If you have been following our Robert Ryan blogathon, which began on Thursday and leads up to TCM’s 100^th Birthday Tribute to him on November 11^th, you’ll notice that the Morlocks tend to favor his more intense performances in such films as Nicholas Ray’s ON DANGEROUS GROUND, Edward Dmytryk’s CROSSFIRE, and Fritz Lang’s CLASH BY NIGHT. And I’m no exception, favoring his hateful and pathetic portrayal of Earle Slater in ODDS AGAINST TOMORROW, directed by Robert Wise.

While Ryan made all kinds of films and played many sympathetic, likable and even heroic characters on the screen, his villains tend to stand out in a more extreme way because of their sheer complexity. Ryan’s John Claggart in BILLY BUDD or his Ben Vandergroat in Anthony Mann’s THE NAKED SPUR or the role of Joe Parkson in Fred Zinnemann’s ACT OF VIOLENCE are such rich, psychologically twisted characters because they are not simply evil in black and white terms – they are recognizably human if emotionally damaged. They have their vulnerable sides but instinctively subvert emotions like tenderness and compassion upon recognizing them. Earle Slater in ODDS AGAINST TOMORROW is a similar piece of work but a much more schizophrenic mixture of psychotic misanthrope and self-loathing loser.

Although Slater has a Southern accent, his sketchy background suggests a lifetime of rootlessness from moving around the country. His status as an ex-con has also reduced his employment opportunities but it’s his bitter me-against-the-world attitude that dooms almost any enterprise he attempts. We get our first glimpse of Ryan in ODDS AGAINST TOMORROW as he strolls menacingly down a New York City city on a bleak mid-winter day. When he playfully scoops up a small black child running on the sidewalk and says teasingly, “You little pickaninny. Ya gonna kill yourself flying like that. Yeah, ya are,” we aren’t completely certain whether his smiling face is malevolent or good-natured. By the time he has entered an apartment building manned by an elderly, slightly deaf clerk and a black elevator operator and we’ve seen Slater’s treatment of them, we know he’s a mean-spirited SOB but it isn’t until he becomes involved in a three man heist engineered by ex-cop Dave Burke (Ed Begley) that we learn just how dangerously unstable he really is. The plan is to rob a bank in a small upstate New York town on a Thursday night when all the payroll money is being prepared for Friday businesses. Burke tells his partners, “This is a one time job,” and he is more prophetic than he knows.

Of course we know Slater is the wild card in the mix. Yet even if he is completely contemptible in his dealings with most men, we see another side of him with women. With Lorry (Shelley Winters), the working class girl Slater lives with, he can open up and be intimate, which often leads to self-pity or bitter self-reflection: “I spoil everything. I can’t help it. I just have to spoil it.” The relationship is one of mutual dependency but Lorry is the breadwinner, holding down a job as manager of a hair salon. The fact that Slater can’t hold a job and has no income makes him feel less than a man with Lorry.

In contrast, Helen (Gloria Grahame), a married neighbor in the apartment, is turned on by Slater’s tough demeanor and reputation for serving time for murder. He, in turn, is more comfortable playing the sexual aggressor in his encounters with her. Unlike Lorry, who wants love and companionship, Helen is aroused by Slater’s dangerous qualities, asking him prior to sex, “How did it feel when you killed that man?” to which Slater says, “I enjoyed it. It scared me but I enjoyed it. I hated that man so I could have killed him all over again.”

While ODDS AGAINST TOMORROW is essentially a heist film in form and execution, it derives its power from the tense relationship that develops between Slater and Johnny Ingram (Harry Belafonte), the third partner in the robbery. Their scenes together crackle with volatile energy – all bad – and lead to an apocalyptic finish worthy of WHITE HEAT or KISS ME DEADLY. Slater, it turns out, is a vicious racist – no backstory is given for his unrelenting hatred; it’s simply part of his nature like a scorpion’s instinct to sting. And his aggressively insulting manner brings out the worst in Ingram who is already at the breaking point, owing a huge gambling debt to white mobsters. Ingram, like Slater, seems to have nothing but bad luck but both seem to bring it on themselves – Ingram with his addiction to gambling and Slater with his penchant for self-destruction. It’s a deadly combination since both men have equal amounts of self-loathing and low self-esteem that turn deadly when they’re brought face to face. Only Burke’s constant refereeing and reminder of the heist money keep the two at bay until the plan goes awry.

