Let No Man Write My Epitaph (1960)

Director:

Philip Leacock

Writers:

Willard Motley (novel)
Robert Presnell Jr. (writer)

Release Date:

October 1960 (USA)

Genre:

Drama

Plot:

In this sequel to "Knock On Any Door", the residents of a Chicago tenement building band together to insure that the son of Nick Romano does not follow in his father's footsteps...to the electric chair. |

Plot Keywords:

Chicago | Sequel | Drug Pusher | Drug Addiction | Piano Player

Cast

Burl Ives	...	Judge Bruce Mallory Sullivan
Shelley Winters	...	Nellie Romano
James Darren	...	Nick Romano
Jean Seberg	...	Barbara Holloway
Ricardo Montalban	...	Louie Ramponi
Ella Fitzgerald	...	Flora
Rodolfo Acosta	...	Max (as Rudolph Acosta)
Philip Ober	...	Grant Holloway
Jeanne Cooper	...	Fran
Bernie Hamilton	...	Goodbye George
Walter Burke	...	Wart
Francis De Sales	...	Night Court Magistrate
Michael Davis	...	Nick Romano - as a Child

Runtime:

105 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Finland:K-16 | Sweden:15

Company:

Columbia Pictures Corporation

Trivia:

Lana Turner originally sought for lead role played by Shelley Winters.

Goofs:

Revealing mistakes: After begging Bobbie and her father to leave his apartment, Nick slams the door shut, making the wall shake.

Movie Connections:

Follows Knock on Any Door (1949)

Soundtrack:

Reach for Tomorrow

So gritty it gets your fingernails dirty

Kind of a cross between "West Side Story" (though it's Chicago's West Side) and "Golden Boy" without Clifford Odets' lyricism, this sleaze-obsessed melodrama benefits from location filming that shows how awful the Chicago slums looked in 1960 and a motley, oddball cast. James Darren is the sensitive hood/concert pianist (and though he's proficient at the keyboard, he's hardly the prodigy the script makes him out to be), being raised by Shelley Winters at her Shelley Wintersiest, screaming and sobbing and unhinging easily. She and an assembly of longtime slum pals, including an uninteresting Burl Ives as a drunken ex-judge, are trying to give the kid a decent upbringing amid all the squalor. There are also Ricardo Montalban, excellent as an insidiously evil-charming dope peddler; Ella Fitzgerald, who gets to act a bit and isn't bad; and Jean Seberg, not quite credible as the Lake Shore girl Darren loves. The direction is uninspired, and the screenplay a little contrived (when it wants us to know Ives loves Winters, it just has him confess to the camera), but what's fascinating is the brio with which the filmmakers depict all the sex and violence and addiction and grimness. It's as if they were trying to show how grownup they are by thrusting all that misery in your face. It moves fast, and if your attention starts to wander, be assured, Shelley Winters will be erupting again soon.