Cars have been the stars of many movies and TV shows over the years, but most of the ones we remember are from the action-adventure end of the spectrum, like James Bond’s Aston Martin, Jim Rockford’s Firebird, or KITT from Knight Rider. It’s less common for a four-wheeled costar to stand out in a purely dramatic role, but every so often, there’s a memorable exception, like the 1972 Lincoln Continental sedan featured in the Oscar-winning 1973 Jack Lemmon drama Save the Tiger.
Depending on your age and tastes, it’s entirely possible that you’ve never heard of Save the Tiger. Released in February 1973, it was a box office disappointment that received mixed contemporary reviews, although it was later nominated for three Academy Awards. Star Jack Lemmon, who had believed in the project enough to take the role for far less than his usual fee, won the Oscar for Best Actor for his lead performance. The film got a 4K Blu-ray release in August 2025. (These screenshots are from an earlier release.)
Save the Tiger, which was directed by John G. Avildsen from a screenplay by Steve Shagan, follows about a day and a half in the life of Harry Stoner (Lemmon), an affluent middle-aged Los Angeles businessman whose comfortable existence is coming apart at the seams. Harry and his business partner Phil (Jack Gilford, above left) run a clothing company called Capri Casuals, which is now teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. They spend much of the film arguing about Harry’s plan to have their Long Beach factory torched for the insurance, a crime Harry insists would be no worse than the “little ballet with the books” that’s gotten them through the past year.
Harry has been living a lavish lifestyle, which his accountant says is costing him about $200 a day, the equivalent of more than $1,650 a day in 2026. He has a big house in Beverly Hills with a heated swimming pool (causing the steam seen in the above shot), a live-in maid, a gardener, a Swiss boarding school for his teenage daughter, and a big car that we later learn has a car phone (still a rare and very expensive item at the time). None this brings Harry much comfort — in the opening scene, his wife tells him he was screaming in his sleep, again.
Harry’s car first appears in the second scene, about 14 minutes in. When I saw it, I paused the film and said “Ahh” aloud, because it struck me as exceptionally precise automotive casting. It’s a Light Gray Metallic 1972 Lincoln Continental sedan with a black vinyl roof and dark blue leather upholstery on Twin Comfort lounge seats. Interestingly, director John Avildsen said the studio had wanted to use a different car because they had an established deal with another automaker, but he pushed for Harry to drive a Continental. “I just felt that he was the kind of guy that would have a Lincoln,” Avildsen said.
I tried to find an example of a surviving four-door 1972 Continental with the same color combination, but came up short; the ’70s Lincoln sedans aren’t nearly as popular with modern collectors as the Mark IV, and trying to find a particular color was a lost cause. Harry Stoner’s car in Save the Tiger seems to have been selected to match Harry’s custom-made gray Italian silk suit, which receives many compliments throughout the film. The Continental falls into the same category as Harry’s suit: It’s conspicuous and clearly expensive, but not overly ostentatious. Unlike a Cadillac (or even a Mark IV), it doesn’t scream “Hey, look at me,” but it has presence.
By 1973, California was the leading U.S. market for imported cars, but Californians were still buying quite a lot of Lincolns: 11,472 in calendar 1972, when this film was shot, a substantial chunk of total 1972 Lincoln sales. However, high-end luxury imports like Mercedes-Benz already had a firm foothold. Other than a Checker taxi, Harry’s Continental is the only car in the movie that’s seen more than fleetingly, but we could probably assume that a lot of his peers now drive luxury imports. Harry himself does not — he prides himself on his somewhat wounded patriotism, telling Phil, “When I was a kid, sitting alone in the room playing the radio, if they ever played the national anthem, I stood up, all alone in the room. I stood at attention.”
Car magazines of the ’70s tended to be contemptuous of big domestic luxury cars like this Continental, dismissing them as rolling isolation chambers that were no fun to drive. For people like Harry Stoner, “enthusiast” driving was entirely beside the point; if Harry wanted a sporty car, he would just buy an Alfa Romeo Spider and park it next to the Lincoln. For Harry, the Continental seems more like a den, a haven where he can shut out as much of the world as he wants to and get lost in daydreams, like Thurber’s Walter Mitty.
