by brutish prison guards, where they are again chained together for the ride to the rock pits where they split boulders with pick axes and sledge hammers. Blacks and white are segregated from each other. Allen is forced to adjust to the primitive, harrowing conditions of the penal system, brutalized by being shackled in a chain-gang, and working under forced labor conditions. During one of the work breaks in the blazing sun, he isn't believed when he tells one of the other murderous criminals that his offense for arrest was "stealing a hamburger". A prisoner is given two minutes to "brush his teeth" which meant peeing in nearby bushes. Sebastian, a powerful black prisoner is well-known among the prisoners for never missing a blow with a sledge. He would be kept in prison for the rest of his life. When Allen pauses and wipes the sweat off his brow, he is pushed to the ground by a guard for not asking permission.
That night at 8:20 PM, after a long day in the hills, the trucks return the prisoners after dark to the prison yard. One of the guards checks the chain leggings of each prisoner before they enter the bunk house. The inmates share a few large pails of soapy water to wash up in. After an atrocious dinner, the warden chooses a few men that didn't work hard enough for a flogging. Ackerman and Red - weakened from stomach cramps, are chosen first for the bare-back, torturous punishment. When Allen comes to the man's defense and calls the warden a "skunk," he is substituted in Red's place.
On Sunday, June 5 --Sunday being the only day of the week where the inmates don't have to work-- One of the inmates legally gets released at the end of their prison term, the chains bound to his feet cause him to walk with a short, faltering step. Allen thinks of his own imprisonment - he has been in the prison for only 4 weeks. Red also leaves the prison - in a pine coffin. Bomber states that the only ways to get out were to work out and die out.
One of the veteran prisoners knows that there are many barriers to escaping -- chains, bloodhounds, and a bunch of guards who'd bring him back to prison and/or kill him. Breaking out had been done before, he just had to figure out the perfect scheme. Although, it could take up to a year or two. Allen takes the advice and perseveres.
Six months pass Allen makes an escape plan. One hot, languorous day on the gang, Allen asks Sebastian to strike unerring blows at his shackles to bend their shape so he could slide him off his foot. The intense blows accurately hit their mark and Allen is able to test the result and slide the rings off his feet. After resting up on Sunday, he plans to escape on Monday. He also accepts $7 from Bomber for expenses and Barney's address in the city.
The next day during work on the gang, James Allen takes a break in the bushes, hides from the guards and slips the shackles off his legs right before making a his getaway. The guards catch him escaping and call out for their guard dogs. From there, a chase sense goes on for quite some time. Allen grabs clothes from a clothesline and changes out of his uniform, runs through the swamps, and outwits guards and bloodhounds that are chasing him by breathing through a hollow reed underwater. He finds himself in the southern city of Booneville, and is free after serving seven months of his ten-year sentence.
He carefully bypasses a policeman on the street corner, and enters I. Gollober's Classy Clothes store where he is outfitted with a suit. And at a barber shop, he is given a shave with a straight-edged razor (sharpened by a leather strap that brings back harsh memories) by Barber Bill. While in the barber's chair, he nervously listens when a policeman enters the shop, talks about his own escape to the small city, and perfectly describes him. Luckily, James is able to a evade the officer when he reads a newspaper.
He locates Barney in a downtown apartment building, where he is given a safe place to sleep for the night and "everything [[he dreams]] about on the chain gang" - booze and a woman to make him "comfortable." Barney offers him a lean and sweet blonde prostitute named Linda for the evening.
The next day, Jim passes the time waiting for the train at the depot by ordering a hamburger at a hot dog stand from the owner. He is alerted that the Chief of Police is canvassing the area for the escaped chain gang fugitive. Allen throws down his hamburger into the street and approaches the train. As he begins boarding the train, the Chief of Police shouts and points in his direction, but they run past him toward a ragged bum scurrying for cover. Although he is treated suspiciously by the train conductor, Allen isn't apprehended.
Allen travels from the South northward to the big city of Chicago where he settles and begins to create a new life for himself. At the Tri-State Engineering Company Employment Office, he applies for a job. He gives the clerk an assumed alias: Allen James.
He's able to afford a nice room near the bridge he works on, reduced in rent from a "reasonable" $25/month to $20/month by a flirtatious landlady named Marie Woods. She calls him a "gentleman" who is friendly. He puts in long hours studying books on civil engineering in the evenings, while fending off the amorous, persistent, scheming advances of Marie. After five years, he had proved himself to be an honored citizen in his job at Tri-State Engineering with a daily salary of $14. 
When Marie notices that he is packing up to leave "to move to a bigger place" - she assumes that she is being deserted. He is appreciative of all her help, but feels stifled by her possessiveness. And James admits to not loving her. So then, Marie pulls out a letter his brother had written to him and reveals she knows about him being wanted by the police and blackmailed him into married her, otherwise she'd report him to the police.
Left with no choice, James gives in and marries her, resulting in the duo having an miserable marriage, and Allen falling right into her trap. Marie's a constant spendthrift, partygoer, and unfaithful partner. At the same time, he works his way up to a senior management position in the company - General Field Superintendent.
