The Wild One **** (1953, Marlon Brando, Mary Murphy, Robert Keith, Lee Marvin, Jay C Flippen) – Classic Movie Review 2491

Marlon Brando stars as the quintessential wild boy in director Laslo Benedek’s legendary, once infamous 1953 biker teenage rebellion melodrama, which was banned in Britain until 1967. As a biker exploitation movie, it influenced the genre in the Sixties, with Easy Rider, Hell’s Angels and the like. It cemented Brando’s star status as an icon of post-war teen rebellion.

The Black Rebels motorbike gang rides into a small town, is detained by an accident, trades insults with a rival gang and gets into trouble. Still, after delivering intimidation and mayhem to paranoid Fifties middle America, the black leather-jacketed leader of the pack, bad-boy Johnny Strabler (Brando), eventually finds that the love of a good young woman like Kathie Bleeker (Mary Murphy), the waitress daughter of the town sheriff Harry Bleeker (Robert Keith), can redeem him.

The Black Rebels invade a motorcycle racing event and cause a ruckus, with one of the gang members stealing a second place trophy to give to Johnny. They ride on to a small town where they continue disturbing and intimidating locals and Sheriff Bleeker is so ineffectual he doesn’t do anything to stop them.

The other iconic performance is that of Lee Marvin as Chino, while Jay C Flippen also stands out, playing Sheriff Stew Singer.

Alas, the movie hasn’t worn too well, and the once supposedly scary, or possibly sexually alluring leather-clad bikers are amusingly camp. But the powerful performances by the entire ensemble, Hal Mohr’s sharp black and white cinematography and Benedek’s committed, conscientious direction keep it engrossing. Despite its problems, it’s still an iconic movie, and a key item in the Brando oeuvre and mythology, and some say it’s still wild.

Famously asked in the movie what he’s rebelling against, Brando’s character replies: ‘Whaddaya got?’ Another rebel without a cause, or maybe a rebel with too many causes, then?

Rejected by the British Board of Film Censors in 1954 as a ‘spectacle of unbridled hooliganism’, it finally won an X certificate in the UK in 1967, when it was found to be lame and tame, really lacking in the promised unbridled hooliganism department, and now it has a PG.

John Paxton’s screenplay is based on the story The Cyclists’ Raid by Frank Rooney, who in turn based it on a real incident.

Also in the cast are Peggy Maley, Hugh Sanders, Ray Teal, Will Wright, Yvonne Doughty, Gene Peterson, Alvy Moore, Jerry Paris, John Brown, Robert Osterloh, William Vedder, Del Tenney and Gil Stratton Jr.

Stuntman, stunt driver and stunt coordinator Bill Hickman was working in Hollywood for ten years before landing his first visible role as one of Brando’s gang. His work is legendary on Bullitt (1968) where he drove the black Dodge Charger 440 Magnum pursued by Steve McQueen in his Ford Mustang 390 G.T. He staged a similar chase on the streets of Manhattan on The French Connection (1971).

It was the first film in which the manufacturer’s logo on motorcycles was not blanked out in screen. Johnson Motors, who imported Triumphs into the US, protested at their bikes being linked with Johnny Strabler and his gang, but in the event it was a profitable association for them.

There’s an obvious use of stunt doubles for Brando when Johnny and Chino are fighting – his hair changes from short and blond to longer and black.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2491

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