A little-known but quite impressive little tv film, starring some first-rate actors. If you like film noir, you'd probably like this. It has the same kind of setting, atmosphere and tensions. And in beautiful black and white.
Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theatre (TV Series)
It's Mental Work (1963)
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Downbeat but dramatically satisfying
lor_28 October 2023
Rod Serling takes a New Yorker story by John O'Hara and turns in an outstanding segment for "Chrysler Theater". Think the cynicism of "Sweet Smell of Success" but applied to a New York world of losers and you have a gripping, unrelenting miniature.
The story is not hopeless but instead a tale of dashed hopes, creating a mood that reminds me of so many classics of Italian cinema adapting the work of Alberto Moravia, the undisputed king of disillusionment (my personal favorite "From a Roman Balcony" starring Jean Sorel).
Lee J. Cobb is perfectly cast as the nearly 60 years old owner of a crummy bar, under pressure to sell out, chatting after hours with his bartender Harry Guardino. They're both supremely world-weary, if Cobb explicitly lamenting how little he has to show for in his life. The heavy in the show is expertly performed with zeo redeeming features by Stanley Adams as Cobb's nasty attorney, a racist (he delights in picking on the bar's cleanup man played by ex-boxer Archie Moore) and mean-spirited creep through and through.
With acid dialogue by Serling, the remaining character is Cobb's young girl friend, a terrific, subtle performance by Gena Rowlands as a night club hat check girl, assumed to be with the older man just out for his money. After Cobb suffers a sudden heart attack, the show builds up hopes for the other characters' future but it leads to a strong climax of Cobb finally erupting (as only he can) in his hospital bed when he feels betrayed. Story ends with a wonderful twist that results in as hopeless an ending as imaginable. For sentimental counterpoint, the bar's juke box plays Eubie Blake's classic "Memories of You".
As television entertainment, this is rather radical in its negative tone, and I wonder how it was greeted when broadcast less than a month after JFK's assassination.
The story is not hopeless but instead a tale of dashed hopes, creating a mood that reminds me of so many classics of Italian cinema adapting the work of Alberto Moravia, the undisputed king of disillusionment (my personal favorite "From a Roman Balcony" starring Jean Sorel).
Lee J. Cobb is perfectly cast as the nearly 60 years old owner of a crummy bar, under pressure to sell out, chatting after hours with his bartender Harry Guardino. They're both supremely world-weary, if Cobb explicitly lamenting how little he has to show for in his life. The heavy in the show is expertly performed with zeo redeeming features by Stanley Adams as Cobb's nasty attorney, a racist (he delights in picking on the bar's cleanup man played by ex-boxer Archie Moore) and mean-spirited creep through and through.
With acid dialogue by Serling, the remaining character is Cobb's young girl friend, a terrific, subtle performance by Gena Rowlands as a night club hat check girl, assumed to be with the older man just out for his money. After Cobb suffers a sudden heart attack, the show builds up hopes for the other characters' future but it leads to a strong climax of Cobb finally erupting (as only he can) in his hospital bed when he feels betrayed. Story ends with a wonderful twist that results in as hopeless an ending as imaginable. For sentimental counterpoint, the bar's juke box plays Eubie Blake's classic "Memories of You".
As television entertainment, this is rather radical in its negative tone, and I wonder how it was greeted when broadcast less than a month after JFK's assassination.
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