Green and Brown Holmes from Robert Elliott Burns's 1932 autobiography of a similar name I Am a Fugitive from a Georgia Chain Gang!

[3] The true life story was later the basis for the television movie The Man Who Broke 1,000 Chains (1987) starring Val Kilmer.

When he announces that he wants to enter the construction industry and improve society as an engineer, his brother reacts with outrage, but his mother regretfully accepts his ambitions.

In an unnamed Southern state (the events upon which the film was based took place in Georgia), Allen visits a diner with an acquaintance, who forces him at gunpoint to participate in a robbery.

Armed guards and bloodhounds give chase, but Allen evades them by changing clothes and hiding at the bottom of a river.

Trying to forget his troubles, he attends a high-society party at the invitation of his superiors and meets and falls in love with a younger woman named Helen.

Many common citizens express their disgust with the chain gangs and their sympathy for a reformed man such as Allen, while editorials written by Southerners describe his continued freedom as a violation of "state's rights."

[7] The book recounts Burns' service on a chain gang while imprisoned in Georgia in the 1920s, his subsequent escape and the furor that developed.

In a lengthy memo to supervising producer Hal B. Wallis, Del Ruth explained his decision: "This subject is heavy and morbid...there is not one moment of relief anywhere."

Mervyn LeRoy, who was at that time directing 42nd Street (released in 1933), dropped out of the shooting and left the reins to Lloyd Bacon.

"[10] Muni set the Warner Bros. research department on a quest to procure every available book and magazine article about the penal system.

Muni fancied the idea of meeting with a guard or warden still working in Georgia, but Warner studio executives quickly rejected his suggestion.

[11] Director Mervyn LeRoy later claimed that the idea for James' retreat into darkness came to him when a fuse blew on the set, but it had been written into the script.

[11] According to Warner Bros. Records, the film earned $650,000 domestically and $949,000 foreign, making it the studio's third-highest success of 1932-33 after Gold Diggers of 1933 and Forty Second Street.

It tells with unflinching realism how chain-gang prisoners are treated and at the same time through its direction and acting it is raised far above the level of mere journalistic exposure.

[16] Jeremiah Kipp of Slant Magazine wrote in 2005, "Th[e] soul-crushing horrors of slave labor in the penal system are neatly interwoven into a highly gripping plot."

But Kipp thought, "It feels more like an uncompromising prison film than a message movie, so its frequent heavy-handedness seems more like unabashed pulp rather than sanctimony.

"[17] Kim Newman wrote in 2006 for Empire, "The most powerful of Warner Brothers’ early 1930s ‘social problem’ films, this indictment of organised cruelty remains potent, hard-hitting melodrama."

American audiences began to question the legitimacy of the U.S. legal system,[19] and in January 1933, the film's protagonist Robert Elliott Burns, who was still imprisoned in New Jersey, and several other chain gang prisoners nationwide in the U.S., were able to appeal and were released.