blanche-2 Robert Taylor had been a familiar face in films for nearly 25 years when he made "Tip on a Dead Jockey" in 1957. Here, he plays Lloyd Tredman, a Korean war pilot who now lives in Madrid doing...well, not much. He is divorced (so he thinks) from his wife Phyllis (Dorothy Malone). However, she never signed the papers and travels to Madrid to find out what happened to their marriage and if there is any way to salvage it.Lloyd admits that he is no longer able to pilot a plane. He is haunted by what he saw in Korea and is now too scared and nervous to fly again. He is the part-owner of a race horse, and is looking forward to winning a lot of money as a result of the race.Before that happens, he is approached by a man who offers him $25,000 to smuggle money out of the country. Lloyd doesn't like it, but he says it all depends on what happens in the race. When the race doesn't turn out as planned, Lloyd is sure that the smuggler had something to do with it. Angry, he refuses to accept the job. Instead, it goes to his close friend Jimmy (Jack Lord). When Jimmy is delayed, his wife (Gia Scala) becomes hysterical, and becomes worse when Jimmy announces he's doing it again! At that point, Lloyd takes over. It's not a smooth trip, with Lloyd almost not able to take off due to being paralyzed from nerves. He finally does, and if anything could happen, it does.This isn't a great movie. It moves slowly and there isn't a lot of action. It's interesting to see Jack Lord pre-Hawaii Five-O, young and with a slightly higher speaking voice and wearing less makeup than he did on his TV show. Dorothy Malone was attractive and good, but the plot is obvious.Taylor, always solid and likable, did six films with director Richard Thorpe. I am a fan of classic films, so I watch him because he is from the golden age, but also because he was my late mother's absolute favorite. He does a good job here.A few words about my mom's favorite guy, after my father, of course. The kid from Nebraska, with his resonant speaking voice and perfect face went on from this film to a successful TV series, "The Detectives," and continued in films until his death from lung cancer at the age of 57, in 1969. Yeah, the cigarettes got most of them.He is somewhat out of favor for testifying before the House Un-American Activities Committee as a friendly witness. However, a new book, Robert Taylor: Reluctant Witness, disputes this. In truth, I don't think he was the sharpest knife in the drawer and probably didn't understand the impact of the committee -- and, like many, he saw Communism as a threat. He claimed to have used bad judgment in accepting the film "Song of Russia." The truth? He did whatever Louis B. Mayer told him to do and wasn't aware that it was making a political statement until someone told him it was pro-Communist. He lived under the umbrella of MGM nearly his entire career and just did what he was assigned.It's not an excuse, and I'm the last one to applaud blacklisting or witch hunts. But everyone who testified had an agenda. Except probably Robert Taylor, who, when he left MGM, didn't know how to make a dinner reservation.

JohnHowardReid A good cast – Robert Taylor, Dorothy Malone, Gia Scala, Martin Gabel, Marcel Dalio, Jack Lord and Joyce Jameson – struggle in a poor screenplay by Charles Lederer, allegedly based on the short story of the same name by Irwin Shaw. I say "allegedly" because Shaw's New Yorker magazine short story is actually a variation on "Casablanca". Aside from the fact that the lead character here is broke, it's very easy to match the players. Thus Taylor has the Bogart role, Gia Scala is Ingrid Bergman, Martin Gabel is Peter Lorre, while Jack Lord impersonates the Paul Henreid character. And needless to say, Irwin Shaw's Bogartian hero is a disillusioned, cynical romantic. In fact, Shaw's story is significantly set in Paris (not Madrid) and is thoroughly suffused with a "Casablanca" atmosphere of disillusionment, as well as being cynical and sharp. Unfortunately, none of this makes it to the M-G-M movie. Instead Tip's plot concentrates on the hero's wife (who is only mentioned in passing in Shaw's story as an ex-wife). The movie is also padded out with a lot of comic relief routines from Marcel Dalio and Joyce Jameson (who are not present in Shaw at all). The only plot elements which actually correspond are our hero's loss of his shirt on a dead jockey and his getting involved in Smith's smuggling racket. The rest of this attempted film noir not only deviates completely from what Shaw wrote , but is totally unlike Shaw in characterization and mood. Reading the story, you are instantly struck by the "Casablanca" parallels, You'd never guess such a connection in a million years with the movie! The picture is tricked out to 98 minutes by means of a lot of dialogue padding. Dorothy Malone's scenes particularly requite quite a lot of trimming. She's also none too flatteringly costumed or photographed. Richard Thorpe's direction, as well as all other credits including Rozsa's music score, rate as strictly routine.

sol ***SPOILERS*** One of Actor Robert Taylor's forgotten movies that I suspect he hoped would stay forgotten in him playing WWII and Korean war hero Llyod Tredman who lost his nerve as a pilot in him sending scores of USAF fighter pilots to their deaths in the Korean War. Feeling that he's a complete failure in life Tredman dropped out of sight and became a full time moocher in far off Madrid Spain. Staying at his good friend and sidekick's as well as fellow moocher Toto, Marcel Daio, pad Tredman just gets himself drunk and reminisces about old times.It's when Tredman tried to divorce his wife Phyllis, Dorothy Malone, in him feeling he's not good enough for her that he opened up a can of worms in having her fly to Spain from Navada to see if there's anything wrong, in the head, with her estranged husband. Trying to make money betting on the horses, to show Phyllis what a big time gambler he is, Tredman puts his last 1,000 in Spanish currency on a horse he 's a part owner of only to have the horse and its jockey Alfredo, Jimmy Murphy, tripped up in the stretch with both, horse and jockey, ending up dead. Broke and facing eviction Tredman finally gives into mobster Bert Smith, Martin Gable, offer to fly a plane with 85 pounds of British 5 pound notes, worth some 200,000 dollars, from Cairo Egypt and then on the return trip drop them in an empty field outside Madrid for Smith and his hoods to grab! For this dangerous mission Smith offers Tredman $25,000.00.Things get even more complicated then they already are with Tredman's good friend and Air Force buddy Jimmy Heldor, Jack Lord, taking up Smith's offer in that the yellow bellied Tredman doesn't have the stomach to do the job. It's when Jimmy almost lost his life, by getting himself lost over the Mediterranean Sea, in a dry run that Tredman decides against his better judgment to do the flying! That's only if Toto, who never flew a plane in his life, agrees to be his co-pilot.***SPOILERS*** The movie gets overly confusing and ridicules with a at first scared out of his wits Tredman suddenly getting his courage, in flying an airplane, back as he flies rings around, on land as well as in the air, those trying to stop him in his secret mission for gangster Bert Smith. It's only later that Tredman finds out that Smith is actually using him to smuggle heroin not British 5 pound notes back into Spain that really turns him off! In the end Tredman sets Smith, who planned to murder him as soon as he landed, up by having the Madrid police and INTEPOL Agents nab him and his henchman before they could make their successful getaway. Now with both his courage and wife Phyills back Tredman can go back to the life that he abandoned back in Korea by getting his job back as a commercial pilot instead of being the leach and good for nothing bum that he had since become.

art_27 A wooden treatment of a shell shocked Korean war vet expatting it in Madrid. Malone barely registers ennui, disillusionment, or any other weight of the world characteristics; he acts more like the suburban dad opting not to shave all weekend. Dalio, the Casablanca croupier, is reduced to playing Malone's colorful sidekick, but a little goes a long way. Jack Lord and his Kennedyesque hairdo go through the motions. Bits of the script, co-written by Shaw, stand out, especially Malone comparing his domestic situation to a Balzac story, "too many people." The title drew me in, and I got a pig in a poke.