During a dance-dinner party with his boss at the Club Chateau one evening, he makes the acquaintance of a sweet society woman named Helen. She learns that Jim likes to build bridges and roads for people to use when trying to get away from things, but that he feels destined to be locked down due to his abusive marriage.
Together, they make a personal "getaway" and park in the moonlight by Lake Michigan, where he begins to fall in love with her.
Seven months pass from August 1929 all the way to March 1930. As Marie lounges on their couch as he negotiates for a divorce, she disapproves of the split, not wanting to take any risks. When he admits his love for another woman, she is unsympathetic with his plight. So he threatens to divorce her if she won't listen to reason, and she determinedly counter-threatens him by threating to tell the police about him which he thought would be better than spending any more time with her. He finally abandons her hoping to never be involved again.
The next day, the Chairman of the Chamber of Commerce invites Allen to speak at a banquet, as a detective bursts into his office and presents a warrant for his arrest. Allen had been informed upon by his blackmailing wife. A campaign is mounted by the entire city of Chicago to save Allen from being extradited back to the South to serve out his sentence.
Allen speaks to reporters about conditions in the southern penal system, vowing that everything he said was true and he wanted the corrupt chain gang system exposed. The people of Chicago were split over what should happen to James Allen.
In the offices of the Chicago District Attorney, the DA debates Allen's extradition. A southern representative proposes for Allen to voluntarily return to the state (and pay the expenses of the case), where he would be fully pardoned and exonerated after 90 days, working in some clerical job in one of the camps. One of Allen's lawyers argues that his client shouldn't have to return at all: "Why mete out punishment to a man who has proven himself a useful and honorable citizen?" Allen's inclination, after speaking to fiancée Helen, is to get his sentence out of the way, so nothing would get in the way of their relationship.
Allen voluntarily decides to give himself up and return - on the representative's assurance of a pardon, to wipe his past slate clean. He is told he wouldn't regret his decision.
A train takes him back to the South, where Allen pays the expenses of his capture and return ($350) and his lawyer's fee ($2,500) in the Attorney at Law Mr. F.E. Ramsey's office. Ramsey admits that nothing is assured, and the promised clerical job has probably evaporated.
In the Tuttle County Prison Camp, the prisoners inform Allen that state police didn't keep their promises. He has not been made a trusty, but has been reassigned right back to an even tougher chain gang. Conditions are revealed to be no different in the bunkhouse as the camera pans through the filthy, grimy place. Bomber recognizes Allen from the other prison.
The other inmates are mocked for believing the state would pardon him from this chain gang.
Allen's case is heard in the prison board, with the chairman presiding. Ramsey introduces Allen's brother to speak on Jim's behalf. Unfortunately, The Reverend's demeanor was weak and unconvincing.
Ramsey concludes the proceedings. He states that James Allen had kept his part of the bargain. He willingly returned to Georgia and has paid all his expenses, meaning they would have to release him from the prison. The Chairman reminds the board of James' "malicious and unwarranted attack upon the chain gang system," and denounces him for his grossly exaggerated criticism of the penal system. He even uses James' own life story as proof that the chain gang rehabilitated him.
Eventually, the Prison Board makes the decision to keep James in prison, leaving Rev. Robert/"Clint" to inform his brother about their decision. Once he learn the states never had any intention of releasing him, despite their promise, he bitterly complains about nine more years of confinement.
James ultimately resigns himself to his fate, to be a "model prisoner" for nine more months to pay his obligation "in full" to the state (a year minus three months already served). His brother persuades him to "be honorably free" and supported by legions of fans throughout the country who will force the state to release him.
Eventually, the nine months pass from July all the way to March. Ramsey argues again before the stern-faced Prison Board that Allen has been a model prisoner - patient without complaining, with support from prominent individuals and organizations. I thought it was only fair that would be given his freedom while there was still time for him to regain his former position in society of prominence and universal respect.
As a result of a final report from the authorities on his new hearing, Allen is told by the warden in the bunkhouse, the board had suspended decision indefinitely. This means that the state prison had broken their promise to release Allen again. He is crushed and his hopes are dashed permanently.
Allen makes a second, amazing jail-break escape with Bomber. They steal a truck carrying a case of high-explosive dynamite and blow up a bridge (completely contradicting his well-known profession, as he literally burns his bridges to society) to seal off the pursuit of guards, and Bomber is shot dead. Allen's jailbreak quickly becomes well-known as his search becomes even more intense.
A full year passes and James Allen hadn't been heard from by any of the civilians. They wondered whether he was just another forgotten man, and Allen's case would go down as one of the most mysterious in history.
One night, James -- now a harried and frightened convict hunted like an animal by police for over a year, and well as desperate and victimized -- emerged from hiding in the shadows to see his fiancée Helen for a brief final farewell and a few words. He couldn't hang out with her much anymore because he was still in hiding. He's was doomed to stay elusive for the rest of his life without any friends, rest or peace, and has to steal in order to provide for himself.
== See also ==
James Allen on the Villains Wiki
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