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Just perfect...

Crappy film

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.

A good cast – Robert Taylor, Dorothy Malone, Gia Scala, Martin Gabel, Marcel Dalio, Jack Lord and Joyce Jameson – struggle in a poor screenplay by Charles Lederer, allegedly based on the short story of the same name by Irwin Shaw. I say "allegedly" because Shaw's New Yorker magazine short story is actually a variation on "Casablanca". Aside from the fact that the lead character here is broke, it's very easy to match the players. Thus Taylor has the Bogart role, Gia Scala is Ingrid Bergman, Martin Gabel is Peter Lorre, while Jack Lord impersonates the Paul Henreid character. And needless to say, Irwin Shaw's Bogartian hero is a disillusioned, cynical romantic. In fact, Shaw's story is significantly set in Paris (not Madrid) and is thoroughly suffused with a "Casablanca" atmosphere of disillusionment, as well as being cynical and sharp. Unfortunately, none of this makes it to the M-G-M movie. Instead Tip's plot concentrates on the hero's wife (who is only mentioned in passing in Shaw's story as an ex-wife). The movie is also padded out with a lot of comic relief routines from Marcel Dalio and Joyce Jameson (who are not present in Shaw at all). The only plot elements which actually correspond are our hero's loss of his shirt on a dead jockey and his getting involved in Smith's smuggling racket. The rest of this attempted film noir not only deviates completely from what Shaw wrote , but is totally unlike Shaw in characterization and mood. Reading the story, you are instantly struck by the "Casablanca" parallels, You'd never guess such a connection in a million years with the movie! The picture is tricked out to 98 minutes by means of a lot of dialogue padding. Dorothy Malone's scenes particularly requite quite a lot of trimming. She's also none too flatteringly costumed or photographed. Richard Thorpe's direction, as well as all other credits including Rozsa's music score, rate as strictly routine.

Robert Taylor is an irresponsible ex-pilot surviving in Madrid on is winnings at roulette and he's visited by his wife, Dorothy Malone, on whom he ran out. What's his problem? Well, he's been a pilot in two wars and it's eroded his confidence. (Kids: Those two wars are World War II and Korea. PS: We won the first and drew a stalemate on the second. PPS: Madrid is in Spain.) He even had to quit his job flying for a commercial airline.Other characters include his egregiously unfunny comic sidekick, Marcel Dalio, his flying buddy Jack Lord, and Lord's wife Gia Scala. Taylor is cutely, kiddingly, flirtatious with Lord's wife, wisecracking that it's the job of a man's best friend, to be in love with the best friend's wife.Enter the unctuous Martin Gabel, short and bald, who offers Taylor an amazing sum to simply fly some money from Egypt to Sicily for an Egyptian millionaire. Gabel engineers an accident in a horse race that kills the jockey and leaves Taylor broke. But Taylor still doesn't accept, and not just on moral grounds but because he's terrified of flying an airplane. No single traumatic episode lies behind the phobia. It's simply that there has been an accretion of guilt over the responsibilities he's had that have led to the death of so many of his friends. If that sounds like a loose end, a weakness in the plot, it's not. It would have been far easier to pin the blame on an accident while Taylor was at the controls, the kind of hoary cliché parodied in "Airplane." Taylor's demons are more diffuse, more challenging.At any rate, if Taylor himself is uninterested in undertaking this illegal but "perfectly safe" smuggling deal, his best friend Jack Lord is not. Lord accepts the job and returns three days later, revealing that it turned out to be more dangerous than described but only a dry run.Lord is anxious to get going again but he's not the flier that Taylor is, so Taylor cold cocks him and takes off with Dalio seated beside him. It develops that there is more to the job than simply smuggling some harmless cash from Egypt into Italy. Gabel is a treacherous murderer.The title is keen, isn't it? "Tip On A Dead Jockey"? And the death of the jockey is integral to the plot. Further, the story itself is full of potential. International smuggling, with a sweating Robert Taylor jockeying the endangered airplane through the sky, pursued by pursuit planes, and Dalio making wisecracks and swilling booze out of the bottle? And, in fact, the script isn't unintelligently written. There is a scene, for instance, in which Dorothy Malone has an shouting argument with Taylor and pins down his psychodynamics in a most convincing manner, that explains such otherwise obscure plot elements as Taylor's flirting with Lord's wife -- not that it's been in any way bothersome to anyone.But it doesn't rise above the mediocre. I was trying to figure out why it didn't. I think the problem lies with the uninspired direction by Richard Thorpe and the stiff, routinized acting of some of the principals. Marcel Dalio, in a familiar role, doesn't go wrong, but Jack Lord sounds like the TV personality he was to become, Taylor's range is limited to grim sincerity, and the lovely Dorothy Malone can't act at all. Gia Scala is animated enough and queerly attractive.But the direction is approached as if it were some humdrum job, fixing a flat tire or something. It's Spain but without color. There is no poetry in it. I'll give one example of what I mean. At a party, Taylor is playing up to Gia Scala, showing a little more than the amount of affection called for, and Taylor's wife, Malone, is watching with interest. There are several reaction shots of her. And that's all she does. She watches. She stares at the semi-seductive exchange between her husband and another man's wife without the slightest hint of embarrassment, jealousy, irritation, anxiety, or any of the other emotions a normally loving and possessive spouse would display. Thorpe never asked her to lower her gaze or turn away or change her expression. It's as if the director's thoughts went no farther than, "Let's see -- the flirting calls for the three of them to be in the shot so I'll put the camera here. Then, for a close up, I'll put the camera over here. There, that's it!"I'll let it go at that. It's a great title. The movie isn't dislikable. It's just that it would have been even easier to smuggle in the drama than it was to smuggle in the illegal cash. The failure is due to pilot error.

