Trivia for
Dick Tracy (1990) More at IMDbPro »

• The main colors in the film are the six that the original comic strip appeared in: red, blue, yellow, green, orange, purple, plus black and white.
  
  
• One of the hardest characters for the make-up artists to create was "Littleface" Finney, one of the hoodlums killed in the garage shootout at the beginning of the film. The character, as created in the comics, has a normal sized head with a face no bigger the average adult nose. In order to create this effect, a child was cast as Finney and then fitted into an over-sized body and made-up head as shown by behind the scenes photos. His voice is overdubbed in the film and cut-away shots where you only see his back were done with an adult actor.
  
  
• The garage shooting that opens the movie was inspired by the "St. Valentine's Day Massacre" in which Al Capone's gunmen killed a group of rival hoods in a garage. In the Dick Tracy comics, "Big Boy" Caprice character was originally was inspired by Al Capone.
  
  
• As a tie-in with the movie, Walt Disney comics released "Dick Tracy: The Tommy Guns and Truehearts Trilogy" which explained the back story leading up to the movie with the actual film plot used as the third installment.
  
  
• The villains, in this film, have an infrastructure (i.e. Big Boy is the boss of Flattop and Itchy, Lips Manlis is the boss of the five card-playing villains in the beginning), unlike in the comic where villains each arose and fought Tracy one-by-one in a fashion largely independent of each other with no hierarchy.
  
  
• Of all the villains, "Numbers" Norton (played by James Tolkan) was the only one created for the film.
  
  
• Dustin Hoffman made a cameo as Mumbles as a favor for Warren Beatty.
  
  
• The five villains appearing in the beginning playing cards are: Stooge, Shoulders, The Rodent, The Brow and Little Face.
  
  
• The make-up used for all of the villains was based directly on how they were drawn by Chester Gould in the original comic strip. The only exception was Big Boy Caprice, whose make-up was designed by Al Pacino himself.
  
  
• The character of Steve "The Tramp" Brogan was a recurring character who eventually turned good. The story of "The Tramp" and The Kid in the movie comes straight out of the comic strip.
  
  
• Twenty One villains from the Chester Gould comic strip appear in the movie: - "Stooge" Viller - Shoulders - William "The Rodent" Wilson (originally Rhodent) - The Brow - "Littleface" Finny - "Flattop" Jones - Jake "Itchy" Rossi (originally Itchell Oliver) - Patricia "Breathless" Mahoney - 88 Keys (originally Keyes) - "Lips" Manlis (originally Manlus) - Steve "the Tramp" Brogan - Alphonse "Big Boy" Caprice - Lorenzo "Pruneface" Prunesti - Mumbles - Texie Garcia - Influence (originally The Influence) - Ribs Mocca (originally Mocco) - Ben "Spud" Spaldoni - Johnny Ramm - The Blank - DeSanto
  
  
• During the make-up tests it was suggested that Warren Beatty be given the detective's famous hooked nose. But after some initial tests the make-up artists decided that it would have been a crime to hide one of the cinema's most famous faces behind putty and latex.
  
  
• The backup dancers and singers supporting Breathless Mahoney (Madonna) were all skilled Broadway performers who were taught how to intentionally sing poorly for comic effect.
  
  
• The character of The Rodent, one of Lips Manlis' henchmen seen playing poker in the opening scene, is indeed from the comic strip. He appeared in 1959, and his name was called "The Rhodent".
  
  
• Warren Beatty originally wanted Bob Fosse to direct, but Fosse turned him down. Martin Scorsese was also a fan of the comic strip and considered directing at one point, but he lost interest and chose to make Goodfellas (1990).
  
  
• Right before the characters at the poker game are killed, one of them gets two pair, aces and eights. This is widely known as the "dead man's hand".
  
  
• First feature made in digital sound.
  
  
• A 135 minute version of the film exists as confirmed by Warren Beatty in an interview in 2002. He was forced to cut the film to the current 105 minute version at the insistence of then chairman of The Walt Disney Studios Jeffrey Katzenberg, prior to the release.
  
  
• Al Pacino actually designed Big Boy Caprice's make-up himself and completely re-imagined the character, who was originally big and fat in the comics with a little nose. Caprice's resulting film counterpart is of average height with enlarged hands, nose, and cheekbones, hence his street name.
  
  
• When Big Boy's goons go on a crime spree after Dick Tracy is in jail, one of his goons kills a man and some oranges fall. In The Godfather (1972), also starring Al Pacino, whenever a murder is committed, there are oranges nearby.
  
