General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

Save the Tiger

Save the Tiger is a 1973 American drama directed by John G. Avildsen, written and produced by Steve Shagan, and starring Jack Lemmon as Harry Stoner, a Los Angeles dress manufacturer who arranges to have his own factory burned down for the insurance money. The film won Lemmon the Academy Award for Best Actor, and its title refers to a petition to save an endangered species of tiger that a stranger asks Stoner to sign during the story.¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Release	February 14, 1973 (Los Angeles and New York openings), distributed by Paramount Pictures¹
Director / writer	John G. Avildsen; written and produced by Steve Shagan, his first feature screenplay¹
Lead role	Jack Lemmon as Harry Stoner, a World War II veteran heading the imperiled Los Angeles fashion house Capri Casuals²
Runtime and rating	100 minutes, rated R³
Academy Awards	Lemmon won Best Actor (1974 ceremony); Jack Gilford nominated for Best Supporting Actor; Shagan nominated for Best Original Screenplay²^•⁴
Budget	One million dollars, granted after two years of lobbying; Lemmon worked for union scale, $165 per week plus a percentage of profits²
Critical standing	88% on the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer from 32 reviews³

Spoilers

Plot

Harry Stoner is a middle-aged partner in Capri Casuals, a Los Angeles garment manufacturer employing roughly 40 people, and the film covers about a day and a half of his life, from a nightmare that wakes him to a pickup baseball game the next morning.⁵^•¹ His business is failing: revenues are down, the bank is threatening foreclosure, and he and his partner Phil Greene (Jack Gilford) have already manipulated the company's books the previous year, leaving them exposed to fraud charges if audited.²^•¹ Harry concludes that the only way the firm can survive another season is to hire a professional arsonist, Charlie Robbins (Thayer David), to burn their under-used Long Beach factory and collect the insurance.²^•¹

The same day carries the buyers' show for the new spring line, which is critical to the firm's survival, and Harry curries favor with a demanding client partly through the services of a high-priced prostitute (Lara Parker).¹^•² Around these business pressures the film traces a collapsing personal life: an inert marriage to Janet (Patricia Smith), a daughter kept at a Swiss boarding school to keep her out of what Harry calls the "zoo" of the Los Angeles school system, and flashbacks and visions of dead soldiers rooted in his wartime experience.²^•⁶ A chance encounter with a young hippie, Myra (Laurie Heineman), offers him an escape he does not take.² Phil, the conscience-stricken partner who has nonetheless joined Harry in earlier fraud, argues for a less criminal way out even at the cost of the business.⁶

The title appears in the story when Harry leaves a movie theater and a man asks him to sign a petition to save an endangered species of tiger; elsewhere the film alludes to dying tigers or lions.⁴

Production

A project Lemmon championed. Paramount wanted nothing to do with what it considered a message picture and a downer, so Lemmon, Avildsen, and Shagan, who also signed on as a producer, spent two years lobbying before receiving a one million dollar budget.² To stretch the money, Lemmon volunteered to work for union scale at $165 per week plus a share of the profits.²

Location shooting. Avildsen shot the film in sequence, wheeling a Cinemobile, a mobile filming unit invented by former I Spy cameraman Fouad Said that kept location costs low, around Los Angeles.² Filming ran from February 14 to April 1, 1972, on location in the downtown garment district, Chinatown, and Beverly Hills, with scenes along Sunset Boulevard and at a beach house in Malibu; the park in the final scenes was Roxbury Park in Beverly Hills.¹

Origins of the script. Shagan's screenplay, his first for a feature film, was acquired by Cinema Center Productions in November 1970. During 1972 he turned the script into a novel, published in late November 1972, after the film was completed but before its release. The co-production company Jalem Productions, Inc. was owned by Jack Lemmon.¹ According to a June 1973 report in The Times of London, Marcello Mastroianni was at one time considered for the lead, with the setting envisaged as Italy or France.¹ Marvin Hamlisch scored the film, Jim Crabe was the cinematographer, and David Bretherton the editor.¹

Reception and awards

Before the film was even finished, Lemmon was being touted as an Oscar contender alongside Jack Nicholson for The Last Detail, Marlon Brando for Last Tango in Paris, Robert Redford for The Sting, and Al Pacino for Serpico.² When he accepted the Best Actor award at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion on April 4, 1974, he became the first performer in Academy history to win both Best Supporting Actor, for Mister Roberts (1955), and Best Actor.² It was his second Academy Award overall.² Gilford's supporting performance and Shagan's screenplay also drew nominations.⁴

Contemporary reviews were mixed, largely because of the depressing plot, though Lemmon and Gilford received excellent notices.⁴ Roger Ebert, then the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times, called the film "essentially a virtuoso piece of movie acting" and described Avildsen stringing together scenes that are "human, quirky, bittersweet".⁵ On Rotten Tomatoes the film holds an 88% Tomatometer score from 32 reviews, with an average of rated reviews of 7.10/10.³

Place in Lemmon's and Avildsen's careers

For Lemmon, the performance is often ranked behind his more widely cited work in Some Like It Hot (1959), The Apartment (1960), The Odd Couple (1968), The China Syndrome (1979), and Missing (1982), and the film itself is little remembered by comparison.² For Avildsen, who had made his mark with downbeat character studies such as Joe (1970) and The Stoolie (1972), the film preceded his popular success with Rocky (1976) and The Karate Kid (1984); Shagan and Avildsen later reteamed on the political crime thriller The Formula (1980).²^•⁷ The film's blend of cynicism and nostalgia for an idealized American past has been read as characteristic of early-1970s American cinema.²

Home media and availability

The film was released on DVD on October 25, 2005, and Paramount Home Video issued a video release on September 8, 2020.⁶^•⁸ A new 4K restoration completed at Paramount was used for a later Blu-ray edition, which includes English SDH subtitles; a 2022 release from the Australian label Imprint Films preceded it.⁹ As of recent listings the film can be rented or bought digitally on Amazon Video, the Apple TV Store, and Fandango At Home, and streamed free with ads on Kanopy and Hoopla.¹⁰

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Drama and biographical films (individual works) › Drama films 1970s › Released 1970 to 1974

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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