Tip on a Dead Jockey, is a good introspective movie with character studies of people in turmoil. Robert Taylor plays a former fly boy that has lost his nerve, his love and his honor. He moves to Spain to get away, and forget how afraid he is of everything. He has a house guest, many parties, many days at the races and little of anything else. Lloyd Tredman (Taylor) is a very troubled man. He has divorced his wife Phyllis (Dorothy Malone) without any explanation and she goes to Spain to find out why. The reason he says, is because he is all used up, too many times he sent flyers out to certain death, and there is just nothing left for him to give. Martin Gabel offers him $25,000 to fly in and out of Spain and drop a package filled with money, but Lloyd can not go, too afraid, so he gives the job to Jimmy (Jack Lord) his best friend. Lloyd thinks he is love with Paquita (Gia Scala), Jimmy's wife. Gabel tells him this is his chance with her if Jimmy does not return. He leaves, runs away, but is summoned back to console Paquita when Jimmy is 3 days late. Phyllis accuses him of trying to murder Jimmy because of Paquita, and he goes over the edge and slaps her. This scene is worth the whole movie. Dorthy Malone, as the embittered and confused ex-wife is great in this scene, with Taylor at his best as the accused. In the end he flies the plane, after he regains his courage, and finds that Gabel has hidden heroine in the package. He alerts the authorities and they arrest Gable and his helpers. He then goes to Phyliss to mend the marriage. Robert Taylor is always good as the man with the hidden past as in "High Wall", "Rogue Cop", and "Ride Vaquero".

A wooden treatment of a shell shocked Korean war vet expatting it in Madrid. Malone barely registers ennui, disillusionment, or any other weight of the world characteristics; he acts more like the suburban dad opting not to shave all weekend. Dalio, the Casablanca croupier, is reduced to playing Malone's colorful sidekick, but a little goes a long way. Jack Lord and his Kennedyesque hairdo go through the motions. Bits of the script, co-written by Shaw, stand out, especially Malone comparing his domestic situation to a Balzac story, "too many people." The title drew me in, and I got a pig in a poke.