Knock on Any Door | |
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Directed by | Nicholas Ray |
Screenplay by | John Monks Jr. Daniel Taradash |
Based on | Knock on Any Door (1947 novel) by Willard Motley |
Produced by | Robert Lord |
Starring | Humphrey Bogart John Derek George Macready Allene Roberts Susan Perry |
Cinematography | Burnett Guffey |
Edited by | Viola Lawrence |
Music by | George Antheil |
Production company | |
Distributed by | Columbia Pictures |
Release dates |
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Running time | 100 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Box office | $2.1 million [1] |
Knock on Any Door is a 1949 American courtroom trial film noir directed by Nicholas Ray and starring Humphrey Bogart. The movie was based on the 1947 novel of the same name by Willard Motley. The picture gave actor John Derek his breakthrough role as young hoodlum Nick Romano, whose motto was, "live fast, die young, and have a good looking corpse." [2]
Against the wishes of his law partners, slick talking lawyer Andrew Morton takes the case of Nick Romano, a troubled punk from the slums, partly because he himself came from the same slums and partly because he feels guilty for his partner botching the criminal trial of Nick's father years earlier. Nick is on trial for shooting a policeman point-blank and faces execution if convicted.
Nick's history is presented through flashbacks showing him as a hoodlum committing one petty crime after another. Morton's wife Adele convinces him to play nursemaid to Nick in order to make Nick a better person. Nick then robs Morton of $100 after a fishing trip. Shortly after that, Nick marries Emma, and he tries to change his lifestyle. He takes on job after job but keeps getting fired because of his recalcitrance. He wastes his paycheck playing dice, wanting to buy Emma some jewelry, and then walks out on another job after punching his boss. Feeling a lack of hope of ever being able to live a normal life, Nick decides to return to his old ways, sticking to his motto: "Live fast, die young, and leave a good-looking corpse." He abandons Emma, even after she tells him that she is pregnant. After Nick commits a botched hold-up at a train station, he returns to Emma so as to take her with him as he flees. He finds that she had committed suicide by gas from an open oven door.
Morton's strategy in the courtroom is to argue that slums breed criminals and that society is to blame for crimes committed by people who live in such miserable conditions. Morton argues that Romano is a victim of society and not a natural-born killer. However, his strategy does not have the desired effect on the jury, thanks to the badgering of the seasoned and experienced District Attorney Kerman, who delivers question after question until Nick shouts out his admission of guilt. Morton, who is naive to believe in his client's innocence, is shocked by Nick's confession. Nick decides to change his plea to guilty. During the sentencing hearing, Morton manages to arouse some sympathy for the plight of those in a dead-end existence. He pleads that anyone who "knocks on any door" may find a Nick Romano. Nevertheless, Nick is sentenced to die in the electric chair. Morton visits Nick prior to the execution and watches him walk down the hall to the death chamber.
Uncredited
Producer Mark Hellinger purchased the rights to the novel Knock on Any Door by Willard Motley and Humphrey Bogart and Marlon Brando were to star in the production. However, after Hellinger died in late 1947, Robert Lord and Bogart formed a corporation to produce the film: Santana Productions, named after Bogart's private sailing yacht. [4] Jack L. Warner was reportedly furious at this, fearing that other stars would do the same and major studios would lose their power.[ citation needed ]
According to critic Hal Erickson, the often-repeated credo spoken by the character Nick Romano--"Live fast, die young, and have a good-looking corpse"—would become the "clarion call for a generation of disenfranchised youth." [5] Knock on Any Door is the second Hollywood movie adapted from a novel by an African American author. The first was The Foxes of Harrow by novelist Frank Yerby, which starred Rex Harrison and Maureen O'Hara and was released in 1947.
