Storm Center

Page 426 of the July/August 1956 issue of the ALA Bulletin, first page of article on 1956 film, "Storm Center"

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Q. I saw this week’s article at the Huffington Post website about movie librarians, Librarians Save The Day! 11 Great Movies In Which They Star. I was very surprised to see a film there starring one of my favorite actresses, Bette Davis, that I never heard of! By any chance, can ALA tell me anything about Storm Center (1956)? I’m hoping to add it to my list of requested films from that online DVD rental service.

A. I also first found out about Storm Center in an article — that was in an issue of the precursor to American Libraries, the ALA Bulletin. The July/August 1956 issue had a two-page article that featured still photographs from the film. But more importantly, the article explained that there was a private preview showing of the film at the ALA 75th Annual Conference that year in Miami Beach, at the First General Session at 8:00 pm on Monday, June 18, at the Miami Beach Auditorium. The showing of the Columbia Pictures release was presumably set up when the film’s producer, Julian Blaustein, and its director and co-writer, Daniel Taradash, spoke about the film at the Midwinter Meeting earlier that year.

The movie’s events were largely fiction, but the character played by Bette Davis was based on Miss Ruth Brown, Librarian of the Bartlesville Public Library in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, from 1919 until she was fired in 1950 on suspicion of being a Communist. Her so-called crimes included treating the town’s African American residents as equals, letting them borrow books from the library well before Brown v. Board of Education allowed them access. There’s a bust of Miss Ruth Brown at the Bartlesville Public Library that recognizes and celebrates her achievements which include: 

“Miss Ruth Brown is nationally recognized as the first librarian in the United States to receive help from the Intellectual Freedom Committee of the American Library Association.”

However, before you go looking to rent the DVD, you should be aware that the film hasn’t yet been officially released on DVD — and wasn’t released on home video before that. The reason for this is unknown, but a guess that it’s the film’s still rather controversial subject matter of book censorship doesn’t sound unreasonable.

Storm Center is still shown on television and at special theater screenings, so it isn’t completely unavailable to the public. Some online dealers selling the film on DVD and VHS — with some being recordings of the film’s television airings — claim Storm Center is in the public domain, but the film’s copyright status is actually unclear at this time. There are a few libraries that have Storm Center in their holdings; contact those libraries directly for more information.