The Tougher They Come (1950) User Reviews (3)

Valley of the Giants among the big trees.

[mark.waltz · 6/10 · 22 May 2019]

So great outdoors comes alive again in this entertaining film about loggers and the women who either stand by them or want a life as far away from trees as they can get. Preston Foster and Wayne Morris are old friends who have worked together in the logging business for years, but when Morris has the opportunity to work under Foster, he turns it down. When Foster marries the Restless Kay Buckley, their trouble just begins to accelerate because she has no intention of spending any lengthy period of time in the great outdoors. When Morris finally changes his mind and takes a job working for foster, Buckley changes her mind about staying in Seattle, and that creates jealousy for Gloria Henry, the daughter of fellow employee Frank McHugh who has fallen in love with Morris. With a big firm trying to scare Morris and other independent loggers out through sabotage, the jealousy that erupts between Morris and Foster must take secondary attention to the violence going on.

Similar in many ways to a series a films made at Warner Brothers ("Tiger Shark", "Slim", "Manpower"), this is a very enjoyable B film that has several shocking moments including two hideous train accidents and a very threatening fire. It is above average for a film of its kind, but unlike other films set in the logging industry, this is in black and white and cries for color. It is also similar to the 1942 Paramount film "The Forest Rangers" in dealing with sabotage and attempts to scare "the little guy" out of business. The one element that remains disturbing is Foster and Morris's need to physically fight out of the drop of a hat, even when their friendship is at its closest. In spite of that, there is a lot to enjoy, and the cast does a good job of making their characters very likable.

Rough Guys and Dames

[boblipton · 5/10 · 9 November 2014]

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.

Timber Rififi

[searchanddestroy-1 · 27 January 2013]

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...