1973’s Save The Tiger tells the story of Harry Stoner (Jack Lemmon).

When Harry was a young man, he loved baseball and he felt like he could conquer the world.  He saw combat in World War II and spent the final part of the war on the Island of Capri, recuperating after being wounded in battle.  Harry went on to partner up with Phil Greene (Jack Gilford) and they started a clothing company in Los Angeles, Capri Casuals.

Now, Harry is a middle-aged man who is still haunted by nightmares about the war.  He’s married.  He has a daughter attending school in Switzerland.  He’s respected in the industry.  He lives in a nice house in Beverly Hills.  And he’s totally miserable.  He wakes up every day and wonders what is happening to the country.  He talks about witnessing a wild pitch at a baseball game, missing the days when something like that could seem like the most important thing in his life.  He spends all of his time at work, cheating to balance the books and keeping clients happy by setting them up with a sophisticated prostitute named Margo (played, with a weary cynicism, by Lara Parker).

Save The Tiger covers just a few days in the life of Harry Stoner, as he searches for some sort of meaning in his life.  He gives a ride to a free-spirited hippie (Laurie Heineman) who offers to have sex with him.  (Harry replies that he’s late for work.)  He accepts an award at an industry dinner and, as he tries to give his acceptance speech, he is haunted by the sight of dead soldiers sitting in the audience.  With Phil, he debates whether or not to balance the books by setting fire to one of their warehouses in order to collect the insurance.  Harry sees a poster imploring him to “Save the Tigers.”  Who can save Harry as he finds himself increasingly overwhelmed by the realities of his life?

As I watched Save the Tiger, I found myself thinking about two other films of the era that featured a middle-aged man dealing with a midlife crisis while searching for meaning in the counterculture.  In Petulia and Breezy, George C. Scott and William Holden each found meaning in a relationship with a younger woman.  And while Petulia and Breezy are both good films, Save The Tiger is far more realistic in its portrayal of Harry’s ennui.  There is no easy solution for Harry.  Even if he accepted the hippie’s offer to “ball” or if he acted on the obvious attraction between himself and Margo, one gets the feeling that Harry would still feel lost.  Harry’s problem isn’t that he’s merely bored with his life.  Harry’s problem is that he yearns for a past that can never be recaptured and which may only exist in his imagination.  If George C. Scott and William Holden were two actors who excelled at playing characters who refused to yield to the world’s demands, Jack Lemmon was an actor who played characters who often seemed to be desperate in their search for happiness.  Save The Tiger features Lemmon at his most desperate, playing a character who has yielded so often and compromised so much that he now has nowhere left to go.

It’s not exactly a cheerful film but it is one that sticks with you.  Jack Lemmon won his second Oscar for his performance as Harry and he certainly deserved it.  Lemmon does a wonderful job generating some sympathy for a character who is not always particularly likable.  Many of Harry’s problems are due to his own bad decisions.  No one forced him to use “ballet with the books” to keep his business open and no one is forcing him to hire arsonist Charlie Robbins (Thayer David, giving a performance that is both witty and sinister at the same time) to burn down not only his warehouse but also an adjoining business that belongs to an acquaintance.  Harry could admit the truth and shut down his business but then how would he afford the home in Beverly Hills and all the other symbols of his success?  Harry yearns for a time when he was young and his decisions didn’t have consequences but that time has passed.

This isn’t exactly the type of film that many would expect from the director of Rocky but director John G. Avildsen does a good job of putting the viewer into Harry’s seedy world.  I especially liked Avilden’s handling of the scene where Harry hallucinates a platoon of wounded soldiers listening to his awards speech.  Instead of lingering on the soldiers, Avildsen instead uses a series of a quick cuts that initially leave the audience as confused as Harry as to what Harry is seeing.  Both Rocky and Save The Tiger are about a man who refuses to give up.  The difference is that perhaps Harry Stoner should.

“You can’t play with us, mister!” a kid yells at Harry when he attempts to recreate the wild pitch that so impressed him as a youth.  In the end, Harry is a man trapped by his memories of the past and his dissatisfaction with the present.  He’s made his decisions and he’ll have to live with the consequences but one is left with the knowledge that, no matter what happens, Harry will be never find the happiness or the satisfaction that he desires.  The tigers can be saved but Harry might be a lost cause.