Manpower

Manpower is a 1941 American crime melodrama directed by Raoul Walsh and starring Edward G. Robinson, Marlene Dietrich, and George Raft. The picture was written by Richard Macaulay and Jerry Wald, and the supporting cast features Alan Hale, Frank McHugh, Eve Arden, Barton MacLane, Ward Bond and Walter Catlett. Robinson and Raft got into a fistfight on the set that was eagerly splashed all over the front pages of the nation's newspapers. The fight was photographed by a Life magazine photographer who was visiting the set that day. Humphrey Bogart was considered for Robinson's role, but Raft refused to have him as his co-star. Victor McLaglen was also considered to play Robinson's role, which would have made it a supporting part, and Raft reportedly resented sharing leading man status on the film as a result of Robinson being cast instead. Raft chose to make Manpower over the remake of the 1931 pre-Code version of Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon, partly because it was a choice between untried first-time director John Huston and Walsh, the veteran director of Raft's 1933 hit The Bowery, plus Raft reasoned that a Hays Code-era remake may not be able to live up to its pre-Code predecessor, so the career-catapulting role of Sam Spade went to Bogart instead. The script is one of many reworkings of the plotline for a 1932 Robinson movie called Tiger Shark, in which Robinson played essentially the same part, only as a tuna fisherman rather than an electric power lineman.