Four years after Slim, Warner Bros. remade the story, with some notable differences.  The New York Times film critic Bosley Crowther quite eruditely explained the studio’s process in this way:

The Warner Brothers…know the pat way to forge a thunderbolt.  They simply pick a profession in which the men are notoriously tough and the mortality rate is high, write a story about it in which both features are persistently stressed, choose a couple of aces from their pack of hard-boiled actors, and, with these assorted ingredients, whip together a cinematic depth charge.

Certainly this is the case with Manpower (1941).  The studio could not have picked a more capable and rugged cast than Edward G. Robinson, George Raft and Marlene Dietrich, with the able support of Alan Hale (in the comedic Stu Erwin role), Frank McHugh, Barton MacLane, Walter Catlett, Ward Bond and Eve Arden.

While Manpower covers roughly the same ground as did Slim, it takes some detours.  Nowhere near as much attention is paid to the electrical jobs or their dangers that  the men undertake — although there is one startlingly cool shot as a biplane attempting a landing in fog approaches an airport just a little too low.  The major difference in the two versions is that Manpower pours its melodrama into its romantic triangle, pitting friend against friend for the affection of a woman.  Fortunately, with Raft and Robinson as the friends fighting over Dietrich, charisma and acting sincerity carry the day over the script’s inconsistencies and lapses.

One other difference is the tone.  While Slim is largely serious, Manpower is raucous and ribald.  There is an amazing amount of innuendo and slang in Raoul Walsh’s film, particularly in its hospital scenes, its convenience store scene, its diner scene and its nightclub scenes.  In fact, Leonard Maltin’s Movie and Video Guide judges that diner scene as “worth the price of admission.”  I heartily concur.

My rating:  ☆ ☆ ☆.  (9:3).