The Tougher They Come (1950)
Set in a rugged Northwest logging camp, this drama follows the exploits of the lumberjack who inherits the camp. For a long time, he has been courting a pretty young thing, and now that she believes him wealthy, she decides to finally accept his proposal. When she finds out that the company has many financial woes and that living in the woods takes guts and courage, she turns into a nagging shrew, constantly urging him to sell-out to a major corporation. Meanwhile his treacherous foreman, an agent of the bigger company, uses sabotage to change the stubborn camp owner's mind.
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the audience applauded
The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.
Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.
The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.
This is the first of two movies that Preston Foster and Wayne Morris starred in for Columbia. In both they played rough-and-tough buddies, like Spencer Tracy & Clark Gable for MGM or Jimmy Cagney & Pat O'Brien for Warners a decade and a half earlier. They've even got Frank McHugh, who often played Cagney's stooge, as Foster's chief cook and bottle washer.In this one, Foster and Morris are a couple of Big Timber men. Foster owns a logging site, but there's a dame, of course. Foster is married to Kay Buckley, a blonde who likes her comforts and wants Foster to sell out to the big combine.There's the usual combination of casual rowdy behavior that typifies this sort of movie and there's nothing done that isn't competent. On the other hand, there isn't much that's particularly noteworthy. The result is a decent time-killer.
I like timber, forest, lumberjack movies. I don't know why. Robert Enrico's LES GRANDES GUEULES, Joseph Kane's TIMBERJACK and SPOILERS OF THE FOREST, Andrew Mac Laglen's FRICKLES, and many many more. Maybe because they are all been shot mostly on locations, and not entirely in studios. This one brings not much to the genre. It's a man's story. The sequence where Wayne Morris and Preston Foster get drunk together, as real pals, and wake up afterwards before fight against each other in the pure John Ford style, this scene is very amusing, I would say exquisite. Some good action sequences, the forest fire is the climax of this pretty well done adventure flick. Ray Nazarro made mostly westerns, desert movies, and not forest ones...