La belle et la brute

Hank (William Bendix) is a coal stoker on a ship that travels between New York and Lisbon. He is brutish, shouts a lot and enjoys fighting. When he has an encounter with Mildred (Susan Hayward) who calls him a "Hairy Ape", he is so enraged that he wants to square things with her. They land at New York and Hank traces her and confronts her in her apartment. Can they resolve their differences?

The film is much better in the second half as we see more from Susan Hayward's character. She takes the acting honours in the film. The scenes between her and Bendix are emotionally charged and she portrays an unlikeable wealthy spoilt brat very convincingly. Dorothy Comingore is also good as her friend Helen, who finally abandons her after Mildred's appalling treatment of her friend, Tony (John Loder). Bendix is good in the lead role but this film is ultimately let down by the noise levels. The shouty dialogue is very annoying and the film is occasionally inaudible because of the shouting. Thank goodness for the scenes with Hayward where we can involve ourselves with the dialogue more clearly. The film starts badly with lots of shouting and a fight in a bar that goes on for far too long. Unfortunately, half of the film is delivered in this intrusive way, so it's ultimately just not very good.

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.

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.

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.

When I saw that this was playing on TCM, I was thrilled. I had never seen this movie before, and it seems impossible to find anywhere. As a Eugene O'Neill fan—I think he is the greatest American Playwright, ever--I was anxious to have this movie for my collection of films and movies based on his plays I have almost all of his major plays (often two versions) and some his minor ones.

My glee at finally having this movie, was short lived when I noticed that, although the film had been restored, its technical quality looks as if it hadn't been--and needed to be. It's hard to imagine what this film looked like BEFORE it was restored!!

In addition, there is very little similarity between O'Neill's play and this movie--either in plot or dialogue. Any similarity between the two is purely superficial, and the movie leaves out the GUTS of O'Neill's play altogether. Perhaps that's why the movie made such little sense and hardly held together at all. Although both the PLAY and the MOVIE stress the way that the classes view each other, O'Neill's PLAY (written in 1922) has a healthy dose of anti-capitalism and a bar speech suggesting Marxism, even if only by a comical drunk. The 1944 movie seems to have expunged any hint of these references.

Near the end of the PLAY, fellow workers tell 'Yank' to get even with Mildred's wealthy father by joining the Wobblies or the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). No one mentions this to 'Hank,' (William Bendix): unlike in the play, Hank never tries to join the local I.W.W. (Even the protagonist's name is changed from 'Yank' in the play to 'Hank' in the MOVIE. The name 'Hank' could be short for Harry, suggesting 'Hairy' in the name of the play.)

In the PLAY, Mildred willfully does volunteer social work in Manhattan's Lower East Side and is ridiculed by her aunt for 'slumming.' In the MOVIE, Mildred (Susan Hayward), pretends to do social work--in Lisbon, while having fun instead. Here, her longtime friend and companion, Helen (Dorothy Comingore), is the real do good-er who chides Mildred for her not doing the work assigned to her in Lisbon. In the PLAY, Mildred's critic is her aunt, who says that her good works just make the lower class feel worse. Again, there are complete changes in characters and motives from the aunt in the PLAY to the friend in the MOVIE!!

In the PLAY, Mildred is NOT the vixen-like villain that she is in the MOVIE. True, Hank is arrested and jailed for a disturbance outside of Mildred's 5th Avenue apartment, but not for the same reasons as in the movie. After being jailed, he is put in cell alone, not with other prisoners who talk to him about labor unions (as in the PLAY).

In the MOVIE, after he is released from jail, he visits the gorilla cage, notices that the gorilla likes to smash things, and then sneaks into Mildred's apartment to 'smash her.' In the MOVIE, we don't know how he gets any revelation by 'seeing how the other half lives' and deciding that their lives are just like his. That is, if he doesn't 'smash her,' as his voice-over tells him to do, we don't know why. Most importantly, the final scene of the PLAY is at the gorilla's cage of the carnival. The MOVIE just kind of throws that scene in earlier--BEFORE he sneaks into Mildred's apartment to 'smash her.'

While there ARE SOME common scenes between the play and the movie, the MOVIE SO mixes up the intent of the PLAY that I am not sure why O'Neill--who must have had to agree with some of the movie content--even agreed to let the movie be shown as a representation of the PLAY.