Hoodlum Priest (1961)

Director:

Irvin Kershner

Writers:

Joseph Landon (writer)
Don Murray (writer)

Release Date:

26 March 1961 (USA)

Genre:

Drama

Plot:

Based on the life of Fr. Charles Clark, a minister to street gangs. |

Plot Keywords:

Execution | Hoodlum | Bare Chested Male | Gas Chamber | Bare Chested Male Bondage

Awards:

1 win & 1 nomination

Cast

Don Murray	...	Father Charles Dismas Clark
Larry Gates	...	Louis Rosen
Cindi Wood	...	Ellen Henley
Keir Dullea	...	Billy Lee Jackson
Logan Ramsey	...	George Hale
Don Joslyn	...	Pio Gentile
Sam Capuano	...	Mario Mazziotti
Vince O'Brien	...	Assistant District Attorney
Al Mack	...	Judge Garrity
Lou Martini	...	Angelo Mazziotri
Norman McKay	...	Father Dunne
Joseph Cusanelli	...	Hector Sterne
Bill Atwood	...	Weasel
Roger Ray	...	Detective Shattuck
William Warford

Also Known As:

The Hoodlum Priest (USA) (alternative title)

Runtime:

101 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.66 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (Western Electric Sound)

Certification:

Finland:K-16

Filming Locations:

St. Louis, Missouri, USA

Company:

Murray-Wood Productions

Trivia:

Concerned that the critics would not be kind to an actor appearing in a film he wrote, DON MURRAY penned the screenplay under the pseudonym "Don Deer", his nickname as a track and field athlete in High school (Rockaway, NY).

Well-meaning but Arty

Irv Kerschner, who was George Lucas' teacher at USC and later directed one of his pupil's Star Trek features, made this glossy well-meaning melodrama released by United Artists in 1961. Shot on location in St. Louis and featuring the semi-documentary but often overly self-conscious B&W cinematography of Haskell Wekler, the story is based on the real life story of a Jesuit priest --perhaps the first man in America to set up a half-way house for ex-cons. Although its heart is in the right place, and the film makes the plea that the criminal justice system in the United States only serves to criminalize young offenders rather than reform them, Kershner cannot resist all the obvious opportunities to be arty: chases through railroad yards and into abandoned buildings with broken furniture and boarded-up windows providing the right shadows on the wall. He also hammers home his point by squeezing out the last drop of melodrama from the shaky plot, including a totally implausible electric chair sequence with the priest admitted into the chamber as his hoodlum friend is about to be electrocuted. The film tries to have its cake and eat it, too. In real life the Irish priest was helped to build his halfway house by a Russian-Jewish immigrant attorney, Morris Shenker, but the film homogenizes their relationship; the young offenders somehow feel as if they dropped out of "West Side Story," made the same year, because they were unable to sing and dance.