The People vs. Paul Crump

The People vs. Paul Crump (1962)

An impassioned plea for the release of a young man sentenced to die in an Illinois prison.

Date of release
1962-05-01
TMDB
9.0 / 10 (1)
Runtime
1h 0m
Genres
Documentary, TV Movie
Director
William Friedkin

Casting

Interesting facts

The People vs. Paul Crump is a 1962 documentary film about prisoner Paul Crump who was on death row for robbery and murder. The People vs. Paul Crump was the directoral debut of renowned filmmaker William Friedkin.

Production

The film's origins date back to 1960 when William Friedkin, then twenty years old, attended a party hosted by Lois Solomon. At the party, Friedkin met Robert Serfling, the Death Row chaplain at the Cook County Jail. Curious, Friedkin asked Serfling if he ever met a prisoner he believed was innocent. To Friedkin's surprise, Serfling responded by saying that there was a man on death row he believed was innocent: Paul Crump.

The film was made for Chicago-area television and was highly praised and crucial to the career of its director William Friedkin, helping him get an agent and jobs making documentaries for David Wolper, and then an episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour. The film won the Golden Gate Award Winner for Film as Communication at the 1962 San Francisco International Film Festival.

The film was shot on 16mm black and white negative. In his 2013 memoir The Friedkin Connection, Friedkin claimed that he had never seen a documentary film and had little knowledge of filmmaking. The film was edited on borrowed equipment from the WGN-TV newsroom.

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

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