The Last Angry Man

Sam Abelman is an aging Brooklyn physician who runs a modest storefront clinic, treating neighbors with a mix of stubbornness and deep commitment. His nephew Myron, trying to launch a journalism career, writes a sympathetic profile that brings Sam unexpected attention. A slick television producer, Woodrow Thrasher, reads the piece and thinks Sam would make ideal material for a human interest program that could boost ratings and bring in money. Myron hopes the exposure will help his career, while Sam fears public attention will cheapen the personal care he gives and unsettle the neighborhood he knows. The film follows how pride, idealism, and opportunism clash among the doctor, his family, and his patients, and small betrayals affect his close community.

Directed by Daniel Mann and released in 1959, the film was brought to screen from material by Gerald Green with screenplay work by Richard Murphy, and it features Paul Muni in the title role alongside David Wayne and Betsy Palmer.

Box office records for The Last Angry Man aren't widely cited, and the picture didn't register as a major commercial smash. It found more attention through critical discussion and television airings than through headline theatrical grosses, with modest domestic totals.

Paul Muni's portrayal helped shape cinematic images of the dedicated, old-school physician, and the film entered conversations about how television can exploit private lives for entertainment. Though not a ubiquitous classic, it keeps coming up in studies of media ethics and of midcentury portrayals of community medicine, and performance studies.

Contemporary reviews highlighted Muni's forceful lead performance even when they differed on pacing and sentimentality. The film examines integrity, the tension between publicity and personal vocation, generational ambitions, and neighborhood loyalty, and modern viewers often respond to it as a character piece about moral stubbornness versus opportunism and patient dignity.