There's a line in this Warner Brothers drama where Margaret Lindsay's character laments the fact that boyfriend Pat O'Brien and his pal Henry Fonda prefer danger and tumbleweed lives over a more respectable way of living. They earn their keep as traveling linemen who go from region to region in search of jobs where they climb tall poles and metal scaffolds to do electrical work.
Fonda plays the title character, so nicknamed because he's skinnier than everyone else. His character is an early version of Tom Joad three years before THE GRAPES OF WRATH, an aw-shucks farm boy who is not interested in milking cows on his uncle's farm. Instead, he'd rather seek employment alongside O'Brien for a man affectionately known as Pop (J. Farrell MacDonald).
At first MacDonald won't hire Fonda, thinking he doesn't have what it takes. But when another man falls from the scaffold and is badly injured, there's a job opening and Fonda pesters him into getting a chance to prove his worth. From here there are some excellent bonding scenes between O'Brien and Fonda, as Fonda is assigned grunt work under O'Brien. Soon Fonda is promoted and scaling the heights with his new mentor.
This is a buddy film in its most basic sense. Some of the male bonding scenes are offset by the inclusion of Lindsay who plays a nurse that O'Brien looks up every time he's in Chicago. A recent visit has Fonda tagging along, which sets the stage for a romantic triangle.
During the second half of the story, viewers may wonder which guy Lindsay will wind up with. She has more history with O'Brien, but he has a phobia of commitment. In her scenes with Fonda, there are some sparks, but Fonda is too loyal and too faithful to cut in on O'Brien's action. However, we know that Lindsay wouldn't be in the film if she didn't get one of the men to settle down with her. Since both men are fairly likable, meaning neither one is a villain, one is going to have to die doing some dangerous work. This will make the decision easier for Lindsay and the survivor to hook up.
Some lines of dialogue are rather fatalistic in the film. At one point O'Brien tells Fonda they need to live it up between jobs because they are only here (in Chicago and on earth) for a short time. A subsequent scene has O'Brien making a toast before drinking in a bar, by saying 'may you live long and hard, then check out real fast.' I guess with dialogue like this it's pretty obvious O'Brien will die at the end and Fonda won't. But this is still an engaging motion picture with some very sincere performances and nail-biting stunt work to recommend it.
Fonda plays the title character, so nicknamed because he's skinnier than everyone else. His character is an early version of Tom Joad three years before THE GRAPES OF WRATH, an aw-shucks farm boy who is not interested in milking cows on his uncle's farm. Instead, he'd rather seek employment alongside O'Brien for a man affectionately known as Pop (J. Farrell MacDonald).
At first MacDonald won't hire Fonda, thinking he doesn't have what it takes. But when another man falls from the scaffold and is badly injured, there's a job opening and Fonda pesters him into getting a chance to prove his worth. From here there are some excellent bonding scenes between O'Brien and Fonda, as Fonda is assigned grunt work under O'Brien. Soon Fonda is promoted and scaling the heights with his new mentor.
This is a buddy film in its most basic sense. Some of the male bonding scenes are offset by the inclusion of Lindsay who plays a nurse that O'Brien looks up every time he's in Chicago. A recent visit has Fonda tagging along, which sets the stage for a romantic triangle.
During the second half of the story, viewers may wonder which guy Lindsay will wind up with. She has more history with O'Brien, but he has a phobia of commitment. In her scenes with Fonda, there are some sparks, but Fonda is too loyal and too faithful to cut in on O'Brien's action. However, we know that Lindsay wouldn't be in the film if she didn't get one of the men to settle down with her. Since both men are fairly likable, meaning neither one is a villain, one is going to have to die doing some dangerous work. This will make the decision easier for Lindsay and the survivor to hook up.
Some lines of dialogue are rather fatalistic in the film. At one point O'Brien tells Fonda they need to live it up between jobs because they are only here (in Chicago and on earth) for a short time. A subsequent scene has O'Brien making a toast before drinking in a bar, by saying 'may you live long and hard, then check out real fast.' I guess with dialogue like this it's pretty obvious O'Brien will die at the end and Fonda won't. But this is still an engaging motion picture with some very sincere performances and nail-biting stunt work to recommend it.