The Last Angry Man *** (1959, Paul Muni, David Wayne, Betsy Palmer, Billy Dee Williams, Godfrey Cambridge) – Classic Movie Review 11,377

Director Daniel Mann’s 1959 drama film The Last Angry Man is a maudlin, but often touching, carefully crafted tale of Dr Sam Abelman (Paul Muni), an aging, long-time committed family doctor in the Brooklyn slums, whose life-work is being made into a TV special after his nephew (Jeby Baker) writes a news story about him.

Muni gives a creditable, quite moving turn and picked up a Best Actor Oscar nomination (his fifth) in this, his final film after a long gap of seven years (13 years since his previous Hollywood film) thanks to his dissatisfaction with Hollywood and also to the Un-American Activities Committee.

David Wayne impresses, too, as Abelman’s producer-agent Woody Thrasher and Nancy R Pollock is convincing as his wife Sarah Abelman.

It also features Betsy Palmer, Luther Adler, Dan Tobin, Robert F Simon, Joanna Moore, Godfrey Cambridge, Claudia McNeil, and Billy Dee Williams.

It is scripted by Richard Murphy from the novel by Gerald Green, who also adapted it.

It is nominated for two Academy Awards: for Best Actor (Paul Muni) and Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Black-and-White (Carl Anderson, William Kiernan).

The film was remade in 1974 as an ABC Movie of the Week starring Pat Hingle.

Paul Muni (Austro-Hungarian-born Frederich Meshilem Meier Weisenfreund) made 22 films and won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his role in the 1936 film The Story of Louis Pasteur.

Muni’s last Hollywood had been Angel on My Shoulder (1946), then devoting most of his attention to stage work. But in 1952, Muni travelled to Italy to star in Stranger on the Prowl [Imbarco a mezzanotte] directed by Joseph Losey, partly as an act of solidarity and support for blacklisted friends living there in exile.

After The Last Angry Man, Muni mostly retired from acting through failing eyesight and other health problems, making his final screen appearance on TV in Saints and Sinners in 1962.

© Derek Winnert 2021 Classic Movie Review 11,377

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