Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye (film)
| Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye | |
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Theatrical release poster
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| Directed by | Gordon Douglas |
| Produced by | William Cagney |
| Screenplay by | Harry Brown |
| Based on | the novel Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye by Horace McCoy |
| Starring |
James Cagney Barbara Payton Helena Carter |
| Music by | Carmen Dragon |
| Cinematography | J. Peverell Marley |
| Edited by | Walter Hannemann Truman K. Wood |
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Production
company |
William Cagney Productions
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| Distributed by | Warner Bros. |
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Release date
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Running time
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102 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye is a 1950 film noir starring James Cagney, directed by Gordon Douglas, produced by William Cagney and based on the novel by Horace McCoy. The film was banned in Ohio as "a sordid, sadistic presentation of brutality and an extreme presentation of crime with explicit steps in commission."
Supporting Cagney are Luther Adler as a crooked lawyer, Ward Bond and Barton MacLane as two crooked cops, and Cagney's brother William (who produced the film) as Ralph Cotter's brother.
Ralph Cotter is a career criminal who escapes from prison, then murders his partner-in-crime. Along the way he attempts to woo his ex-partner's sister (Barbara Payton) by threatening to expose her role in his escape.
Cotter quickly gets back into the crime business, only to be shaken down by corrupt local cops.
A restored version of the film was released in 2011. The film was restored by the UCLA Film & Television Archive, in coöperation with Paramount Pictures, funded by the Packard Humanities Institute.
The new print was made “from the original 35mm nitrate picture and track negatives and a 35mm safety print.”
The restoration premiered at the UCLA Festival of Preservation on March 14, 2011.
The film, often compared unfavorably to White Heat, received mixed reviews. Fred Camper, film critic for The Chicago Reader, called the film mis-directed, writing, "Gordon Douglas's direction is almost incoherent compared to Raoul Walsh's in White Heat (1949), which features Cagney in a similar role; the compositions and camera movements, while momentarily effective, have little relationship to each other, and the film reads a bit like an orchestra playing without a conductor."
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Wikipedia