The Good Die Young | |
---|---|
Directed by | Lewis Gilbert |
Screenplay by | Vernon Harris Lewis Gilbert |
Based on | The Good Die Young by Richard Macauley |
Produced by | John Woolf |
Starring | Laurence Harvey Gloria Grahame Richard Basehart Joan Collins John Ireland Rene Ray Stanley Baker Margaret Leighton |
Cinematography | Jack Asher |
Edited by | Ralph Kemplen |
Music by | Georges Auric |
Production company | |
Distributed by | IFD (UK) United Artists (US) |
Release dates |
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Running time | 94 min. |
Country | United Kingdom |
Language | English |
The Good Die Young is a 1954 British film noir crime thriller film made by Remus Films, featuring a number of American characters. It was directed by Lewis Gilbert. The screenplay was based on the book of the same name written by Richard Macaulay.
The cast includes Laurence Harvey, Gloria Grahame, Joan Collins, Stanley Baker and Richard Basehart.
The film opens with four men in a car, apparently about to commit a serious crime. How each of the previously law-abiding men came to be in this position is then explored.
Mike (Stanley Baker) is an ageing boxer, in love with his wife (Rene Ray) but injured and unable to find a job. Joe (Richard Basehart) is an out-of-work clerk who needs to fly to the United States with his young wife (Joan Collins) to escape her clinging and unstable mother (Freda Jackson). Eddie (John Ireland) is an AWOL American airman with an unfaithful actress wife (Gloria Grahame). The last man, 'Rave' Ravenscourt (Laurence Harvey), is a 'gentleman' sponger and a scoundrel with gambling debts and the unscrupulous leader who lures the other three. The film reaches a bloody climax at Heathrow Airport.
The film was made by Romulus, the company of the Woolf Brothers, who made British films targeted at international audiences. This meant they used American stars.[1]
The film was shot on location in London and at Shepperton Studios, with other scenes of BOAC Boeing Stratocruiser aircraft at Heathrow Airport and the District Line around Barbican. Laurence Harvey subsequently married Margaret Leighton, who played his wife in the film.
The film's screenwriters changed the setting of Richard Macauley's original novel from America to 1950s England. The British bank financing the film also required that the novel's bank robbery be switched to a post office in the film version.[2]
Kirk Douglas visited Gloria Grahame and John Ireland on the set and appeared in the film as an extra as a joke.[3]
The film opened in the UK on 2 March 1954, with general release following on 5 April.[4]
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