The Hairy Ape

Only the most ardent fans of the man best known to the nostalgia-minded as the title character in the radio/TV sitcom THE LIFE OF RILEY have any business viewing this weak Eugene O'Neill adaptation. The impact of its contemplative dialogue is drastically lessened by static characters and a frustratingly implausible ending. For example, are we to believe that Bendix can get away with breaking into Susan Hayward's apartment tote her around in his arms while leering perversely at her and dump her on the sofa with the close-up clearly showing she will doubtlessly be traumatized for life by this experience and then have the film end with him yucking it up with his fellow coal stokers? This damaging flaw could have easily been replaced by a complete plot rearrangement in which Bendix softens Hayward's callous snobbishness through a comically developed friendship/romance with her. Instead all we get are 90 minutes of Bendix grunting and leering in one of the most unsatisfying and disturbingly sexist pictures to come out of the Second World War.

The play THE HAIRY APE is a hundred years old. The movie was made during World War II, but the worldview behind the play comes from before World War I. The protagonist, an uneducated laborer, considers himself a man who belongs, because he keeps the machines running; but a pampered heiress is shocked at the look and sound of him and in his resentment he goes off in a self-defeating attempt to fight the world, by communism or whatever else it takes. Such a fight would be no fit material for a Hollywood movie during WWII, when the idea was that all sectors of society stand together in common cause. So in the movie, the heiress touches off a different kind of conflict-- a conflict between the common cause and her particular personal selfishness, which she supports with unlimited money and allure. Susan Hayward in full-out "divine bitch" mode adds to the conflict an element of sex that is foreign to the play. In a way, the importance that the out-of-reach woman assumes for the protagonist, and his ultimately ambiguous breakthrough meeting with her at the end of the movie, seem like a topsy-turvy version of CITY LIGHTS. William Bendix is Chaplinesque, too, as lead actor. His best scenes are scenes of silent emotion, and they are impressive. But whether or not it has to do with what we've absorbed from his usual casting elsewhere as a "good-natured slob" (to quote from THE GLASS KEY), Bendix doesn't seem to play the role with the brutal primitivity that the play implies.

Not only does the movie give a different slant to the play, it also leaves out scenes (such as the communist scene) and it inserts others (beefing up Susan Hayward's role). The result is a good, watchable film albeit a little old-fashioned, but it's shocking to think that someone could see the movie and assume it gives a reliable idea of the play.

Back in 1922 The Hairy Ape premiered on Broadway and in the role played now by William Bendix, Louis Wolheim starred in the title role. It only had a run of about 3 months so it was not a big commercial success for Eugene O'Neil. Still even second rung O'Neil is a lot better than most.

But if you expect to see much of O'Neil here you will be disappointed. In fact you'll be down right discouraged when you see that O'Neil's play has been turned into a cut rate version of Of Mice And Men. Maybe John Steinbeck should have sued.

Knowing that Wolheim originated the role of the ship's stoker I can see why Bendix was cast. He certainly played a lot of blue collar types in his career. And in a straight dramatic no deviation production of The Hairy Ape he might very well have given an outstanding performance. He's not bad in this film.

All the social commentary of what O'Neil was trying to say about the failures of capitalism and the inability of socialism to provide a meaningful alternative are missing. The film is also updated to provide references to World War II, the ship is part of a convoy. What you're left with is the fact that some are born richer and better looking than others and never the twain shall mix.

Bendix as a stoker is a man happy with his lot and in truth it's the guys who are shoveling coal into the ship's furnace that do make her go, up on top the rest just steer. And it's a dirty job, but someone has to do it.

Susan Hayward plays a rich society bitch who is teasing ship's officer John Loder for a little amusement even though her best friend and traveling companion Dorothy Comingore is in love with him. One day she wanders into the engine room and is so repelled by the dirty, sweaty, hairy Bendix that she tags on him the title of the film.

It bothers Bendix that this is how the world might see him even coming from this shallow society queen. Like Lennie from Of Mice And Men he's both repellent and pitiable. Unlike him he very well knows his own strength.

For what we get here both Bendix and Hayward deliver some fine performances. But if you want to see fine film productions of Eugene O'Neil I would check out The Iceman Cometh and Long Day's Journey Into Night.

I dare anyone who watches this film to take his or her eyes off William Bendix even for a moment. For anyone who remembers him as the bumbling sidekick in those old war movies and the miscast role as Babe Ruth and humorous radio's Life of Riley - will be amazed at this multifaceted role as the stevedore shoveling coal who ends up showing more character in his little finger than all the rest. Why he was not even nominated for Best Actor category must have been a disappointment. I read somewhere Eugene O'Neill disliked the movie (maybe because it had a happy ending!)

I caught this film on channel 13 wee hours on a Sunday morning.

Eugene O'Neill's play is used only as a frame for this production, with even the name of the eponymous lead being changed, and the action brought forward in time into the Second World (U-Boat) War period, wherein are added additional sub-plots, characters and dialogue not even remotely descended from the original. It is notable, therefore, that O'Neill's powerful brand of Expressionism is incorporated within the making of this work, by director Alfred Santell, displaying the strongest creative impulses in his career, by the splendid cinematographer Lucien Andriot, as well as production and art designer James Sullivan, and others. The result is a cultural hybrid, geared partially to please wartime audiences, but marked by the finest performance in the career of William Bendix; a singularly consistent and vicious interpretation by Susan Hayward; and by fine work from always reliable Dorothy Comingore and Roman Bohnen - the few scenes that Bendix and Hayward share are incandescent and directed brilliantly by Santell.