The story of a powerful, tyrannical father and his four sons is given a stormy look in two 20th Century Fox films. The first is a black and white, noirish drama that takes place in 1932 Manhattan, focusing on the banking industry. The remake is a colorful western that centers on a wealthy, dysfunctional ranching family set in 1880s Arizona. Both have starry casts that made each film very popular.
House of Strangers
1949 Drama
Directed by Joseph Mankiewicz
Starring
Edward G. Robinson
Susan Hayward
Richard Conte
Luther Adler
Paul Valentine
Efrem Zimbalist Jr.
Debra Paget
Esther Minciotti
Hope Emerson
Diana Douglas
Robinson is Gino Monetti, a barber whose dreams of wealth are realized when he becomes a banker. To get there he has trampled on or sidelined everyone in his path. His wife (Minciotti) rarely speaks to him and three of his four sons (Adler, Valentine and Zimbalist) are underpaid flunkies working for their father who have become bitter and vengeful. The fourth son (Conte) is an attorney working inside the bank and is his father's favorite and the only family member who cuts the old man any slack.
Conte is the central character. He is engaged to marry a family friend (Paget) but falls in love with a new client (Hayward) with whom he does more sparring than loving. The more she learns about his family the less she likes them. When Conte fails to be able to control Hayward in the manner he's accustomed to and explodes as a result, she tells him to go back to Paget if obedience is all he wants.
Robinson thinks he's king of his borough and that he's bigger, better and smarter than anyone else. While he's warned along the way that some of his business practices are at least unethical and more likely illegal, he waves away all such notions. One day he is arrested and among his questionable business practices is misapplication of funds. Conte agrees to defend him but the other three will do nothing to help cover up for him. The sons want him to go to prison and Robinson wants them to rot in hell.
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| Edward G. Robinson |
Conte somehow gets his father off the hook but he is himself arrested after trying to bribe an already sympathetic juror and he goes to prison for seven years. The elder brother, Adler, wrests control of the bank from Robinson who now sits in a huge, dark mausoleum of a house with a silent wife. Sadly, one doesn't really feel too sorry for him.
While in prison, Conte vows revenge on his brothers and blames them for Robinson's death. The brothers, in their treachery, prove that the apple doesn't fall very far from the tree.
Hayward's only scene with Robinson is good one as she tells him to stop writing to Conte, stop needling him, stop trying to send him down the same dark path as the rest of the family. When Conte gets out, she is waiting for him.
But so are the brothers. Conte is so happy about freedom and Hayward and the promise of a new life in San Francisco that he isn't interested in exacting his revenge against his brothers. But they haven't forgotten and they don't believe he has either. So they decide to kill him on the terrace of a high rise but there are unexpected results.
Mankiewicz is one of Hollywood's great directors and this is one of his great dark films. It illuminates blood not being thicker than water. It is about hatred.
Mankiewicz or someone at the studio didn't like writer Philip Yordan's screenplay, adapted from Jerome Weidman's novel, so most of it was scrapped. Mankiewicz himself rewrote all of the dialogue and much more. When Fox told the director he could have co-screenwriting credit with Yordan, he was grossed out and declined. Yordan's sole credit is unfortunate. Regardless of who did the writing, it certainly helps sell the film.
Of course, so does the acting. Arguably Conte has never had such a good part, such a well-rounded one. His character may not be in the thuggish vein of his brothers but he's not Tom Sawyer either. He infuses so many divergent characteristics but one ends up liking him and rooting for him. He works well with Hayward and they would do it again a few years later in I'll Cry Tomorrow.
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| Conte and Hayward |
Hayward delivers one of her standard spirited roles... shoulders up, head held high, self-righteous smile on her beautiful face, a bouncy gait and that big, red mane bobbing up and down with attitude. Most actresses are concerned about the entrances but I'm betting for Hayward it was her exits. She was always walking out, walking away, usually after saying something in the area of I don't care what you do. Nobody does it better...
That sweet, loving Robinson sure knew how to play despicable people. He mesmerized me. It's one of his memorable roles.
Adler certainly chews up the scenery as the nastiest of the brothers. Valentine scores well in the last scene and Zimbalist trembles well. Paget was just 15 when she played this part.
Nearly devoid of comedy, the couple of scenes between little Eddie G. and huge Hope Emerson (as Paget's pushy mother) were definitely fun.
I highly recommend this one. Here's a preview.
