Last Angry Man The (1959)

Last Angry Man The (1959)

Paul Muni received a Best Actor Academy Award nomination for this his final film role; the film’s B&W Art Direction-Set Decoration was also Oscar nominated. Directed by Daniel Mann and based on the novel by Gerald Green it was adapted by Richard Murphy (The Desert Rats (1953)). The drama also marks the screen debut of Billy Dee Williams.

Muni plays Dr. Sam Abelman an aged cantankerous Jewish doctor that lives in the ghettos of Brooklyn NY. Drug dealers and other criminals drop their victims off at his doorstep in the middle of the night knowing that he’ll take care of them because he lives under an old fashioned code of conduct (that’s unfortunately long gone today). Dr. Abelman is proud to be a general practitioner (for over 40 years) and seems not to mind that most of his patients can’t pay him while at the same time he maintains a fighting demeanor against change. He maintains that the world has become one of convenience that’s emptying of its honor; he calls the less than dependable people which populate it "galloots". When his nephew Myron (Joby Baker) writes a newspaper item about his "Good Samaritan" uncle’s self sacrifice an over mortgaged highly stressed TV producer named Woody Thrasher (David Wayne) sees an opportunity to tell a real story that will satisfy his bill paying wife Anna (Betsy Palmer) and drug company sponsor Mr. Gattling (Robert F. Simon uncredited) at the same time. But of course Abelman will have nothing to do with such publicity until his specialist friend Dr. Max Vogel (Luther Adler) intervenes. During the course of the story Abelman and Thrasher develop a mutual respect which didn’t seem possible at the outset.

Twenty-two year old Williams plays an ungrateful street kid with the jitters which Abelman correctly diagnoses as symptomatic of a brain tumor; Claudia McNeil appears briefly as the boy’s mother. Dan Tobin appears uncredited as the documentary’s onscreen talent interviewing Dr. Abelman.