Filmed on locations in Hudson, New York, the old Gold Medal Studios in the Bronx and New York City, ODDS AGAINST TOMORROW was the first film by Harbel Productions, Harry Belafonte’s short-lived production company which also produced THE WORLD, THE FLESH AND THE DEVIL (1959). Belafonte was the one who first read William McGivern’s novel of the same name and realized what a potentially powerful film it could be. (John O. Killens and Nelson Gidding worked on the screenplay with contributions from blacklisted writer Abraham Polonsky who was not credited at the time; his credit would be reinstated years later). ODDS AGAINST TOMORROW would not only give Belafonte a chance to show his potential as a serious actor but also address racism within the context of a genre film in a time prior to the passing of the Civil Rights act of 1964. Belafonte, who was friends with Shelley Winters, recruited her to play the part of Lorry and made an effort to fill out the cast with many up-and-coming fellow actors in smaller bits such as Cicely Tyson (glimpsed briefly as a bartender in a jazz club), Diana Sands (a brief cameo as a nightclub hostess), Kim Hamilton (as Johnny’s ex-wife), Mae Barnes (in her only film role as Johnny’s daughter), Robert Earl Jones, the father of James Earl Jones, in a bit, Wayne Rogers as a soldier who is injured by Slater in a bar and Zohra Lampert as Rogers’ girlfriend.

Robert Ryan, who had worked with director Robert Wise before on THE SET-UP (1949), had just completed work on DAY OF THE OUTLAW when he agreed to play Slater. Ryan’s reputation in the film industry was exceptional and he was admired by practically everyone who worked with him. Although well known for his commitment to humanitarian causes such as SANE (the National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy) which might be considered liberal by some Hollywood conservatives, Ryan even got along well with right wing hawks like John Wayne who could be very combative with anyone who didn’t share his political views. Wise was quoted as saying, “Bob was a dream to work with…He was a very real person, and had no phoniness…He was always helpful with the other actors, and if I ever had a problem with one of them, he would always be patient…Bob worked with people whom other stars of his caliber would have had great trouble dealing with.”

Shelley Winters was also an admirer of Ryan and first met him at Schwab’s during her early years in Hollywood through their mutual friend, Marilyn Monroe. In her account of the filming of ODDS AGAINST TOMORROW in her autobiography Shelley II: The Middle of My Century, the actress recalled, “…Robert Ryan and I would sit in our little set of a cheap run-down flat that was sort of an apartment hotel. We would talk about the theatre, organic farming, where Hollywood was going in this age of television, anything but what we were really thinking about. If I remembered correctly, Bob had been rather a heavy drinker when I’d known him in my early Schwab days, but you never could tell if he was drunk. He would just grow very quiet after eight hours of drinking. The only time I suspected he had a hangover was when he had two beers at breakfast. He had also smoked a couple of packs of cigarettes a day, but it seemed, during the shooting of ODDS AGAINST TOMORROW, that he had completely reformed.” As they prepared for a scene together, Shelley confessed to Ryan that she was having marital problems with husband-at-the-time Anthony Franciosa who was often unfaithful. “In the scene, I’m rather sexually aggressive with him [Ryan], and he is withdrawn and rather off. I mean, that’s what the script required. That afternoon, after hearing my sad tale, Robert was at his most reassuring and loving. But I guess I still had some stupid notion in my head about being faithful to Tony. I told Bob about some of my marital problems in Italy. He became annoyed with my sexual reservations. “What’s going on?” he said. “Shelley, you’re being faithful to Tony, and he’s faithful to all the leading ladies of the Screen Actors Guild?” I began to laugh hysterically so I wouldn’t cry. Then we noticed Robert Wise was standing in the hallway, watching us. He’s quite an elegant gentleman, and he murmured: “Shelley, Bob, that’s wonderful preparation, but I think you’ve got your motivations backwards.” I’m not sure we ever straightened it out, because every time I’ve seen that film, I’ve thought we made all the political points of ODDS AGAINST TOMORROW quite well, but the human points seem rather blurred.”

