Never Love a Stranger

I found "Never Love a Stranger" on YouTube and decided to watch it as it is the first credited movie appearance by Steve McQueen. He doesn't star in the film, but he is an important character in the story.

When the movie begins, a woman dies in a rooming house...leaving a brand new baby behind. With no other options, the boy is sent to be raised in a Catholic orphanage. While he's there, Frankie (John Drew Barrymore) makes friends with a Jewish teen, Marty (McQueen), and his family. He also makes friends with the local mob boss...a guy who likes what he sees in Frankie.

Some time later, the folks at the orphanage discover that Frankie's dead mother was Jewish...and they make arrangements to send him to a Jewish orphanage. Frankie doesn't want to go and disappears for seven years.

In the interim, Marty goes to law school and obtains a job with the District Attorney's office. When Frankie returns, he goes back into business with the mob boss...and soon is able to wrangle his way to the top of the mob empire! As a result, Marty is given a new job by the DA....to get Frankie and make sure he goes to prison! This is made all the tougher as they were friends AND Marty's sister, Julie, is in love with Frankie. What's next? See the film.

While this is generally a very good film, I think all the narration could have been removed and the film could have been a bit better. It's just too schmaltzy and unnecessary. Apart from that, it was an entertaining crime film....not noir, as it lacked the camerawork, glib dialog and violence you'd expect in noir.

I watched this to see John Drew Barrymore, whom I had never seen as an actor. The film also stars Steve McQueen, Lita Milan, and Robert Bray.

The premise is somewhat iffy. An orphan, Frankie Kane, raised in a Catholic orphanage, is found to be Jewish, so he has to be sent somewhere else. Someone asked on IMDb if this was true about the Catholic church. I have no idea. It seems to me if they could make someone a Christian, they would.

Okay, that aside, Frankie has Jewish friends, Martin Cabell (McQueen) and his sister Julie. Frankie protected Martin from some antiSemite teens, and Martin wants Frankie to teach him how to fight. Frankie also falls for Julie.

With the threat of being sent away, Frankie leaves town. He has had some contact with a gangster, Silk Fennell (Bray) before leaving. When he returns to town a hopeless bum seven years later, Bray brings him into the business. Bray is also by then involved with Julie, and she's singing in a nightclub.

Martin by now is a special prosecutor who is supposed to bring down the mob, and he wants Frankie to turn himself in. Problems ensue.

I think Frankie could have run away for another reason besides being Jewish - and I don't understand making the Cabells Jewish. It just made no sense to have that part of the story.

John Drew Barrymore, Drew's dad, John's son, was a good-looking man who reminded me of the actor Mark Goddard. He's pretty good in this. Unfortunately, he came to a bad end, and, thanks to him, his father came to a worse one.

Barrymore Sr. Had wanted to be cremated but at that time, Catholics couldn't be cremated. That law changed in 1963. Long story short, John Drew and a relative dug up Barrymore's body - after 38 years - and the leakage of body fluids nearly killed both of them. The fluids had formed a glue and attached it to the floor of the crypt, making it difficult to move, and the fluids continued leaking. John insisted on looking inside before his father was cremated and was completely freaked out.

Steve McQueen give an authoritative performance. R. G. Armstrong, a familiar face, is also in the film.

Not good - but it was written by Harold Robbins, and had I known that, I would have skipped it.

Never Love a Stranger (1958)

You might be most impressed by the early appearance of Steve McQueen, who shows a spark and intensity that makes him rise above the rest of the cast, who are really rather good in all. It says something about star power, which isn't all smoke and mirrors. You might also get a kick that the leading male (McQueen is secondary) is played by John Drew Barrymore, son of the famous John and father of the famous Drew. Sadly, this man of the generation in the middle was troubled and had a mixture of leading roles, never achieving greatness or fame.

