Tiger Shark

Sorry, I forgot to add a point to my comment that was rather an important one, at least to me. Tiger Shark was shot in the early 1930s and there are some interesting scenes of men sailing their boat into a school of tuna, guided by a lookout, then lining up in the leads and pulling the fish in using flexible poles, one at a time. The scenes are authentic and exciting. Alas, they are history. Tuna fisherman now use "long lines." (Koreans and Japanese have huge industries built around this technique.) The fishing boat now needs a smaller crew (less expensive) because there no longer any mano a mano contests between fish and man. The crew simply strings out long fishing lines, guided by sonar, more than a mile long, with baited hooks fixed to the lines at short, regular intervals, set for a given depth. This has proved far more lucrative than fishing exclusively for tuna with poles. The long lines have a tendency to clean everything that swims out of the sea; not just tuna but sharks, sea turtles, porpoises, and game fish like marlin (which can't be legally sold). By the time they are harvested, many of the animals are already dead, especially the air-breathing turtles and porpoises. The industry has become much more efficient and without passion. Mike probably wouldn't have approved but the organization that would now own his boat would have.

All the old-time Hollywood studios recycled their scripts, turning previously-filmed properties into remakes and then re-remakes. More so than any other studio, Warner Brothers were notorious for re-re-re-remaking their previous films with only very slight changes in setting and dialogue. "Tiger Shark" is an historically significant film, as this movie provided the original template for a plot line which Warners recycled about two dozen times ... each time with just enough changes to fool the audience into thinking they were seeing an original plot. Except for stories which are in the public domain (such as Cinderella), "Tiger Shark" holds the all-time record for being re-made MORE OFTEN than any other movie ... each remake being "disguised" as a new movie.

The basic plot is this: an older man with a physical handicap falls in love with an attractive young woman who owes him a favour. She marries him, more out of a sense of obligation than for love. Then she becomes attracted to a handsome young man who works alongside her handicapped husband. The young man returns her attraction, and they start having an affair. The husband discovers his wife's infidelity, and then (in the climax of the film) he and the younger man duke it out. That's the plot of "Tiger Shark", starring Edward G. Robinson, and it's also the plot of two dozen other Warners films which are uncredited remakes of "Tiger Shark".

Compare this film to "Manpower" (1941), also starring Robinson. In "Tiger Shark" he plays a one-handed fisherman, with a hook at the end of his left arm. In "Manpower" he plays an electrical lineman with a limp. In both films, his love interest is a younger woman with a European accent: Zita Johann here, Marlene Dietrich in "Manpower". Robinson's younger rival in "Tiger Shark" (played by Richard Arlen) is basically the same character as Robinson's rival in "Manpower" (George Raft). The climax of "Tiger Shark" is a fight on the seashore; the climax of "Manpower" is a fistfight at the top of a telephone pole during a lightning storm. Once you allow for the change of setting, they're both the same film. I could make the same connections between "Tiger Shark" and about two dozen other Warners films, not all of them starring Robinson.

"Tiger Shark" benefits from some excellent direction by Howard Hawks. Richard Arlen is unfairly forgotten nowadays, but he was the closest thing Hollywood had to Harrison Ford before Harrison Ford came along. (I'm referring of course to the modern Harrison Ford, not the silent-film actor of the same name.) Arlen gives a good performance here. Zita Johann is excellent here, hampered only by her thick accent. She retired early from films to marry the producer John Houseman, long before Houseman became an Oscar-winning actor. Johann's most famous role is the female lead in "The Mummy" opposite Boris Karloff. When Johann published her autobiography in the 1980s, the publishers' promo material played up the fact that Johann had co-starred with Karloff, but they managed to avoid mentioning *which* Karloff film she'd been in: apparently they were afraid we would think that Zita Johann was a "scream queen" actress who only starred in horror films.

I'll rate "Tiger Shark" 7 out of 10 on its own merits, or 9 points if you're an aspiring screenwriter who wants to study this film so you can learn how a single plot line can be reworked repeatedly.

Edward G. Robinson plays a one handed fisherman making his living on the California coast. Even with a hook for a left hand he does pretty good in his line of work. But that steel hook isn't exactly quail bait.

One of his crew is lost to the sharks during a voyage and he brings the news home to his daughter Zita Johann. She's back home after having run away from the fishing life and has had a pretty rough go of it.

Though she doesn't love him, Johann marries Robinson and then another Robinson's crew, Richard Arlen comes in to complicate things.

Other reviewers have mentioned the gazillion times Warner Brothers recycled the plot of Tiger Shark in other locales. But actually Robinson had done a version of They Knew What They Wanted back in 1930 entitled A Lady to Love. That's the real origin of this plot.

The fishing boat scenes are realistically handled and the principal players do a good job. But this story has been told better and told better by Mr. Robinson himself.

How many times has this plot been used? The older guy--hearty, well-liked, a good man--wins the pretty young thing, but she's attracted to his best friend. It's like "They Knew What They Wanted," with Edward G. Robinson changing Charles Laughton's Italian accent to Portuguese and becoming an ace fisherman instead of a vintner. He's wonderful, in a showy yet subtle performance, and the beautiful Zita Johann is a prize worth fighting for. The writing isn't wonderful, though--we never understand why this lying blowhard is so popular, and the third side of the triangle, Richard Arlen, is given no personality at all. Howard Hawks must have liked the maritime setting, or just being on a boat, because there are yards of irrelevant footage of tuna fishing, leading to a climax that's not very clearly edited (just how does Arlen get out of this, and why does Eddie G. do such a turnaround?). But it leads to a moving big finale. It's atmospheric, with lots of outdoors shooting that makes it seem less studio-bound, and Robinson is always worth watching.

Had the bizarre fishing-village-set TIGER SHARK come out ten years later, it would've made a pretty intriguing Film Noir, following the trope of the pretty young girl marrying an older businessman while falling in love with the handsome younger fella who has no money, and is friends with the rich guy...

In this case that rich guy, before there was any money and when he had both hands... during the more adventuresome Hemingway-meets-Melville first act... saves the life of Richard Arlen as common fisherman Pipes Boley by losing one hand to the titular (yet thereafter unimportant) TIGER SHARK, later replaced with a hook...

Making Edward G. Robinson more a gentleman dandy than the pirate he'd seem... and his only real handicap is baby-faced ingenue Zita Johann, feeling no chemistry with Robinson's Mike Mascarenhas as a husband, leading to when and how he'll discover where her love is going...

Which does genuinely provide the short/stout firebrand the kind of dangerous potential for the audience to anticipate his inevitable explosion...

But too much time's spent on the searing romantic triangle when an actor like Robinson needed and deserved more of an edgy potboiler than this morality play programmer.