The Runaway

Felipe, a young, homeless boy, lives hand-to-mouth, taking any temporary work he can find in a Mexican border town. When he gets into a fight with another boy while picking up trash at a bullfight arena, he is fired but manages to snag more than his share of his employer's payroll as he flees the stadium. With the authorities in pursuit, Felipe then returns to the dog kennel where he worked occasionally in exchange for board, steals a greyhound puppy and the two of them head for California. Along the way, the boy and his dog narrowly avoid being mugged by tramps or apprehended by the law, eventually hitching a ride with a kind priest who takes them across the U.S. border. When a policeman arrives to take Felipe back to a detention center for juveniles, the priest intervenes, allowing the boy and his dog to stay with him under the condition that he educate and reform the young troublemaker. While the relationship between Felipe and the priest is contentious at first, they soon form a bond over the training of "Mike," the greyhound, who grows from a wounded puppy into a prize-winning champion at the dog races. Often classified as a lost film, The Runaway (1962) was conceived as a family film but never had an opportunity to find its audience due to a problem with rights issues that prevented it from being released in theatres. Although the movie was made on a low budget, it was clearly a labor of love for the filmmakers who grounded the film in a reality established by the unglamorous settings and the unsentimental nature of the story. Felipe, as played by Roger Mobley, is not the sort of sweet-natured adolescent hero you'd find in a Walt Disney live-action film of the same era. Instead, he's a tough, street-smart waif with a foul mouth who is quick to anger and has an obvious problem with authority figures. While The Runaway might not be a masterpiece, it is a refreshing change of pace from the usual cliché-ridden "boy and his dog" stories churned out by Hollywood. The film is also notable as one of Haskell Wexler's early efforts as cinematographer. He collaborated with veteran cameraman Ray Foster on The Runaway, capturing the dusty backwater towns along the California-Mexican border where economically-depressed conditions result in broken homes and runaways like Felipe. Wexler worked on the film between filming Angel Baby in 1961 and Face in the Rain in 1963 and you can see some of the cinematographer's emerging style in the hand-held tracking shot of Felipe wandering the streets at night in the opening credit sequence of The Runaway. Despite a cast of mostly unknown character actors and non-professionals, The Runaway does feature two Hollywood veterans in key roles. Cesar Romero, who played "Latin Lovers" in his earlier career at 20th-Century-Fox and later achieved cult fame as the Joker in TV's Batman series, dominates the film as the liberal-minded priest who adopts Felipe. Anita Page, once a stunningly beautiful actress at MGM in such escapist Pre-Code fare as Our Blushing Brides (1930) and Skyscraper Souls (1932), plays a compassionate nun who provides a Mother figure substitute for Felipe. In what is basically a cameo role, you may notice character actor Frank Wolff as the more threatening of the two tramps who encounter Felipe and his dog. Wolff first established himself as a scene-stealing actor in the low-budget films of Roger Corman (Beast from Haunted Cave [1959], Ski Troop Attack [1960], Atlas [1961]) before relocating to Europe where he appeared in numerous spaghetti westerns as well as such movies as Francesco Rosi's Salvatore Giuliano [1962] and Radley Metzger's erotic masterpiece, The Lickerish Quartet [1970]. In the central role of Felipe, Roger Mobley is adequate but never completely convincing as the scrappy orphan hero. Although he had already appeared in several feature films and television shows when he starred in The Runaway, he would become a more confident performer as he grew older, eventually winning major roles in Walt Disney's Emil and the Detectives [1964] and their TV series Disneyland. In 1968, he was drafted, went to Viet Nam, joined the Green Berets and later returned to the U.S. to become an undercover narcotics agent. His attempt at a film and TV career comeback in the late seventies/early eighties failed and he is currently a pastor in Texas. Maybe Cesar Romero's priest in The Runaway had a positive effect on him after all. Producer: Arthur N. Rupe Director: Claudio Guzman Screenplay: Samuel Roeca Cinematography: Haskell Wexler, Ray Foster Music: Michael Anderson Cast: Roger Mobley (Felipe), Cesar Romero (Priest), Anita Page (Nun), Chick Chandler, Frank Wolff, Lewis Martin. BW-85m. by Jeff Stafford