by Stephen Vagg
Most film buffs would remember Lawrence Tierney from his late career performances, notably the bald, burly Joe Cabot in Reservoir Dogs, and as Elaine Bennis’ terrifying father in the classic Seinfeld episode, “The Jacket”.
Less well-known is Tierney’s stint as a genuine leading man. Back in the 1940s and 1950s, he was an actual star – of B pictures, admittedly, but he played leading roles and what’s more, often heroic, romantic ones. I managed to track down the nine main ones.
1. Dillinger (1945)
Tierney was born in Brooklyn in 1919. He studied at college for a few years via an athletics scholarship, then dropped out, did a variety of jobs including labouring and working as a catalogue model (!!), before drifting into acting in the 1940s. There was a shortage of male actors due to World War Two and Tierney got a contract with RKO. The studio initially seemed to envision him mostly in support parts – hoodlums, soldiers, third cowboy on the left, that sort of thing – and Tierney was cast accordingly. Then he got the break of a lifetime: the title role in Dillinger, a biopic of the notorious gangster. There was a general ban/agreement at the time among the major studios to not dramatise the lives of genuine gangsters but this film was made by the King Brothers (probably best remembered today for hiring blacklisted writers like Dalton Trumbo on the cheap), and distributed by poverty row outfit Monogram (RKO loaned out Tierney’s services). The film, directed by Max Nosseck and based on a story by eventually-legendary screenwriter Philip Yordan, was a ‘sleeper’ box office hit, made for $100,000 and grossing over $2 million. The actual movie is patchy – I was hoping for it to be a hidden gem but it’s too erratic and only vaguely touches on real life. However, Tierney is impressive as the scowling Dillinger and gives the film what life it has. RKO realised they have an actor under contract who could be their own Bogart/Cagney/Raft and tried him out as a B-picture star.…
2. Step By Step (1946)
RKO’s first lead for Tierney was, surprisingly, not very gangster-y… it feels like a project they had in mind for another star who become unavailable, so they decided to give Tierney a go (I could be wrong about that). Step by Step is a Hitchcockian B-picture about a war veteran falsely accused of murder who goes on the run with a blonde (Anne Jeffreys). Tierney is best remembered as a tubby, menacing bald dude but at this stage of life was young, slim with a full head of hair (he had been a catalogue model, remember) – the film really exploits his looks, he’s constantly shown to be irresistible to women and running around in swimming trunks. I’m not sure Tierney’s as hot as the filmmakers present him to be, but others may disagree). It’s quite a fun film, capably directed by old hand Phil Rosen, and Anne Jeffreys is a delight as the female lead.
3. San Quentin (1946)
This feels more specifically devised by RKO for Tierney, being the sort of film you could imagine Bogart making at Warners. Tierney plays an ex-con-turned-good who resorts to old tactics when his beloved mentor, a prison warden, gets in trouble. Tierney is effective and the film quite entertaining though it feels like the sequel to a more interesting movie (where the Tierney’s character initially reforms). It’s very pro-prison reform – like, to an almost annoying degree. The director was Gordon Douglas, who had a five-decade career that mostly consisted of unpretentious entertaining programmers such as this one. Tierney isn’t as effective as a hero as he would be as a villain, but you could say that about a lot of actors.
4. The Devil Thumbs a Ride (1947)
This movie has more of a cult about it, in part due to its great title, but also Tierney’s presence. After playing two heroic roles, he returned to playing an out-an-out louse as a killer who hitches a ride with a cheerful idiot (Ted North) who is required by the plot to be particularly stupid. I kept wanting this movie to be better than it was – it had Tierney playing a psychopath, a really cool title, a running time that goes for not much over an hour, brisk pacing and an opening that throws you right into it. But too much time is spent with North and various subplots that take the viewer away from Tierney. The action picks up at the end when a blonde moll gets involved with Tierney and goes along with him despite his ruthlessness, and you go “oh that’s what the film should’ve been about: you two.” The movie has a lot of fans, though. It was directed by Felix E. Feist who has a few interesting “B”s on his resume (The Threat, Donovan’s Brain).
5. Born to Kill (1947)
In Devil Thumbs a Ride I thought the film should have been about the relationship between Tierney and the brassy blonde… well that kind of happens here, with the focus being the relationship between Tierney and Claire Trevor; he’s an impulsively jealous killer, she’s his socialite sister in law. The casting’s not quite right – both are meant to be unable to resist each other in a Postman Always Rings Twice way but that worked because they were young and hot and her husband was old, and they were stuck out in the middle of nowhere; here, Trevor and Tierney are kind of old looking and she’s got another option (a dull rich man) and he’s got this hot rich sister (Audrey Long who is too good looking for Tierney). Miscasting aside, the acting is very good and there’s superb support work from Walter Slezak (sleazy investigator), Elisha Cook Jnr and Esther Howard. It was directed by Robert Wise, then during the B-pictures-at-RKO phase of his career. The film has a remarkably bleak soul, which helped it suffer at the hands of the censors. It’s probably the best of Tierney’s starring vehicles.
6. Bodyguard (1948) as Mike Carter
Tierney’s last movie for RKO. He plays the title role but actually doesn’t do much body guarding – he’s a cop who’s fired, hired as a bodyguard of someone who dies, and has to prove his innocence. This is very much a Bogart style picture; it is quite fun. The film was based on a story by a fresh-out-of-the-services-pre-industrial-filmmaker-in-Kansas-City Robert Altman (the meat packing sequence at the end apparently was inspired by Altman’s personal experiences). The director was Robert Fleischer, who was apparently set to use Tierney again in Fleischer’s next film, The Clay Pigeon but Bill Williams played the role instead. Around this time, Tierney kept getting arrested for brawls/drinking… his films weren’t making enough money for RKO to tolerate it so they let him go.
7. Kill or Be Killed (1950)
After being booted from RKO, Tierney went back to Max Nosseck, the director of Dillinger for two independent films – this and The Hoodlum. Kill or Be Killed again has Tierney in Bogart territory although not Bogart as a gangster/cop but as a heroic American in the third world: Tierney plays an engineer in South America who is falsely accused of murder and gets mixed up with crooks and revolutionaries. This is quite fun; there’s a great scene where someone dies and the camera pans around all these villagers while the music plays this Enrico Morricone-style score which is cool, and George Coulouris gives the support cast some class. This lacks the polish of a “B” picture from a major studio, but if you enjoy junky, low-budget adventure tales set in a Hollywood depiction of the third world you’ll have a good time.
The whole movie is in the public domain
8) The Hoodlum (1951)
Tierney went back to being a Bad Apple in this one, playing a robber whose over-acting ethnic mother worries about him and whose dull brother moralises at him. Once again Tierney is catnip to the ladies, seducing two women who find him irresistible (one who’s engaged to his brother, the other who helps him rob a bank). It’s not a very good movie: the low budget hurts the production value and quality of the support cast.
The film is in the public domain
9) The Female Jungle (1955)
Tierney’s last leading role was in a super low budgeter but it actually works in a way because the film is set in a studio and set entirely at night so it’s got this surreal, nightmare quality that is effective. This is a Laura (1944)-esque tale in which Tierney plays a cop investigating a crime which he might’ve committed because he was too drunk to remember what he was doing on the night in question. The support cast includes John Carradine and Jayne Mansfield. This was an early AIP release. I enjoyed it a lot, and Tierney should really have continued as a leading man (there was always work for tough guy actors) if he hadn’t been so hard to deal with.
