Murder, Inc. (1960)

Interesting facts

• Based on: Murder, Inc.
• Filmed in: New York City
• Awards: 0 · Nominations: 1

Murder, Inc. is a 1960 American gangster film starring Stuart Whitman, May Britt, Henry Morgan and Peter Falk. Filmed in Cinemascope and directed by Burt Balaban and Stuart Rosenberg, the film was based on the true story of Murder, Inc., a Brooklyn gang that operated in the 1930s.

Production

The novel was optioned by Burt Balaban's Princess Pictures. Balaban was the son of Paramount executive Barney Balaban. It was made in association with Robert L. Lippert's Associate Productions and 20th Century Fox.

Filmed in and around New York City, Murder, Inc. had a cast consisting largely of actors from off-Broadway theater. Peter Falk recalled in his autobiography Just One More Thing that the film was "no big deal for Twentieth Century Fox. They hired second-tier stars, nobody had ever heard of them. The cast of off-Broadway stage actors, including me, came cheap. A few dollars a week and a bag of peanuts."

Stuart Rosenberg, who had been directing for Alfred Hitchcock Presents, was signed to make his feature debut as director.

Robert Evans, who later became head of production at Paramount Pictures Corporation but at the time was a young actor, was offered the part of Reles but turned it down. In an interview with The Guardian in 2002, Evans said:

I was hot as an actor for a few minutes and I turned down parts that got guys nominated for Academy Awards. For example, there was a picture called Murder, Inc. which was to star Stuart Whitman, May Britt and myself. I said "If I'm not going to lead, then I'm not going to play the part." and got a suspension. And they hired an actor who had never been north of 14th Street in New York and had never been to Hollywood – this guy called Peter Falk.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.