Tiger by the Tail [Cross-Up] ** (1954, Larry Parks, Constance Smith, Lisa Daniely) – Classic Movie Review 11,547

Tiger by the Tail was released in Belgium, where its Flemish title was Kaliber 22 Long Rifle.

Director John Gilling’s 1955 British low-budget crime thriller film Tiger by the Tail is a basically pretty dull old British B-movie. But it is much enlivened by its handling and its star Larry Parks (The Jolson Story) as John Desmond, a US news agency reporter who becomes romantically embroiled with femme fatale Anna Ray (Lisa Daniely) while working to expose a criminal gang in London.

[Spoiler alert] Anna Ray is shot and John Desmond is then kidnapped by the counterfeit currency gang of criminals to obtain a diary that holds all their secrets.

Director John Gilling puts some energy into a busy though stock thriller plot, but the piece is always held back by some murky performances and the standard, cheapo 1950s Brit production.

John Gilling and Willis Goldbeck’s screenplay is based on the critically acclaimed 1941 novel Never Come Back by John Mair, in a very loose and updated adaptation. The novel concerns Nazi spies in Britain at the outbreak of World War Two, but the film is about a counterfeit currency gang. Never Come Back was Mair’s only novel. Tragically he was killed in an RAF training accident, aged 29, the year after it was published.

Tiger by the Tail was released in Belgium, where its Flemish title was Kaliber 22 Long Rifle.

In March 1958 United Artists distributed this as Cross-Up in the US in a double bill with Run Silent Run Deep (1958).

Larry Parks was blacklisted because of his former Communist associations, and had his first film role for four years, while Constance Smith was dropped from her 20th Century-Fox contract after box-office flops. Parks made only one more film eight years later, making Freud (1962) his final film role.

Parks married actress Betty Garrett in 1944 and, after Parks eventually left the film industry, he occasionally acted on stage and TV, and the couple formed a profitable construction business. Parks was godfather to Jeff Bridges.

Lisa Daniely was born Mary Elizabeth Bodington on 4 June 1929 in Reading, Berkshire, to an English solicitor father and a French mother. She was educated in Paris and made her film debut at 21, in the title role of Lilli Marlene (1950) and starred in Hindle Wakes (1952). She died on 24 January 2014.

The cast are Larry Parks as John Desmond, Constance Smith as Jane Claymore, Lisa Daniely as Anna Ray, Donald Stewart as Macauly, Cyril Chamberlain as Foster, Ronan O’Casey as Nick, Alexander Gauge as Fitzgerald, Ronald Leigh-Hunt as Doctor Scott, June Rodney as Young Psychiatric Nurse, Joan Heal as Annabella, Thora Hird as Mary, Doris Hare as Nurse Brady, Marie Bryant as Melodie, Russell Westwood as Sam, John H. Watson as Truscott, Robert Moore as Clarke, Hal Osmond as Charlie, Frank Forsyth as Sergeant Gross, Alastair Hunter -as Hotel Clerk, and Margot Bryant as Cleaning Woman.

Derek Winnert 2021 Classic Movie Review 11,547

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