B-movies can still have A-plus moments or messages. Case in point: Home Town Story, a 61-minute black-and-white feature made in 1951.  

To even a political score, Blake Washburn (Jeffrey Lynn), a small-town newspaper editor, goes on a crusade against a successful local manufacturing company owned by John MacFarland (Donald Crisp).

Editor Washburn prints a series of editorials criticizing “big business” and corporate profits. The crusade boosts readership but also divides the town.

One day, MacFarland comes to the newsroom for a chat with Washburn about a “personal pet theory” he has regarding profits. He delivers an eloquent and reasoned defense of profits and business. Crisp was the perfect choice for the part. Besides being an Oscar-winning actor (How Green Was My Valley, 1942) he was also a studio executive, a businessman, an advisor to Bank of America and he made a fortune in real estate.  

Some online critics dismiss the scene as crude, pro-business “propaganda” and dismiss the movie’s overall message because it was made with the help of General Motors. However, while Home Town Story has its flaws, the scene where MacFarland defends profits and “big business” is not one of them.

In fact, I wish the scene were shown and discussed in grammar schools and high schools and that this scene of the script were reprinted in economics and business textbooks. More than that, I wish someone would remake Home Town Story, as politically incorrect as that would be. I’m sure I’m not the only one tired of seeing business people portrayed in films and on TV as greedy, evil, uncaring, one-dimensional characters.

Here’s the scene. I’ve also reprinted it below. See what you think.

MacFarland (addressing Editor Washburn): “I’m interested in profits, both for myself and the customer. It’s a pet theory I have. I call it ‘profits to the customer.’ It’s very simple, not very complicated. I’m not an economist. I’m just a businessman.  I have to make a profit to stay in business…I make a profit on every electric motor I sell. But the customer must make a larger profit because if he doesn’t he won’t buy my motor and I’m out of business.  

“Yes, the customer must make a profit. For example, you have some typesetting machines out there. The manufacturer who sold them made a profit on them, but your paper would never have bought them in the first place if they couldn’t deliver something beyond their original cost. They must continue to work for your paper to be worth more to you than you paid for them.  As a customer, that’s your profit.  

“You sell your newspaper to a man for five cents. He gets news, advertisements, and all kinds of information for his home and business. He gets service beyond the value of his five cents. As a customer, that’s his profit.

“It’s the same story with everything else—the light bulb, the refrigerator, the telephone. For this (holding up a phone) we pay a few dollars a month—our profits are enormous. In case of an emergency its value can’t be estimated.

“In your editorials you’ve been insisting that because a thing is big, it’s bad. It takes bigness to do big things. Our industry’s turned out equipment for our armed forces in a remarkably short span of time. It was a big job and it was well done. It helped us to win the war and preserve our country. That’s what American industry with its bigness was able to accomplish.  Was that bad, Blake?  

“In the last fifty years we’ve come a long way. It used to take a week to get a letter across the United States. Now we do it in one day. The difference in time alone could affect the happiness of a family; it might even mean a matter of life and death.

“In my time I’ve seen advances in industry that have added twenty years to the average span of life. My father died in the old country at the age of forty, an old man. His work was absolute drudgery, slavery, on his own farm—from five o’clock in the morning until eight o’clock at night.

“But because I live in America I feel like a young man. I’ll be 65 in April. Well perhaps I thought you’d be interested in both sides of the profit question—print something else for a change.”

Washburn: “Mr. MacFarland, I don’t tell you how to run your plant so please don’t tell me how to run my paper. I’ll print my own conception of business profits. Good day, sir.”

MacFarland: “Well I just thought I’d come in and talk, which I have. Remember, Blake, when this country was first discovered there was nothing here. Now look around you—everything you see is profits—our transportation, communication, household appliances, medical equipment. Notice them sometime, Blake. They’re the real profits.”

Washburn eventually has a change of heart about business, bigness and profits.  But that gets into spoiler territory.

For movie fans there are other reasons to watch Home Town Story. Its supporting cast includes Alan Hale Jr. (Little John in the 1938 Robin Hood, “Skipper” in the mid-60s sit-com ”Gilligan’s Island”; and over 200 movies in between); a cameo by Hugh Beaumont (the father in “Leave it to Beaver”); and a small early part for Marilyn Monroe, who plays the shapely but prim newsroom secretary.

Also of interest: Crisp played Gen. Ulysses S. Grant in D.W. Griffith’s silent classic “Birth of a Nation.” Crisp was a staunch Republican, who campaigned for Dewey against FDR in 1944. He was 69 when he played MacFarland in Home Town Story.

Jeffrey Lynn (Editor Washburn) put his Hollywood career on hold for WWII, earning a Bronze Star as a combat intelligence captain in Italy and Austria. But his career really never recovered.  He had been a go-to-romantic leading man during the 30s, and was even considered for the role of Ashley Wilkes in Gone With the Wind.  In that year (1939) he played opposite Cagney and Bogart in the excellent Warner Bros. gangster picture the Roaring Twenties. But WWII was in some ways his demise.

Arthur Pierson, the writer, director and producer of Home Town Story, was born in Norway, raised in Seattle, acted on Broadway, worked for Paramount and Fox and eventually moved on to television, working as an executive at Hanna-Barbera (“The Flintstones” and “The Jetsons”).

Freelance writer Marc Beauchamp lives in far northern California. Among his former jobs he worked for the Seattle Symphony Orchestra, Kyodo News Service in Tokyo, Forbes magazine in Los Angeles, the Nasdaq Stock Market in Washington, D.C. and an electricity company in Hawaii.

Beauchamp also serves as programmer for the Anthem Libertarian Film Festival, which will meet at Paris Resort Las Vegas July 17-20. View this season’s selections and ticket information.