The Last Angry Man

The Last Angry Man explores the themes of living with integrity and not being corrupted or co-opted by the world's materialism. Paul Muni plays a Jewish doctor living in a Brooklyn neighborhood that has, to use a euphemism, changed. He continues to treat the neighborhood's residents for minimal fees, including a very young Billy Dee Williams, who plays a gang-banger, angry at the world, who Muni believes has a brain tumor.

Muni's nephew is an aspiring journalist who is caught up in glitz and glamor. When Muni saves the life of a young black woman who has been dumped on his doorstep after an assault, his nephew senses an opportunity and writes the story in the newspaper. A television producer picks up on it and sees profiling Muni on his new television program as his ticket to fame.

Muni's character is really too complex to portray completely in this film, but the interplay between the doctor and his patients portrays him as both compassionate and moral. He relates on a spiritual level to the character Billy Dee Williams plays, sensing that both of them are rebelling in their own ways against injustice and abuses of power. Dr. Abelman's last act is to visit Williams in jail rather than proceed with his greatly anticipated television appearance, reinforcing his determination to live a life of integrity and in the words of Thoreau (an author quoted frequently throughout the film), "march to the beat of a different drummer."

Paul Muni had long been out of pictures when in the fifties his success on the Broadway stage in 'Inherit the Wind' reawakened Hollywood's interest in him.

Two decades after his thirties heyday when he usually played older than his years, now in the era of television he was actually playing a genuinely old man with the result that his 68 year-old Brooklyn slum doctor Sam Abelman looks hardly distinguishable from his Louis Pasteur.

Some of the attacks the trenchant old codger makes on the drugs company that sponsors his show are still relevant today. Muni wears the makeup which leaves the field clear for David Wayne to play a surprisingly 'straight' role.

This is the story of an elderly Jewish doctor who lives and works in the Brooklyn slums. He is dedicated to his work and his patients. The movie revolves around his nephew's attempts to produce a documentary based on the doctor's life. The movie is ok, but Paul Muni shines. He received an Oscar nomination for this, his last role. Billy Dee Williams makes his movie debut as one of the doctor's patients. He plays a young thug with a brain tumor. He's a difficult patient and the doctor has to chase after him in order to treat him. If you look closely at the girl left on the porch in the opening scene, you'll see that it's Cicely Tyson, also an unknown at that time.

PAUL MUNI could always be counted on to give an interesting performance, even if sometimes over-the-top (as he was in A SONG TO REMEMBER as Chopin's mentor). But here, in his last gasp as a screen actor, he does himself proud in an Oscar-nominated performance.

He's a Brooklyn doctor, a dedicated one with his own brand of honest values and not above making house calls when the need arises (a character trait that instantly dates the film). The story of how a clever TV man (DAVID WAYNE) tries to manipulate him in order to tell his life story on TV, is told in a very straightforward way with no unusual sub-plots or other distractions so that it ends up as a no frills entertainment and a time capsule of the late '50s-era Brooklyn, as well.

Interesting to note some top featured players had bit roles here. Television's BETSY PALMER has a more substantial part, but BILLY DEE WILLIAMS, CICELY TYSON, LUTHER ADLER, GODFREY McCAMBRIDGE and CLAUDIA McNEIL all make brief appearances.

Muni's performance was up against Charlton Heston's BEN-HUR--otherwise there's a strong possibility he might have won another Best Actor Oscar.

Directed with a sense of style by Daniel Mann and adopted by Gerald Green from his novel--and yet, oddly enough, it has the feel of a teleplay adapted for the screen.

Paul Muni is excellent as a doctor in Brooklyn. I remember doctors like him, from when I was a child. They'd leave their dinners to get cold if a patient needed help. Now they mostly give three minutes of their time at most.

The family is allowed to be clearly Jewish. I wonder, though, what the word galoot is about. Muni keeps using it. I think of it as a sort of comic strip term, like calling a boxer a big galoot. Luther Adler, as his friend, another doctor, using some Yiddish.

David Wayne is thoroughly convincing as the crass TV man who decides doc's story would sell pills for his network's sponsor. Everyone is good, really,.

Though the patient we see Muni treating is black, it is not a forced racial drama. His played by Billy Dee Williams and the fine Claudia McNeil is his mother.

I feel this movie tugging on my sleeve and saying, "Hey! Hey! Look how significant I am!" It isn't a great movie but it does its job well and Muni is superb.