If the plot is a familiar one about two slum kids in New York growing up into opposite roles, one a thug, the other the area's district attorney (there are several of these films), there is another theme that makes the movie singular. That is the issue of being Jewish, and at times downright anti-Semitism, though handled with kid gloves. The fighting between Catholic boys and the one Jewish kid (McQueen) is standard clan rivalry, with a religious twist. But when the other character, raised in a Catholic orphanage, discovers he is actually Jewish, his first reaction is rebellion. And the movie carries this theme throughout, adding a good if forced second level to work with.

I'm not sure it matters, but it's interesting, at least, that McQueen and Barrymore are both not Jewish as far as I know (McQueen in particular doesn't fit the stereotypes, but that's probably okay by itself), nor was the director, Robert Stevens the American (as opposed to the more famous Robert Stevens the Brit). Even more interesting, the book the movie draws from was written by Harold Robbins, whose parents were Jewish immigrants, but when he was a child he claimed (falsely) to have been raised in a Roman Catholic orphanage. For whatever reason, then, the theme is handled with a kind of detachment that makes it odd, and not nearly as affecting as, say, some of the European films that really attack the issue of "passing" for Goy when the Nazi rampage was on (Louis Malle's "Au revoir les enfants" possibly the best). The Barrymore character never does quite accept of address his heritage.

Now to be clear, the movie lacks a directorial touch to keep it alive and pertinent. It's a decent if uninspired effort, but the exceptions will make it worth a close look for some.

"Never Love A Stranger" is a badly directed movie with very poor dialogue, and an off-screen narrator pompously intoning meaningless platitudes.. The basic story is borrowed from several better films, and consequently has few surprises for the audience. However the film is of interest for other reasons.

The first major turning point in the story is based on an extraordinarily racist idea. A mother had died giving birth to a baby who is brought up in a Catholic orphanage. When the child is in his teens, it is discovered that his mother was Jewish. Although the boy has been raised from birth as a Christian, it is decided that he should be removed from the orphanage because it is felt that his parentage prevents him from being a Christian! Can any student of the Catholic Church in America confirm or deny that this kind of racist nonsense ever occurred?

Steve McQueen gives an early career performance, and already it is strikingly obvious that he has a rapport with the movie camera. Interestingly, so too has John Drew Barrymore, which raises the question of why did his movie career not prosper. Lita Milan has a strong and interesting face that is not conventionally beautiful. Thanks to Lee Garmes' lighting and to her heavy eye shadow, she seems better looking than she really is. R. G. Armstong comes in late in the movie, playing a hired assassin. Wearing glasses and city clothes, he is almost unrecognisable from the westerners he played in Sam Peckinpah's movies. Only his eyes remind the audience that they have seen him somewhere before.

The IMDb states incorrectly that Dorothy Collins is not given a screen credit, Yes she is, and so too is lyricist Lawrence Elow.

It is regrettable that "Never Love A Stranger" is such a weak movie. Buried beneath the shoddy dialogue and implausible characterisation is a workable story, struggling to emerge.

When John Drew Barrymore was making films in the 50s he opted for a more modern style than his father John Barrymore ever tried. The elder Barrymore's classical style of acting was quite passé and would never have been accepted. Sad to say that young Barrymore tried and failed to be a James Dean type rebel. For Never Love A Stranger that's especially interesting because supporting Barrymore was an actor who would become the ideal image of cool.

With elements taken from Manhattan Melodrama and Little Caesar, Never Love A Stranger is an old fashioned type film that probably was an anachronism in the 50s let alone now. Young Barrymore plays a slum kid who suffers an identity crisis when he discovers his Jewish roots after having been raised in a Catholic orphanage.

He goes away but comes back one mean and tough punk who becomes kingpin of the rackets, taking over from Robert Bray who gave him his start. And as it turns out his childhood friend, Steve McQueen becomes the special prosecutor with the mission of bringing Barrymore down.

Steve McQueen might have made this film slightly better had he been cast in the lead. But frankly this film was a turgid mess and I doubt that would have helped.