Tue 12 Jan 2010
Review: THE TOUGHEST MAN ALIVE (1955).
Posted by Steve under Reviews , Suspense & espionage films[3] Comments
THE TOUGHEST MAN ALIVE. Allied Artists, 1955. Dane Clark, Lita Milan, Anthony Caruso, Ross Elliott. Screenplay: Steve Fisher. Director: Sidney Salkow.
When it comes down to it, all things considered, they couldn’t have made a better choice to play the title character than Dane Clark. Short, wiry, but not overly pugnacious, he still carried himself in all of the films he made as if he had a chip on his shoulder, one that he all but asked anyone who crossed his path to knock off.
To nab a gang of crooks who’ve been stealing US government munitions and selling them to the highest bidder on the open market, Dane Clark as agent Lee Stevens goes underground, posing as the notorious soldier-of-fortune (and all around bad guy) Pete Gore (Anthony Caruso) to make contact with the gang.
And where is Pete Gore? Locked up in some Latin American prison, and of course we all know what’s going to happen down there. Stevens’ means of tracking down the high honcho of gang is Lida Velasco (the statuesque Lita Milan, who later married Ramfis Trujillo, the son of the well-known Dominican Republic dictator). Lida herself is the daughter of a recently deposed banana republic dictator, and she needs guns to overthrow the current regime.
That about sums it up, except for agent Cal York (Ross Elliott), Stevens’ primary contact with his own office. Once it’s known that his buddy is happily married, we know how that particular sidebar of the story is going to work out. Actually we pretty much how the entire story is going to end up, once it’s properly underway.
No surprises here, nor anywhere along the way.
January 12th, 2010 at 10:33 pm
The most interesting thing about this is that Steve Fisher wrote it.
Dane Clark began as a poor man’s John Garfield and segued into a touchy bad tempered leading man and character actor. To see him more relaxed and better tempered than usual check out Roy Ward Baker’s HIGHLY DANGEROUS, with a screenplay by Eric Ambler.
He also has a major role (with Garfield ironically) in another Fisher related film DESTINATION TOKYO based on Fisher’s novel and starring Cary Grant.
January 13th, 2010 at 12:11 am
Right. Steve Fisher did a lot better work for the movies than he did with this one. It wasn’t the fault of the actors, though Dane Clark was the only one with a name anyone might recognize today. They (the actors) didn’t have much to work with.
Strangely enough, since writing this review I happened to have seen Clark in the first episode of VEGA$ (not the pilot). He plays a talent agent with only one star and several pockets fill of debt, and he lets her down badly.
It was several years after TOUGHEST MAN, and he looks tired and a bit worn out, though some of that may have been the role he had to play.
— Steve
January 15th, 2010 at 12:18 am
[…] – but here immediately on the heels of another Dane Clark film, The Toughest Man Alive, reviewed here, is another one, this one coming out four years earlier. (In between but not reported on here was a […]