Treating criminality with kid gloves and blaming law abiding society for its ills didn't go over well with the public or the critics. Bosley Crowther, film critic for The New York Times, called the film "a pretentious social melodrama" and blasted the film's message and the screenplay. He wrote, "Rubbish! The only shortcoming of society which this film proves is that it casually tolerates the pouring of such fraudulence onto the public mind. Not only are the justifications for the boy's delinquencies inept and superficial, as they are tossed off in the script, but the nature and aspect of the hoodlum are outrageously heroized." [6]
The staff at Variety magazine was more receptive of the film, writing: "An eloquent document on juvenile delinquency, its cause and effect, has been fashioned from Knock on Any Door...Nicholas Ray's direction stresses the realism of the script taken from Willard Motley's novel of the same title, and gives the film a hard, taut pace that compels complete attention." [7]
In 1960 a sequel to the film, Let No Man Write My Epitaph , was produced and directed by Philip Leacock starring Burl Ives, Shelley Winters, James Darren, Ella Fitzgerald, among others. [8] It was based on the 1958 novel of the same name by Willard Motley.
Humphrey DeForest Bogart, colloquially nicknamed Bogie, was an American actor. His performances in classic Hollywood cinema films made him an American cultural icon. In 1999, the American Film Institute selected Bogart as the greatest male star of classic American cinema.
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In a Lonely Place is a 1950 American film noir directed by Nicholas Ray and starring Humphrey Bogart and Gloria Grahame, produced for Bogart's Santana Productions. The script was written by Andrew P. Solt from Edmund H. North's adaptation of Dorothy B. Hughes' 1947 novel of the same name.
John Derek was an American actor, filmmaker and photographer. He appeared in such films as Knock on Any Door, All the King's Men, Rogues of Sherwood Forest (1950), and The Ten Commandments (1956). He discovered actress Bo Derek and she became his fourth wife.
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Emma Allene Roberts was an American actress.
Mark John Hellinger was an American journalist, theatre columnist and film producer.
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The Man I Love is a 1947 American film noir melodrama starring Ida Lupino, Robert Alda, Andrea King, and Bruce Bennett. Directed by Raoul Walsh, the film is based on the novel Night Shift by Maritta M. Wolff. The title is taken from the George and Ira Gershwin song "The Man I Love", which is prominently featured.
The Two Mrs. Carrolls is a 1947 American mystery film noir directed by Peter Godfrey and starring Humphrey Bogart, Barbara Stanwyck, and Alexis Smith. It was produced by Mark Hellinger from a screenplay by Thomas Job, based on the 1935 play by Martin Vale.
I Died a Thousand Times is a 1955 American CinemaScope Warnercolor film noir directed by Stuart Heisler. The drama features Jack Palance as paroled bank robber Roy Earle, with Shelley Winters, Lee Marvin, Earl Holliman, Perry Lopez, Pedro Gonzalez Gonzalez, and Lon Chaney Jr.
Manpower is a 1941 American crime melodrama directed by Raoul Walsh and starring Edward G. Robinson, Marlene Dietrich, and George Raft. The picture was written by Richard Macaulay and Jerry Wald, and the supporting cast features Alan Hale, Frank McHugh, Eve Arden, Barton MacLane, Ward Bond and Walter Catlett.
Daniel Taradash was an American screenwriter.
The Wagons Roll at Night is a 1941 circus film directed by Ray Enright and starring Humphrey Bogart as traveling carnival owner Nick Coster, Sylvia Sidney as his girlfriend, and Eddie Albert as a newcomer who falls in love with Nick's sister, played by Joan Leslie. The screenplay is by Fred Niblo Jr. and Barry Trivers, and the film is based on a 1936 novel by Francis Wallace, first published as a serial in The Saturday Evening Post.
Willard Francis Motley was an American author. Beginning as a teenager, Motley published a column in the African-American oriented Chicago Defender newspaper under the pen-name Bud Billiken. He worked as a freelance writer, and later founded and published the Hull House Magazine and worked in the Federal Writers Project. Motley's first and best known novel was Knock on Any Door (1947), which was made into a movie of the same name (1949).
Let No Man Write My Epitaph is a 1960 American neo noir crime film about the son of an executed criminal who aspires to escape his impoverished, crime-ridden neighborhood with the help of his mother and a group of concerned neighbors. The film was directed by Philip Leacock, and stars Burl Ives, Shelley Winters, James Darren, Jean Seberg, Ricardo Montalbán and Ella Fitzgerald.