If anything, ODDS AGAINST TOMORROW received almost unanimous glowing reviews at the time of its release. Bosley Crowther of The New York Times called it “a sharp, hard suspenseful melodrama” and said “Mr. Ryan is brilliant, cold and rasping, as a drifter from the South whose hatreds are ingrained and vicious, recalling the anti-Semitic killer he played in the melodramatic Crossfire a dozen years ago.” Variety proclaimed it “an absorbing, disquieting film,” adding “Ryan makes the flesh crawl as the fanatical bigot.” Time magazine noted the many reasons for the film’s effectiveness, “thanks partly to director Robert Wise, partly to an able Negro scriptwriter named John O. Killens, but mostly to actor Robert Ryan, a menace who can look bullets, and smile sulphuric acid.” Philip T. Hartung of The Commonweal wrote, “Belafonte, as the man who is the subject of Ryan’s hatred, has a sense of dignity and a feeling of being driven beyond his strength. As a consequence, Ryan’s skillfully portrayed hatred of him becomes all the more forceful.” And voicing what many critics echoed in their observations was this opinion of Derek Conrad in Films and Filming: “One is dazzled by the technical virtuosity with which the film is put over. The camera work of Joseph Brun is superb, there is no other word for it….The cutting is a model of cinema craftsmanship [Dede Allen was the editor], and the music score by the Modern Jazz Quartet’s John Lewis is expert.”

Despite all of the great notices, ODDS AGAINST TOMORROW was a disappointment at the boxoffice and when THE WORLD, THE FLESH AND THE DEVIL, Belafonte’s second production, didn’t perform any better, he got out of film producing. While ODDS AGAINST TOMORROW is one of the last great film noirs before the neo-noirs of the sixties such as POINT BLANK, it is easy to see why it wasn’t a hit with audiences in 1959. The racial tension and the relentlessly bleak mood of the movie was not most peoples’ idea of a fun night out at the movies. This was a genre film with serious intentions and not the sort of thing to please audiences who like their heist films without a moral. If the final scene in the movie with a policeman trying to identify two charred bodies (“Which is which?”) seemed heavy handed to some, it was no more heavy handed than the racism experienced by minorities every day in real life.

Considering the time it was made, ODDS AGAINST TOMORROW was a brave film and Belafonte deserves immense credit for making it happen. I also have to say that Robert Ryan was courageous in undertaking such an alienating role but of course he had done it many times before and would go it again. Still, men like Earle Slater and Montgomery (CROSSFIRE) and Howard Wilson (BEWARE MY LOVELY) seemed to be so far removed from the Robert Ryan people knew and worked with. Robert Ryan the actor was a family man, a Civil Rights campaigner, a trusted colleague and a man of pacifist beliefs who obviously found a challenge in playing these extreme characters. However, his oldest son Tim noted in a recent article on Ryan in the Chicago Reader that he thought his father “had a lot of demons” and would talk about his “Black Irish moods” as he got older. Maybe Ryan realized he had all of these people inside him and acting was a way to exorcise them. Or maybe he actually knew someone in his past who became the inspiration for damaged souls like Earle Slater. Regardless of the source, that, to me, was the greatest aspect of Ryan’s art. To hold up the mirror to the audience and show us the ugly truth: man is his own worst enemy and most of his troubles in the world sprang from that.

Sources:

Robert Ryan: A Biography and Critical Filmography by Franklin Jarlett

“The Actor’s Letter” by J. R. Jones (Chicago Reader)

Shelley II: The Middle of My Century by Shelley Winters

Suicide Blonde: The Life of Gloria Grahame by Vincent Curcio