George Tobias is best remembered by my generation for a wonderful comic "cameo-supporting" role he had in the series BEWITCHED, opposite Alice Pearce. He was the immortal Abner Kravitz, neighbor of Samantha and Darren Stevens, who was married to the overly snoopy Gladys Kravitz (Pearce), who was always certain something odd was going on at the Stevens' home. Gladys was right, but she never was able to get her timing correct with Abner (always reading the newspaper, or doing his taxes, or watching television, while she was certain she saw something unearthly across the street). Tobias could play dramatic as well as comic roles, but his timing as a comic performer was wonderful here - with a complete deadpan he always put down his wife, whom he was increasingly convinced was a nut job! This comic ability was put to first rate use by Warner Brothers in his career from the middle 1930s to the 1940s (lest I leave you thinking him just good at comedy, look at his self-sacrificing legionnaire in Burt Lancaster's TEN TALL MEN or his escaped convict in RAWHIDE). In films like THE STRAWBERRY BLOND or YANKEE DOODLE DANDY Tobias enlivened the proceedings like others of the perennial supporting actors crew (like Frank McHugh, Alan Hale Sr., S.Z.Sakall).
Tobias did it very realistically. Look at his performance in YANKEE DOODLE DANDY as Mr. Dietz (of Dietz and Goff, the theatrical producers). His matter-of-fact rejection of George. M. Cohan's work the audience knows is wrongheaded, but we also know that 90% of the theater producers in 1903 would have agreed with him. His look of total puzzlement listening to Cohan's tunes (Cagney's singing "Harrigan") makes sense as the tune is not the type of sentimental number about Irishmen that was acceptable on stage in 1903 (Cohan's tune has a feistier, more realistic type involved). When a fed up Cagney dismisses Tobias by saying he has no ear for music, Tobias quietly answers he has a wonderful ear for music. Even if the long term result for Dietz and his partner was wrong, the short term one happened to make sense.
I bring this all up because of Tobias' role in TORRID ZONE, as the local revolutionary "bandit" chief, Rosario La Mata. Head of a gang who commit robberies mostly of the local American owned businesses (ironically for this comedy, his two henchmen are the ill-fated George Reeves and the ill-fated Victor Killian), he is usually assisting the locals against greedy gringos and their corrupt minions. This is not approved of by the American owned fruit company that employs Jerome Cowan, Pat 0'Brien, and Jimmy Cagney, but the closer the employee is to the reality of the situation (Cagney is the lowest rung of management here), the more apparent that for all the trouble La Mata is doing he actually is helping his people more than the government is. Notice, Cagney does refer to him as "Rosie", hardly a negative view of the man.
The main plot of TORRID ZONE bears comparison to MGM's film (set in French Indo-China) of RED DUST. There to we have Clark Gable and his staff (Tully Marshall and Donald Crisp) on their rubber plantation, awaiting the new manager (Gene Raymond) and his attractive wife (Mary Astor). There a triangle develops between Gable, Astor, and Jean Harlow (who is currently stuck on the plantation). Here it is Cagney's relationship with Cowan's wife Helen Vinson, and his growing attraction to Ann Sheridan. O'Brien (in this, another of his "buddy" films with Cagney) is Cagney's immediate supervisor trying to keep the peace in the business between Cagney and Cowan.
It is the business with Tobias' Rosie that lifts it. There is no similar character in RED DUST. His antics, his confrontation at the conclusion with Cagney, O'Brien, Sheridan, and the others, and the nifty way he and Cagney get each other out of the final jam lift the film.
Now my question is why was Tobias given such a likable rogue figure in 1940. Well it's obvious that the screenwriters were thinking of someone, a trifle less funny but somewhat admirable in his way. Rosie is a clone (if you will) of August Sandino, the Nicaraguan national hero who was fighting the Somoza Family and their ally (the United Fruit Company) in the late 1920s (see my film review on MARGIE). Sandino was a more ruthless type, but his goal was understandable to his foes. One of them, General Smedley Butler, wrote an interesting book of memoirs about how his Marine Corps commands ended up being used by the Federal Government to help American corporations in Latin America - including Nicaragua. One wishes that Sandino could have seen the film to see some Americans did appreciate his goals. Unfortunately, he was killed in an ambush in 1933.
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