One of Harry’s defining traits throughout this movie is recurring fits of almost morbid nostalgia. In between felonies and PTSD flashbacks to World War 2, he tries to remember the lineup of the 1939 Brooklyn Dodgers, and complains frequently about the erosion of hallowed traditions and institutions, like baseball. His 1972 Continental is practically an institution in itself — 225.4 inches on a 127-inch wheelbase, 79.6 inches wide, and more than 5,200 lb of orthodox Detroit luxury — and it’s a place where he can safely listen to the big band music his wife (Patricia Smith) rolls her eyes at.
Shortly after we see him get in the car in the film’s second scene, Harry leans over to an aftermarket cassette deck under the Continental’s AM/FM MPX stereo and pops in a cassette of Bunny Berigan’s 1937 rendition of the Vernon Duke/Ira Gershwin standard “I Can’t Get Started,” a tune that’s also played at the beginning and end of the movie as a kind of theme song. (You can read J P Cavanaugh’s take on the song here.) Harry quickly becomes so wrapped up in the music that a cop car has to honk at him to move from a stop sign.
A little while later, a young hitchhiker Harry picks up on the Sunset Strip, Myra (Laurie Heineman), listens to the tape for a moment and remarks, “Sounds like an old recording.” “It is,” he admits.
In a later scene, after picking Myra up a second time, Harry, high as a kite and close to a nervous breakdown, laments, “I want that girl in a Cole Porter song. I wanna see Lena Horne at the Cotton Club, hear Billie Holiday sing ‘Fine and Mellow,’ walk in that kind of rain that never washes the perfume away.” You can see right away why he would be drawn to the traditionalist lavishness of a ’70s Lincoln. Sure, it only got 11 mpg, but look at the gas prices on the 76 station sign: 32.9¢ regular, 36.9¢ premium — a trivial expense for a man who’s spending about $200 a day just “to get out of bed.”
Some contemporary critics were annoyed by Harry’s mawkishness, which does get pretty overwrought. The point is that he’s traumatized by his past and terrified of the future, so his only refuge is picking and choosing past moments that seem safer and simpler. The big Lincoln, which is almost silent inside except for the radio or the strains of Bunny Berigan, becomes a sort of fortress in an increasingly hostile world.
Watching Harry behind the wheel of his Lincoln, alone or with Myra, I couldn’t help recalling that this movie was released less than nine months before the 1973–1974 oil embargo, which would make big cars like this unexpectedly fraught and set the wheels in motion for industry-wide downsizing — chipping away at yet another of Harry’s cherished institutions. Of course, the filmmakers had no way of anticipating that, but it adds another layer to the character’s anxiety about the walls closing in.
Assuming that he survived his various crises, I could see Harry Stoner a few years later, now reluctantly driving an S-Class Mercedes and waxing nostalgic about the Lincoln, long since traded in. “Man, that Continental,” he’d say. “Nineteen feet long, soft as a pillow, four hundred and sixty cubic inches. Now, that was a car. My god! Whatever happened to Detroit?”
Harry’s Lincoln only appears in a four or five scenes throughout the movie. There are no car chases; it doesn’t jump any bridges, pull any tire-smoking J-turns, or turn into an airplane. I’m sure that no toy companies were lining up outside the Paramount gates clamoring for merchandising rights. Harry himself barely remarks on it. However, the Lincoln is at least as much a character as some of the film’s human supporting cast. (It has more screen time than Harry’s wife!) It’s exactly right for the character (although I have a suspicion Harry would have ordered the $446.67 Town Car package, which the gray car didn’t have), and in its understated way, it tells you a lot about him and the life he leads.
I have mixed feelings about Save the Tiger as a film (it is very heavy-handed), but as a portrait of its time, it’s far more interesting now than it probably was back then. Screenwriter Steve Shagan recalled a contemporary English critic who remarked, “The film could be put in a time capsule and could be opened 50, 60, 100 years from now, and people would know what the ’70s were like, and what America was like at the time.” For me, that’s at least half of the appeal of both classic movies and classic cars.
