Storm Center

Storm Center (1956)

Who really set the town aflame?...

Politicians go after a small-town librarian when she refuses to ban a book. She's quickly labeled a Communist.

Date of release
1956-07-31
TMDB
6.9 / 10 (24)
Runtime
1h 25m
Genres
Drama
Director
Daniel Taradash

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Filmed in: California

Storm Center is a 1956 American dramatic film starring Bette Davis and directed by Daniel Taradash. The screenplay by Taradash and Elick Moll focuses on the controversial subjects of communism and censorship.

Production

In 1951, it was announced that Mary Pickford would return to the screen after an 18-year absence in The Library, produced by Stanley Kramer and directed by Irving Reis. The following year, she withdrew from the project, a month before filming was scheduled to begin, reportedly because it was not a Technicolor production.

While the events in the film are largely fictional, the character of Alicia is based on Ruth W. Brown, a Bartlesville, Oklahoma librarian who struggled with the county commission over communist literature.

Although set in New England, the film was shot on location in Santa Rosa, California.

The film features an early poster and title sequence created by noted graphic designer Saul Bass. The opening title sequence features flames that eat away at both the face of a boy and pages from a book. The two pages shown are actually duplicates of a single page from Chapter 2 of John Stuart Mill's 1859 essay "On Liberty".

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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