Still image from the 1957 film The Strange One.

The Strange One

Directed by Jack Garfein

A military school student develops a destructive power over his fellow cadets.

1957 1h 40m Drama TV-PG

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CAST
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Jack Garfein, Director
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Jack Garfein
Director

1

Ben Gazzara, Jocko de Paris
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Ben Gazzara
Jocko de Paris

2

Pat Hingle, Harold Koble
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Pat Hingle
Harold Koble

3

Mark Richman, Cadet Colonel Corger
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Mark Richman
Cadet Colonel Corger

4

Arthur Storch, Simmons
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Arthur Storch
Simmons

5

Paul E. Richards, Perrin McKee
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Paul E. Richards
Perrin McKee

FULL SYNOPSIS

At the Southern Military College, brutish upper-classman Jocko de Paris intimidates freshmen Robert Marquales and Simmons into inviting the school's dimwitted football star, Roger Gatt, to their room for a crooked card game. Although Jocko's amiable roommate, Harold Knoble, assures the reluctant freshmen that the game is just a good-natured prank, in reality, the vindictive Jocko has planned the evening as a ruse to get even with Major Avery, the schoolmaster who once disciplined him. Jocko orders the whining Simmons to act as bartender and ply Gatt with alcohol. Once Gatt becomes drunk and belligerent, Jocko provokes him into beating Simmons with a broom. In the next room, Avery's cadet son Georgie hears Simmons' cries and hurries to alert his father, who is the officer on duty. When Avery reaches the freshmen's room, however, he finds them sound asleep in their bunks, thus casting doubt on Georgie's story. After the major departs, the freshmen jump out of their bunks and Roger emerges from his hiding place in their closet just as Georgie runs into the room. At reveille the next morning, Georgie's badly beaten body is found sprawled next to a tree. When Colonel Cliff Ramey, the officer in charge, summons Jocko to his office and informs him that Georgie has accused him of assault, Jocko asserts that Georgie fell down the stairs while drunk and is now suffering delusions of persecution. The colonel then states that he doubts that Georgie was drunk and has taken a sampl...


ARTICLES
The Strange One (1957), a psychological drama about military school mores and veiled homosexuality, was promoted as the first picture shot entirely by a cast and crew from New York's the Actors Studio, and the connection shows. Both the power and self-indulgence of that particular school of performing is on ample display here. However, even though some scenes were eventually censored or made less explicit by the Motion Picture Production Code, The Strange One was still a shocking film for its time, and was a harbinger of greater things to come for several of its cast members. Ben Gazzara plays Jocko De Paris, a macho troublemaker who lords over his younger classmates at a southern military school. De Paris and his dim-witted partners in abuse, Koble (Pat Hingle) and Gatt (James Olson), take special joy in tormenting Simmons (Arthur Storch), a young man who appears to be gay. Maj. Avery (Larry Gates) is an adult who's on to Jocko's power trip, and attempts to get him kicked out of the school. Jocko, on the other hand, recognizes his enemy, and tries to harm Avery's reputation. Gazzara's character is so wholly despicable that the tag line on The Strange One's movie poster actually states: "The Most Fascinating Louse You Ever Met!" He might also be fighting his own homosexual tendencies, but that wasn't the kind of thing you shouted about on movie posters in 1957. Producer Sam Spiegel, who was deep in preparation for David Lean's The Bridge on the River Kwai (195...

NOTES

The working titles of this film were End as a Man and The Young One. The opening and closing credits differ slightly in order. There are some significant differences between the film and its source material: In Calder Willingham's play and novel, it is established that Jocko de Paris is the son of a powerful man whose enmity is feared by school authorities. In both the play and the novel, the school authorities are responsible for ridding their institution of Jocko. In addition, the character of "Rosebud" does not appear in the play or the novel. According to the Daily Variety review, the PCA mandated that three minutes of footage dealing with homosexuality be deleted on the grounds that it "violated the rules banning sex perversion or any inference of it." The film's file in the MPAA/PCA COllection at the AMPAS Library contains no reference to those cuts, however. Although there is no overt reference to homosexuality, there is an undercurrent of homosexuality, which was also present in the play and novel, that runs throughout the film.
       Although an August 1956 Hollywood Reporter news item adds Vergel Cook to the cast, his appearance in the released film has not been confirmed. According to a July 1956 Hollywood Reporter news item, location shooting was done at Rollins College in Orlando, FL and at The Citadel in South Carolina and interiors were filmed at the Shamrock Studios in Winter Park, FL. Ben Gazzara, Arthur Storch, Pat Hingle and Paul E. Richards all reprised their Broadways roles for the film. The Strange One marked the film debuts of Gazzara, George Peppard, Geoffrey Horne and Julie Wilson, and the motion picture directorial debut of Jack Garfein, who directed the play on Broadway.

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