Joe Macbeth

Joe Macbeth (1955)

Scarface... Dillinger... and now Joe Macbeth

Lily Macbeth pushes her husband Joe to rub out the reigning crime boss and become the new kingpin himself. Success is short-lived, however, as he confronts Lennie, a mobster whose father and wife were Joe's murder victims.

Date of release
1955-10-18
TMDB
7.6 / 10 (9)
Runtime
1h 30m
Genres
Crime, Drama
Director
Ken Hughes

Casting

Interesting facts

Joe MacBeth is a 1955 British gangster film directed by Ken Hughes and starring Paul Douglas, Ruth Roman, Bonar Colleano, Grégoire Aslan and Sid James. It was written by Hughes and Philip Yordan, and is a modern retelling of Shakespeare's Macbeth, set in a 1930s American criminal underworld. The film's plot closely follows that of Shakespeare's original play.

Production

Philip Yordan's script was originally purchased by Eugene Frenke, who intended to produce the film for United Artists. Shooting was set to take place in Chicago in late 1947, with Robert Cummings attached to star. Later, Lew Ayres and Shelley Winters were floated as potential leads, with William Bacher producing. Ultimately, M. J. Frankovich produced the film for Columbia, having been made head of the studio's British branch in 1955.

Filming began 1 May 1955 at Shepperton Studios. Ken Hughes later said he "enjoyed" making the film: "I was terribly young, only 22. The cheek I had to be directing old timers like Paul Douglas and Richard Conte. Still, I think they liked that and I tried never to be arrogant. And it was one of the few scripts I picked up in my life that didn't require a great deal of work."

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

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