Broken Lance
1954 Western
Directed by Edward Dmytryk
Starring
Spencer Tracy
Robert Wagner
Jean Peters
Richard Widmark
Katy Jurado
E. G. Marshall
Eduard Franz
Earl Holliman
Hugh O'Brian
Carl Benton Reid
I cannot deny that I enjoy the colorful Broken Lance although it's just an average western. I have always been drawn to its glittering cast and to Tracy's larger than life performance . I saw this film before I saw the former so I knew nothing about Lance being a remake of sorts. Actually, when I ended up seeing House of Strangers, I remember thinking how much it reminded me of Lance.
Tracy plays an egotistical, power-hungry. controlling, often out-of-control cattle baron who has feelings of contempt for his three eldest sons (Widmark, O'Brian and Holliman) by a deceased white mother. He is, however, profoundly attached to his youngest son (Wagner) born out of Tracy's second marriage to an Indian woman (Jurado). The three eldest band together because they know they're all they have and they are united in their dismissive attitudes toward their half-brother. The older boys are also dismissive toward Jurado because of her race (and of course she's the nicest one in the story).
Much to his annoyance, Tracy is forced by law to allow copper mining on his property. When the mine begins to pollute a stream and 40 head of the ranch's horses die, Tracy is furious. He grabs his sons and other ranchers for a battle with the minors which Tracy wins for the time being. But matters are taken to court and the fierce rancher all but loses his mind when he cannot manipulate the system. When it seems certain that he will go to prison for a few years, Wagner takes the blame and does prison time for his old man.
Tracy is grooming Wagner to take over the ranch but he is not interested. Widmark, who is obsessively interested in the ranch, isn't given any hope of doing so and when Widmark realizes it, he becomes homicidal.
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| O'Brian, Holliman, Wagner, Peters, Widmark |
Widmark and Tracy come to verbal rows over the future of the ranch and Widmark threatens to take everything away from his father for being incompetent. Their relationship is a shame because Widmark's outlandish behavior is due to suffering from a lack of love from his old man. It is apparent that Holliman and O'Brian are mere saddle tramps but Widmark had more to offer... once.
He is determined to kill his father but before he can accomplish it, Tracy dies while riding his beautiful mare. Studio head Darryl Zanuck told Dmytryk that he wanted something different for Tracy's death and while Dmytryk did as he was told, he found it corny. So did I... and preposterous, too.
Later when Wagner gets out of prison, he has changed his mind about exacting revenge against his brothers but they, especially Widmark, think Wagner is up to no good so Widmark plans to do him in. A shootout between the two brothers ends as one knows it has to and a lance is broken to signify the end of the family's bad blood.
In real life Tracy and Widmark became close work buddies and they had similar ways of working. Widmark worshiped Tracy and said he learned more from him than he had any other costar. They would work together again in Judgment at Nuremberg.
Widmark did not want to make Broken Lance when it was first offered. He didn't consider it an important enough film but he changed his mind when he learned Tracy would play his father. This would be Widmark's last film under his contract with Fox and Zanuck was pissed off with him because he would not sign another contract. So he put him in this film and then at an unheard of fourth billing for the actor.
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| Tracy and Jurado |
Tracy and Wagner also developed a strong relationship as a father and son. Tracy had always been Wagner's favorite actor and they became lifelong friends who visited regularly. They, along with director Dmytryk, would next make The Mountain together. Unfortunately it was not a success.
Interestingly enough, Jurado was the only actor to get an Oscar nomination for her work. She played the patient wife far better on the screen than she did in real life.
Peters as Marshall's daughter is not given much to do as Wagner's love interest but she sure held her own in a couple of scenes with Tracy. She had worked the year before with Widmark in the exceptional film noir, Pickup on South Street. Holliman and O'Brian did not have compelling roles in much the same way Valentine and Zimbalist did not in the original. Franz, Reid and Marshall are adept character actors who always added much to any cast.
Writer Philip Yordan figures controversially in this film as he did in House of Strangers. Apparently he didn't write it and yet he won an Oscar for doing so.
Joseph McDonald's Technicolor cameras capture gorgeous Arizona locations and one of the most beautiful ranch houses I've ever seen in a western.
Dmytryk's films I seem to never miss. He did film noirs, westerns, adventure stuff, men's films. He always had my attention. He worked with a great many powerful actors and yet no one ran roughshod on Eddie Dmytryk.
Here's a look:
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