The Good Die Young

The Good Die Young (1954)

Two deadly weapons. Burning lips! ... Hot lead! ...

An amoral, psychotic playboy incites three men who are down on their luck to commit a mail van robbery, which goes badly wrong.

Date of release
1954-03-02
TMDB
6.3 / 10 (38)
Runtime
1h 40m
Genres
Thriller, Crime
Director
Lewis Gilbert

Casting

Interesting facts

The Good Die Young is a 1954 British crime film directed by Lewis Gilbert and starring Laurence Harvey, Gloria Grahame, Joan Collins, Stanley Baker, Richard Basehart and John Ireland. It was made by Remus Films from a screenplay by Vernon Harris and Gilbert based on the 1953 novel of the same name by Richard Macaulay. It tells the story of four men in London with no criminal past whose marriages and finances are collapsing and, meeting in a pub, are tempted to redeem their situations by a robbery.

Production

The film was presented by the Woolf Brothers' Romulus company, who made British films targeted at international audiences. This meant they used American stars. Gilbert says that James Woolf found the book and gave it to him, but that Woolf insisted Laurence Harvey be cast. The film was an early lead role for Stanley Baker.

Filming started on 28 September 1953. Jack Clayton was credited as the associate producer of this Remus production.

The novel's original setting was Beverly Hills but for the film this was changed to London. Shooting was on location in London and at Shepperton Studios, with other scenes of Pan Am Boeing Stratocruiser aircraft at Heathrow Airport and the London Underground District Line around Barbican. The sets were designed by the art director Bernard Robinson.

The British bank financing the film required that the novel's bank robbery be switched to a post office in the film. Gilbert claimed in one interview that the characters were not allowed to use guns due to the censor; however, although the majority of Gilbert's memories of the film being "watered down" for the finished screenplay are correct, this memory was incorrect. Guns were ultimately used in the heist and subsequent scenes.

Laurence Harvey subsequently married Margaret Leighton, who played his wife in the film. Kirk Douglas visited Gloria Grahame and John Ireland on the set and appeared in the film as an extra as a joke.

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

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