Having brutalized women in two successive films, it was time for Widmark the romantic to take center stage. Road House, directed by Jean Nugulesco, cast him as Jefty Roberts, the owner of a restaurant-bar managed by his best friend, played by Cornel Wilde.
Jefty falls in love with a singer played by Ida Lupino, but while he’s away on a hunting trip, she falls for Wilde. But even as a spurned lover, there was little time for Widmark to be tender. In this weird little drama, he frames his employee for theft, then, in an outwardly compassionate act, urges the judge to release Wilde in his custody. But his plan is to torture the poor guy for having stolen his true love.
After Road House Widmark took his villainy out west for William Wellman’s Yellow Sky, then turned good guy for Hathaway’s Down to the Sea in Ships before taking on the definitive noir anti-hero in Jules Dassin’s
Night and the City.
