Baby Face Nelson

Baby Face Nelson (1957)

the baby-face punk who became the FBI's PUBLIC ENEMY NO. 1!

Famed Depression-era gangster “Baby Face Nelson” robs and kills while accompanied by his beautiful moll.

Date of release
1957-12-11
TMDB
5.6 / 10 (29)
Runtime
1h 25m
Genres
Crime, Drama
Director
Don Siegel

Casting

Interesting facts

Baby Face Nelson is a 1957 American film noir crime film based on the real-life 1930s gangster, directed by Don Siegel, co-written by Daniel Mainwaring—who also wrote the screenplay for Siegel's 1956 sci-fi thriller Invasion of the Body Snatchers—and starring Mickey Rooney, Carolyn Jones, Cedric Hardwicke, Leo Gordon as Dillinger, Anthony Caruso, Jack Elam, John Hoyt and Elisha Cook Jr.

Production

The Production Code had recently repealed a ban on dramatising the lives of real criminals. Producer Al Zimbalist formed ZS Productions with Irving Shulman to make a film based on the latter's unpublished novel about Baby Face Nelson. He originally announced he was seeking Montgomery Clift, Frank Sinatra or Tony Curtis for the lead.

Eventually they partnered with Mickey Rooney's Fryman Enterprises to make the movie. Don Siegel was hired to direct.

Zimbalist wanted to borrow Edd Byrnes from Warner Bros to play John Dillinger, but the studio refused to release him.

Filming started in October 1955. Zimbalist did some second unit filming in Chicago himself.

Shulman was later hired by Sam Katzman to do a script on Pretty Boy Floyd.

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

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