Odds Against Tomorrow

Hollywood liberalism peaked in the late ‘fifties. Some blacklistees were finding more work, if still not being able to use their real names. Politically outspoken performer Harry Belafonte was getting the nod to produce a crime thriller for United Artists.

Derided by resentful voices as ‘Sidney Poitier with a mouth,’ the handsome Harry Belafonte had made his mark with his calypso singing and broad smile. Otto Preminger had promoted both Belafonte and Dorothy Dandridge, but African-American performers were marginalized by the Production Code and considered a business liability. The Zanuck film Island in the Sun teased at an interracial romance between Belafonte and Joan Fontaine, but the pair are never allowed to even touch each other. Much of the South wouldn’t show the picture.

Belafonte felt doubly betrayed by MGM over The World The Flesh and The Devil, a science-fiction thriller in which he and co-star Inger Stevens played the last people left alive on Earth. As explained by audio commentator Alan K. Rode, screenplay revisions eliminated the story’s mixed-race romance. The reason concocted to keep the races apart, is that Belafonte’s character is a racist.

The creative hypocrisy of those films motivated Harry Belafonte to form his own production company, which contracted with United Artists for a crime story produced and directed by the respected Robert Wise. Odds Against Tomorrow is a tough-minded crime tale with a topical racial intolerance angle. Efficient storytelling builds up considerable tension, some of which is dissipated at the climax, with a social lesson that’s much too on-the-nose: big Heists go better when crooks put race prejudice aside.

Although most famous for his later blockbuster musicals, Robert Wise had made a specialty of polished films noir: Born to Kill,  The Set-Up, The House on Telegraph Hill,  The Captive City,  I Want to Live!  Not known as an actor’s director, Wise often attracted excellent actors. This thriller has an impressive mix of top talent and interesting newcomers from the New York scene.

The story source is a book by William P. McGivern, who seemed to specialize in corrupt cops: The Big Heat, Shield for Murder. Working behind a front, the blacklisted writer Abraham Polonsky (Force of Evil) sees crime as an inevitable result of economic pressure — the poison of race prejudice only makes things worse.

A corrupt cop is at the center of Odds Against Tomorrow as well. The disgraced Dave Burke (Ed Begley) claims that he lost his NYPD badge because he wouldn’t inform on the mob. He won’t work for gangster Bacco (Will Kuluva of Crime in the Streets), but he will work with him. Dave needs two partners to rob a bank in the upstate burg of Melton. Unhappy jazz singer and xylophonist Johnny Ingram (Harry Belafonte) initially says no, despite frightening gambling debts that threaten his estranged wife (Kim Hamilton) and daughter (Lois Thorne).

The bitter ex-con Earle Slater (Robert Ryan) has serious anger issues. His hardworking wife Lorry (Shelley Winters) pays the bills, while he boosts his failing masculinity with his amorous neighbor, Helen (Gloria Grahame). Earle initially refuses Dave because he won’t work with blacks, yet he and Johnny decide they have no choice but to come in on the robbery scheme. Dave’s plan is good — but can he control his partners?  The friction between Earle and Johnny is caustic, volatile.

It’s a hostile, hardboiled world out there.

The accomplished Odds Against Tomorrow shows off Robert Wise’s talent for gritty realism. The talented filmmaker looks for creative ways to communicate the dread of a New York winter. The streets are oppressively chilly. A long shot of a street has an effect that looks as if it were seen through a slightly foggy window. Wise’s film also succeeds with Johnny Ingram’s atmospheric jazz bar milieu, which expresses his despair in the club’s smoky, music-filled performance space. We didn’t know Belafonte could play the xylophone.

Robert Wise had pulled some technical tricks in the past, as with the particularly fast deep-focus ‘Hoge’ lenses he used on his earlier The Captive City. Here he goes one step further and experiments with infra-red film, which is sensitive to heat as well as light. Green registers as white, and skies go dark making bright sunny exteriors appear bitter cold. Earle Slater’s introduction sees him walking into the sunlight on a sidewalk, and he’s so bright that he could have been composited into the shot with a traveling matte. Wise brings the infra-red trick back now and then for other bleak exterior shots. A car on a turnpike passes some grass, which looks as white as ice.

The tight, character-driven screenplay benefits from casting that feels right for every role. Belafonte plays his gambling addict with special sensitivity. Johnny Ingram’s wife left him over his irresponsibility. Only now does he care about repairing the damage to his family. Three white men — the gangster, the racist, and the duplicitous Dave Burke — oppress Johnny in different ways. His attempt to get tough only results in more pressure from Bacco. Getting drunk, he causes trouble at the nightclub, boorishly horning into another entertainer’s act. It’s a very good bit shared with singer Mae Barnes (her only feature film performance). When Johnny finally gives up waiting for a miracle at the race track, he takes Dave Burke’s offer thinking it’s the only way to survive.

