The Guy Who Came Back

Paul Douglas has been a star football player since college days, but he's getting on. The Navy doesn't want him -- this is during the Second World War -- because his bones have been broken too often. But if he isn't a football player, what is he? Linda Darnell thinks he can become a performer, but his marriage to Joan Bennett is crumbling, and his son, Billy Gray, knows that things are going wrong.

Douglas gives his usual fine performance as a man in out of his depth: well meaning, honest, and just smart enough to understand he's not smart enough to turn his life round. It's a surprisingly brutal film for a post-war Fox programmer. Zero Mostel plays a thinly disguised Toots Shor.