General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

The Lost Man

The Lost Man is a 1969 American crime drama written and directed by Robert Alan Aurthur, loosely based on British author F. L. Green's 1945 novel Odd Man Out, and starring Sidney Poitier as Jason Higgs, the leader of a Black militant group who masterminds a factory payroll robbery to fund the families of jailed demonstrators.¹^•² It was Aurthur's only feature film as director, produced and distributed by Universal Pictures.¹

Key fact	Detail
Director and writer	Robert Alan Aurthur, his sole feature directorial effort¹
Source	Loose adaptation of F. L. Green's novel Odd Man Out (1945), previously filmed by Carol Reed in 1947 with James Mason²
Lead cast	Sidney Poitier (Jason Higgs), Joanna Shimkus (Cathy Ellis), Al Freeman Jr. (Dennis Laurence)¹
Release	World premiere 24 June 1969 at Chicago's Oriental Theatre; New York opening 25 June 1969¹
Runtime and format	113 minutes, Technicolor, Panavision (2.35:1)¹^•³
Music	Score by Quincy Jones, released on Universal's UNi label on 16 June 1969; Grammy-nominated for Best Original Score Written for a Motion Picture or a Television Special⁴
Box office	$1.85 million in cumulative domestic film rentals; named one of Variety's "Big Rental Films of 1969"⁴

Spoilers

Plot

After watching officers disperse a peaceful protest at a factory in a big Eastern city, Black militants under Jason Higgs's leadership plot to steal that plant's payroll in order to fund the families of Black demonstrators who are behind bars. Jason, who abandoned nonviolence after nineteen arrests, persuades Dennis Laurence, leader of the peaceful protest, to stage another demonstration at the same spot to divert police from the robbery.¹

The heist goes wrong. Jason and his associates Eddie Moxy, Reggie Page, and Orville seize the payroll and take the factory manager and his secretary hostage, but the manager breaks away and Reggie is killed in the ensuing scuffle. Wounded, Jason flees on foot and takes refuge in a movie theater, where Sally, a young Black woman, gives him first aid at her apartment. Eddie and Orville are slain trying to escape a whorehouse after the madam notifies the police. Sally contacts Dennis, who reluctantly agrees to help Jason deliver the money to his organization and escape by boat, but police security prevents contact with the organization. When Cathy Ellis, a white social worker, tries to hide Jason in her home, her father, a civil rights attorney, slaps her and notifies the police. At the waterfront, the detective Hamilton shoots Jason after he refuses to make a deal, and Jason, too weak to reach the waiting ship, is left with the film's unresolved ending.¹

Production

Stirling Silliphant was initially hired to write the screenplay, as announced in a 3 January 1968 Daily Variety item, but he was soon replaced by Aurthur, who had recently worked with Poitier on For Love of Ivy (1968). Their earlier collaborations included the 1955 Philco TV Playhouse episode "A Man Is Ten Feet Tall," expanded into the theatrical film Edge of the City (1957), and the Broadway play Carry Me Back to Morningside Heights (1968), which Poitier directed.⁴

Casting and shooting. Canadian actress Joanna Shimkus was announced as Poitier's co-star in August 1968. The two began a relationship during production and were later married. Following a week of rehearsals, principal photography commenced on 23 September 1968 in Philadelphia, with locations including the Warwick Hotel; interiors were shot at the H. G. Peters studios in Primos, Pennsylvania, the first time a Hollywood movie was shot there. Filming later moved to Universal's studio lot in Universal City, California.⁴ The prop firearms, imported from Los Angeles with firing pins removed, were stored nightly at the Police Armory because filming took place in the city's ghetto.⁴ In a November 1968 interview, actor Michael Tolan credited Poitier's efforts to ensure Black crew members were hired on the integrated crew.⁴

Title and release. The film was briefly re-titled How Many Roads? in February 1969, but the title reverted before theatrical release. Universal hired the publicity firm D. Parke Gibson Associates for a special campaign targeting Black moviegoers. The world premiere took place on 24 June 1969 at Chicago's Oriental Theatre, followed by general release on 25 June 1969 in "fifteen key domestic situations," with a Los Angeles opening on 2 July 1969; screenings were also scheduled at the San Sebastian and Berlin Film Festivals.¹^•⁴

Poitier's role and reception

The film marked a departure for Poitier, who came to it fresh from a string of hits including To Sir, with Love, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, In the Heat of the Night (all 1967), and For Love of Ivy (1968); in February 1969 he was named the top box-office draw of 1968 in the Motion Picture Herald's annual poll. Critics at the time noted the role as an expansion for the star, playing a Black militant on the run from the establishment rather than his more conventional earlier characters.⁴^•⁵

Roger Ebert, reviewing for the Chicago Sun-Times in June 1969, wrote that Poitier had "seldom been stronger or more human" and judged The Lost Man the better of the two recent films about Black militants drawn from work about Irish militants, comparing it with Jules Dassin's Up Tight!. He also observed that Aurthur had drawn heavily from Carol Reed's Odd Man Out (1947) in the screenplay's final sequences, and criticized a tendency to smooth corners and tinker with the plot.⁶ Other critics were less favorable: Penelope Houston wrote in The Spectator that Aurthur "begins as though he might have something to say about extremism versus non violent protest on the picket-line, loses it rather rapidly down the melodramatic dark alleys," and Bernard Drew called the treatment of a vital subject "lax and diffuse."⁷ Critical reception was mixed overall, though the picture ranked among Variety's "Big Rental Films of 1969."⁴

The UCLA Film & Television Archive has described the film's jazz and funk-tinged Quincy Jones score as innovative and its style as foreshadowing the Blaxploitation genre of the 1970s.⁵

Later availability

For decades the film was difficult to see; a Universal VHS release appeared in 2000, and no DVD or Blu-ray edition existed until Kino Lorber prepared a new 4K restoration from the 35mm original camera negative, released on Blu-ray in 2026 with an audio commentary by Julie Kirgo and Peter Hankoff.⁸^•⁹

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 1960s › Released 1966 to 1969

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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