Johnny is opposed by Earle Slater, yet another variation on the maladjusted problem men Robert Ryan played in noirs as varied as Edward Dmytryk’s Crossfire and Fred Zinnemann’s Act of Violence. When Earle goes out of control he’s a dangerous brute who doesn’t know his own strength. Wounded and bitter, Earle can’t even face the understanding, loving Lorry — the nicer she is the more upset he becomes. Shelley Winters gets third billing in her brief but perfectly-delivered supporting role.

“What was it like when you killed that man?”

We’re told that Ryan didn’t want to play another brutal hothead — until he read the terrific scenes he would be given. Earle’s reaction to the teasing of Gloria Grahame’s frisky neighbor Helen is pure pulp fiction, especially when she excites herself with Earle’s ‘manly’ aptitude for violence. Polonsky’s dialogue expresses the perversity of killing as a turn-on. It mirrors the vibe we get from the paperbacks of author Jim Thompson: these are unhappy people in sordid situations, finding out what they’re capable of. Ms. Grahame makes the cheap thrill explicit.

Equally indelible is the barroom confrontation between Earle and a punk soldier (Wayne Rogers of TV’s M*A*S*H) showing off for his girl (Zohra Lampert of Splendor in the Grass). It’s a convincing, frightening macho face-off challenge. We easily believe that Earle could kill a man with one blow. Earle’s victory is fairly won, yet he once again finds himself condemned as a villain.

Earle Slater would seem a variation on Sterling Hayden’s ‘hooligan’ character in the original caper drama The Asphalt Jungle. Whereas John Huston sympathizes with his crooks, Odds Against Tomorrow simply watches coldly as its thieves scratch and tear at each other.

The undeserving Dave Burke.

Ed Begley’s Dave Burke is in the middle of everything. He convinces as the cop gone bad, a furious man forcing a smile to charm his confederates. Out for revenge on a system that’s wronged him, Dave Burke doesn’t care who gets hurt. Begley and Ryan had played well together in perhaps the best of the rogue cop movies, Nicholas Ray’s On Dangerous Ground. Some viewers don’t catch Dave Burke’s nasty manipulation, conniving with Bacco to force Johnny Ingram in on the robbery. Even if Johnny’s crime gamble goes well, Bacco will make certain that he’s still behind the eight ball.

The trip to Melton gives the impression that the whole world is against this ill-chosen trio. The long afternoon wait gives the the thieves plenty of time to think about their supposedly foolproof crime plan. John Lewis’s jazz soundtrack isolates each of them, shivering in the bleak sunlight.

The actual bank robbery is too well done to spoil here. It’s not the slick caper of The Asphalt Jungle but the details appear credible enough. Robert Wise’s angles have a carefully storyboarded feel: precise, but also predetermined. The shots say ‘this is going to work!’ but Earle’s ugly attitude says otherwise. Earle is so filled with hate for Johnny that he refuses to follow the plan. In short order everything goes straight to hell.

The last three minutes of Odds Against Tomorrow are what prevents it from reaching full classic status. As if forced to stage an ‘explosive’ action finale, we’re given a replay of the end of Raoul Walsh’s White Heat. The fiery shoot-out atop a giant fuel tank may even use the same stock-shot explosion footage. A cop delivers the ironic dialogue capper, appropriate for a morally instructive Twilight Zone episode. The plea to Love Thy Neighbor is laudable, but it contradicts the film’s unyielding panorama of noir injustice, despair and failure.

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Odds Against Tomorrow is one of those movies where every bit player seems destined for great things. As a producer exercising some authority, Harry Belafonte hired a fine selection of New York performers. Each has their moment to shine — the aforementioned Mae Barnes and Kim Hamilton; congenial Mel Stuart as the elevator operator and the respected Robert Earle Jones (Wild River) as a club bouncer. Jones is the father of star James Earl Jones.

Carmen De Lavallade (Carmen Jones) gets an amorous neck ‘n’ kiss moment in the club with Belafonte. In movies she began as a dance extra, but we’re looking forward to seeing her again next month when John Sayles’ Lone Star arrives on Blu-ray. The ‘look who’s there’ surprise is a quick dialogue line and smile from none other than Cicely Tyson, as a club bartender. Ms De Lavallade gets a credit, but Tyson, Robert Earl Jones and Mel Stuart go un-billed. Diana Sands is said to be present as well, also without screen credit.

A major standout is a young Richard Bright, as a gay thug on Bacco’s payroll. As one of the few actors in all three Godfather films, he’s now as familiar as Wayne Rogers or Zohra Lampert. Future actor-assistant director-producer Burtt Harris has a small part too, his first credited acting job.