Related Reading
1970 Lincoln Continental – All-New, Lighter, Faster, But Not Quite Good Enough? (by me)
Car Show Classic: 1972 Lincoln Continental – Making The Case For Peak 1970s Lincoln (by J P Cavanaugh)
Liv Lindeland (b 1945) had a part in Save the Tiger (she was credited as “Liv Von Linden”). She was Playboy’s Playmate of the year for 1972 and in those days the PotY was given a pink car, Ms Lindeland receiving a De Tomaso Pantera which, although much modified and now a vibrant red, has survived.
I’m just old enough (turning 70 next month) to remember guys like Harry—guys born between 1915 and 1930. Their middle-age crises hit hard because they came at a time when EVERYTHING was in crisis. By the time anyone’s pushing 50, more things have changed than have stayed the same, but the late sixties and all of the seventies were another thing entirely.
“Save the Tiger” is heavy-handed, but it’s also accurate. I can smell the gin and the stale cigarette smoke watching it.
How about the sexy (not) 1971 Plymouth Valiant from the movie “Duel?” Comes to mind as my first car was a 1974 model. Will have to check out “Save the Tiger.” Thank you
One thing in the pictures stood out to me, but I can’t find any information to determine whether I’m right or wrong. In my mind, if a 1972 car had a tape player, it would have been for 8-track tapes, not cassettes. I don’t recall factory cassette players before 1977 or so. Can anyone corroborate this?
My grandmother had a 1971 280SE with a Blaupunkt cassette player. My grandfather got her the car as a 30th wedding anniversary present and selected as many options as he possibly could. Because it wasn’t a common option at the time, I’m sure the cassette player was quite expensive.
Yes, I should have narrowed my comment to American cars. I didn’t have access to many foreign car interiors at that time.
Lincoln didn’t offer factory cassette players until 1979. But—I just found “Save the Tiger” streaming for free online (Pluto TV) and Harry puts the tape into an aftermarket underdash cassette deck at the 14:58 mark in the movie.
AHA! This explains everything! Thank you!
Thanks for clarifying that — I couldn’t make it out clearly enough to be sure.
Pluto’s print looks pretty good. It’s still murky (70s movie film), but Harry reaches down to the transmission tunnel with the cassette in his hand and he puts it in. Not clear enough to tell what brand, model or anything like that.
An interesting detail is that the cassette is homemade, not a commercial release. In the first seen, we see that Harry has a reel-to-reel machine at home, so maybe he transferred it to cassette himself.
Movies with themes like this, resonate a little too clearly for me now. I’m in my 70’s and I realize that I’m living in the last quarter of the game. Jack Lemmon’s character’s life is unraveling in the movie from poor choices, bad luck, and a changing world. I’m sure that he felt that he was losing, or had already lost control of events, and was just trying to keep the car on the road.
I can certainly see the Lincoln as a representation of traditional values. This was what you aspired to, and the comfortable lifestyle that accompanies it. As Lincoln advertises to this day; it has the power of Sanctuary. Looking at that photo of his factory, which looks more like Downtown L.A.’s garment district, than Long Beach, I see that his Wife and family’s comfort came from his hustling and hard work back at the factory. He could get in that Lincoln, drive away and try to distance himself from that gritty environment.
In some ways the Lincoln was as specialized as any sports car to it’s mission. It provided quiet, calm, restful transportation, a depressurizing chamber for the transition from workplace to home. At the same time it made a quiet statement about the status and financial success of it’s driver.
I graduated from high school in 1973, and I was aware of this movie, probably because of it’s unusual title. I never watched it, probably because I saw it as an old person’s movie, that would be boring to me. Now I want to watch it because I can identify with the character. As to the theme song, I’ve got a later recording of that song, along with a collection of Big Band LPs. That music sure sounds awful good to me now, even though I came of age with Disco.
