In Lewis Seiler’s
Dust Be My Destiny, Joe Bell (John Garfield) is a bitter young man convinced the whole world is against him. Having already spent months in jail for a crime he didn’t commit, Joe’s arrested again for disturbing the peace and sent off to a work farm, where he falls in love with Mabel Alden (Priscilla Lane), the stepdaughter of farm foreman Charles Garreth (Stanley Ridges), who strongly disapproves of the relationship. When Joe accidentally kills Garreth in a tussle, he and Mabel go on the lam, drifting from state to state to elude the police, desperate to find food and shelter at every turn (“No Tramps Allowed,” “Hoboes Not Welcome”). As an early proto-noir, the film cushions Joe’s angry nihilism with remarkable kindness from the characters who help him along the way: the train conductor, the diner owner, the deli owner, and especially the newspaper publisher Mike Leonard (Alan Hale), who hires Joe as a news photographer. With a handful of fluffy moments and a slightly cheesy happy ending,
Dust Be My Destiny isn’t anywhere near as dark as the cycle would become, but, along with Fritz Lang’s even earlier
You Only Live Once (1937), it helped establish that most enduring subcategory: the American couple on the run.
