SAVE THE TIGER

The tiger's an ecological casualty -- a little like garment manufacturer Harry Stoner who is seen here during a critical two days of his middle-aged life although he's the victim of his own failures, appetites and an overwhelming nostalgia for the past which keeps surfacing (baseball games, pop music, movies, the war -- all sharply annotated). Otherwise this commercial novel which is part Schulberg, part Harold Robbins with a good deal of hard-core scoring, doesn't have too much to offer. It takes place in cinema city just when Harry is in a disastrous financial bind and about to preview his new dress collection; and also when, in the interest of securing a sale, he procures a hooker for a man who's had a bad heart attack and has another under the whip-and-vibrator ministrations of Margo. Harry's life, like his business, keeps coming apart at the seams -- it's a little soiled, and a little sad, and maybe it takes the rueful countenance of Jack Lemmon to make more of it than appears here. As it will.