All of the movie was shot in real locations in L.A., so Harry and Phil’s main factory (which is where they have their offices and designers) is indeed in the garment district, and those scenes were shot in an actual garment factory downtown. The separate factory they’re planning to burn down is the one in Long Beach (which we don’t ever actually see), which Phil says is making pantsuits.
One of the things I appreciated about the movie is that nothing was shot on a sound stage, and it doesn’t “cheat” locations. Typically, modern movies and TV shows that are “set” in a place are filmed on sets or locations somewhere else — in Vancouver or Toronto or wherever has the best incentive programs — with only a handful of quick exterior shots in the actual locale. I’ve lost track of how many things I’ve seen that are supposedly set in someplace like Chicago, but have almost no local atmosphere or color at all because everything involving the main cast could have been filmed basically anywhere.
This movie was actually shot in existing locations in the places the story is supposed to be set, and so it gives a pretty vivid glimpse of L.A. in 1972. At the risk of sounding like Harry, if it were remade today, I’m pretty certain that would be lost.
It is possible to shoot locations and get a feel of a city still—it’s just expensive (though California has started fighting back with incentives of its own).
The original “Bosch” series on Amazon Prime and “The Lincoln Lawyer” series on Netflix (both from novels by author Michael Connelly, a former L.A. Times reporter) get a lot of location shoots in, as does “Shrinking” (with Harrison Ford and Jason Segel) on Apple TV, which is set in Pasadena and does a TON of location work.
But yeah, “Save the Tiger” is right up there with “Adam-12”, “Columbo” and “The Rockford Files” for showing what L.A. really looked like in the 70s.
Aah, the 72 Continental and that great Bunny Berrigan record – two things I could get lost in too! I have never seen this movie and should watch for it .
Thanks for the link to my take on that classic performance. I just listened to it again, and it draws me in every time. Now I need to find a 72 Lincoln to ride in. 🙂
This flick was on “TCM”, not soo long ago. Saw a bit, wasn’t anything that held my interest.
IIRC, the zany ex-CIA agent Otto (Kevin Kline) in ‘A Fish Called Wanda’ also drove a ’72 Continental through the streets of London, careening off of other cars while shouting, “A$$hole!”.
Interesting car and it did have “presence.” Arguably not as distinguished as the classic ”61-’69 models. It shared its chassis with the less-distinguished and lower-priced Fords and Mercurys and its engine and transmission were optional on those cheaper cars. Probably why it is not as popular as those earlier models with collectors.
Interesting movie that I’ll have to keep an eye out for to see how some of “The Greatest Generation” coped with their mid-life crises. The basic plot sounds like something that I can easily imagine as being depicted in a BBC or ITC production and broadcast on my local PBS station.
SAVE THE TIGER is one of my favorites for its grit, truth. Jack Guilford was excellent, as well as Lemmon. Very (!) seventies on all of the many levels. The seventies Lincoln I liked best? The 1974 Town Coupé. Never see them.
Thanks. Great article.
Jack Gilford is really, really good in this movie. He was nominated for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor, although he lost out to John Houseman for The Paper Chase.
Thanks so much for revealing J.P.’s Blog!
I will be spending a lot of time reviewing the music section.
I’m lucky to have grown up watching Mr. Lemmon’s films .
He was a fantastic actor no matter the subject .
I missed this film when new, I’ll have to keep an eye out for it on the vintage movie channel .
I read the book this movie is based on, a good read if saddening .
-Nate
The movie is actually not based on the book, but kind of the other way around. Shagan wrote the screenplay first, but he spent a lot of time shopping it around without any bites — it was not an easy sell, since it’s a drama about middle-aged people at a time when Hollywood was desperate to try to reclaim a younger audience — so he novelized his script.
I got married in the summer of 76, my wife and i, now my ex, rode in my 1938 Buick special sedan and the wedding party rode in her mother’s boyfriends 72 continental sedan. It was the hottest day in June and the Lincoln overheated… The Buick experienced no problem just that we were hot in it… Had the Buick nine years, sold it to pay a visa bill. Never had a problem with the buick, should have dumped the wife then and kept the buick.. Me in 75