  
• The movie was originally conceived in the early 1980s by United Artists and was to be written by Tom Mankiewicz, who had the movie's only villain, The Blank, with Flattop Jones as the supporting villain in a side-plot. Mankiewicz's idea for the start of the movie was to have a beaten-up cop who was on his death bed having a police artist show his drawing of the killer without a face yet drawn. The beaten-up cop says, "That's him!" and dies. Dick Tracy creator Chester Gould loved the idea and wanted him to do the script, but due to Gould's demands on the picture that no one could meet, the project was shelved. After Gould's death, the demands weren't as drastic from his family members and the project was in development again. After some new attempts with other studios and directors, Warren Beatty purchased the rights and brought the project to Disney and an earlier draft written by Jim Cash and Jack Epps Jr. was rewritten by Bo Goldman which became the final script.
  
  
• The highest-grossing film of Warren Beatty's career.
  
  
• Danny Elfman was hired to compose the film score because Warren Beatty was impressed with his work on Batman (1989). Of working with Beatty, Elfman has said "Warren was insane".
  
  
• Earlier in pre-production, Tim Burton was offered the chance to direct the movie, but declined because he was already in production with Edward Scissorhands (1990).
  
  
• As a fan of the comic strip, Warren Beatty wanted to put in as many characters from the comics into the film as he could. This was a measure used by Beatty in case the film didn't have a sequel.
  
  
• Madonna was paid just $35,000 for her performance in this film.
  
  
• Robert De Niro and Jack Nicholson were offered the role of Dick Tracy. Nicholson was committed to playing The Joker in Batman (1989), and De Niro refused the role for fear of being typecast as a grim, hardened tough guy similar to his Travis Bickle character in Taxi Driver (1976).
  
  
• As a fan of the comic strip, Warren Beatty was initially offered the director's job. He signed on only if he could play Tracy himself. The producers, having trouble casting the lead role, happily complied with his wish.
  
  
• Kim Basinger and Michelle Pfeiffer were considered for the role of Breathless Mahoney.
  
  
• Sean Young was originally cast as Tess Trueheart but was fired after a few days of filming by Warren Beatty. Afterwards, Young publicly accused Beatty of firing her because she "wouldn't sleep with him" though Deborah Ruf, Charlie Korsmo's Mom, later disputed this saying that "the rumor was that she had become too demanding and they just decided not to put up with it". Beatty issued a statement saying, "I made a mistake casting her in the part and I felt very badly about it."
  
  
• In one scene, after the incident with The Blank in the Southside Warehouse, Big Boy yells to his crew about how he wants Tracy dead. Originally, that scene began with Breathless sarcastically saying, "Tracy really gets under your skin, doesn't he?" before Big Boy starts to yelling but that line was cut. However, Breathless's line did appear in the theatrical trailer and in some TV airings of the film (for a time).
  
  
• Make-up designer John Caglione Jr.'s final design of Big Boy Caprice matches the intended design conceived by Al Pacino. Since then, Caglione Jr. became Pacino's personal make-up man in all of his films.
  
  
• At one point, John Landis was set to direct. He hired Jim Cash and Jack Epps Jr. to write the screenplay. His orders to the writers were to do the screenplay for the film centered on Big Boy Caprice as the main villain, and in a 1930s atmosphere. But Landis, after an on-set accident on Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983), left the project.
  
  
• Although not involved in the production, Art Linson and Floyd Mutrux were credited as co-producers as they were responsible of purchasing the rights first. After the release of the film, Linson and Mutrux launched a lawsuit against Warren Beatty alleging that they were owed profit participation from the film. This lawsuit prevented Beatty from producing another film for two years, but the case was eventually settled out of court.
  
  
• In this film, Al Pacino co-stars with James Caan as rival gangsters. In The Godfather (1972), Pacino played Michael Corleone and Caan played his brother, Sonny.
  
  
• The animated short Roller Coaster Rabbit (1990) was released theatrically with this movie.
  
  
• Recommended by costume designer Milena Canonero, Warren Beatty hired John Caglione Jr. and Doug Drexler as the make-up designers.
  
  
• Make-up designers John Caglione Jr. and Doug Drexler jokingly suggested Ronald Reagan for the role of Pruneface, but Warren Beatty opted for R.G. Armstrong as he had worked with him on Heaven Can Wait (1978) and Reds (1981).
  
  
• Estelle Parsons and Michael J. Pollard reunites with Warren Beatty 23 years after their success in Bonnie and Clyde (1967).
  
  
• The movie based on a comic book with the most Academy Award wins (3, albeit mostly technical) followed by The Dark Knight (2008) with two wins.
  
  

• SPOILER: Dick Van Dyke who only worked on the film for three days, broke his shoulder when he was shooting the scene where his character is murdered by The Blank. That take was the one that was eventually used in the film.
  
  

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