Tip on a Dead Jockey (1957)

Sorry, this movie sucks

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

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.

Perhaps it's just me, but doesn't Robert Taylor look awfully old for this role? Now he wasn't THAT old, but the late 1950s, he went from looking handsome and vigorous to very tired. And, in general, so did his performances. Here, he plays a disaffected American pilot who responds to his war experiences by dropping off the map. Instead of returning home to his adoring wife (Dorothy Malone), he moves to Madrid and sends a letter to his wife--asking for a divorce. However, Malone is not content to just do this and so she goes to Spain to try to figure out what's happened to a once excellent husband. Once there, he seems happy to see her--but also without direction and occasionally a bit of a jerk.Into this boring reunion comes a smuggler who offers to pay Taylor a ton of money. He refuses it but his young partner (Jack Lord) gets involved. But, because Lord is involved with a young lady, Taylor does the macho thing--punching Lord and flying this mission instead--even though he has PTSD due to his combat experiences. Will Taylor make it alive? Does anyone really care? The biggest problem about this film is that it's hard to really give a darn about Taylor. He seems, at times, whiny and hard to like. And, after just a bit of this, you wonder why his wife would even want him back in the first place. Overall, a time-passer and not much more.

***SPOILERS*** One of Actor Robert Taylor's forgotten movies that I suspect he hoped would stay forgotten in him playing WWII and Korean war hero Llyod Tredman who lost his nerve as a pilot in him sending scores of USAF fighter pilots to their deaths in the Korean War. Feeling that he's a complete failure in life Tredman dropped out of sight and became a full time moocher in far off Madrid Spain. Staying at his good friend and sidekick's as well as fellow moocher Toto, Marcel Daio, pad Tredman just gets himself drunk and reminisces about old times.It's when Tredman tried to divorce his wife Phyllis, Dorothy Malone, in him feeling he's not good enough for her that he opened up a can of worms in having her fly to Spain from Navada to see if there's anything wrong, in the head, with her estranged husband. Trying to make money betting on the horses, to show Phyllis what a big time gambler he is, Tredman puts his last 1,000 in Spanish currency on a horse he 's a part owner of only to have the horse and its jockey Alfredo, Jimmy Murphy, tripped up in the stretch with both, horse and jockey, ending up dead. Broke and facing eviction Tredman finally gives into mobster Bert Smith, Martin Gable, offer to fly a plane with 85 pounds of British 5 pound notes, worth some 200,000 dollars, from Cairo Egypt and then on the return trip drop them in an empty field outside Madrid for Smith and his hoods to grab! For this dangerous mission Smith offers Tredman $25,000.00.Things get even more complicated then they already are with Tredman's good friend and Air Force buddy Jimmy Heldor, Jack Lord, taking up Smith's offer in that the yellow bellied Tredman doesn't have the stomach to do the job. It's when Jimmy almost lost his life, by getting himself lost over the Mediterranean Sea, in a dry run that Tredman decides against his better judgment to do the flying! That's only if Toto, who never flew a plane in his life, agrees to be his co-pilot.***SPOILERS*** The movie gets overly confusing and ridicules with a at first scared out of his wits Tredman suddenly getting his courage, in flying an airplane, back as he flies rings around, on land as well as in the air, those trying to stop him in his secret mission for gangster Bert Smith. It's only later that Tredman finds out that Smith is actually using him to smuggle heroin not British 5 pound notes back into Spain that really turns him off! In the end Tredman sets Smith, who planned to murder him as soon as he landed, up by having the Madrid police and INTEPOL Agents nab him and his henchman before they could make their successful getaway. Now with both his courage and wife Phyills back Tredman can go back to the life that he abandoned back in Korea by getting his job back as a commercial pilot instead of being the leach and good for nothing bum that he had since become.

Tip On A Dead Jockey is an average action/adventure film that finds Robert Taylor as an Air Force veteran settled in Spain after he thinks he's gotten a divorce from Dorothy Malone. He's a Korean War pilot group commander who ordered too many men to their deaths and is now just sick of flying. He's living in Madrid with house guest Marcel Dalio and his best friends are fellow Korean war pilot Jack Lord and his wife Gia Scala.It turns out his divorce never went through with Malone so she follows him to Europe to see if she can get her man back. At the same time a rather oily Martin Gabel comes along with a proposition if he'll take a certain package from Cairo to Spain he can receive a handsome amount of cash, enough to clear up his mounting debts.Taylor might need that money as a steeplechase race he had some heavy bets on was lost due to a spill that cost the jockey his life. It's only when Scala puts her foot down on Jack Lord making the run that Taylor does with Dalio along for company.Tip On A Dead Jockey is a strangely introspective action film with Taylor just wanting to retire from life and wanting to leave Malone because he feels she's entitled to the man she married, not who he is now. Dorothy Malone was fresh off an Oscar for Written on the Wind and she was at the height of her career. She's miles from the amoral nymphomaniac she got the Oscar for. But she's also far away from the good girl leading ladies she had played for a decade in any number of B films. Malone gives a good account of herself the woman not taking divorce for an answer. Martin Gabel played mostly oily characters in his film career, so just his first appearance on the screen tells you he's up to no good. Hence there's no real suspense in Tip On A Dead Jockey.Though he gets out of the bind Gabel puts him in, it's a strangely action-less conclusion to the film. Probably it's closer than to what most of us would do in the situation.Tip On A Dead Jockey features some earnest performances by the cast, but the film is not on the best 10 list for any involved.And we never do find out what happened to that jockey.