Anatomy of a Murder | |
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Theatrical release poster by Saul Bass
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Directed by | Otto Preminger |
Produced by | Otto Preminger |
Screenplay by | Wendell Mayes |
Based on |
Anatomy of a Murder by Robert Traver |
Starring |
James Stewart Lee Remick Ben Gazzara Arthur O'Connell Eve Arden Kathryn Grant George C. Scott |
Music by | Duke Ellington |
Cinematography | Sam Leavitt |
Edited by | Louis R. Loeffler |
Production
company |
Carlyle Productions
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Distributed by | Columbia Pictures Corporation |
Release date
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Running time
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160 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Box office | $11 million |
Anatomy of a Murder | ||||
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Soundtrack album by Duke Ellington | ||||
Released | 1959 | |||
Recorded | May 29 and June 1–2, 1959 Radio Recorders, Los Angeles |
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Genre | Jazz | |||
Label |
Columbia CS 8166 |
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Duke Ellington chronology | ||||
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Professional ratings | |
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Review scores | |
Source | Rating |
AllMusic | |
The Rolling Stone Jazz Record Guide |
Anatomy of a Murder is a 1959 American courtroom drama crime film produced and directed by Otto Preminger. The screenplay by Wendell Mayes was based on the novel of the same name written by Michigan Supreme Court Justice John D. Voelker under the pen name Robert Traver. Voelker based the novel on a 1952 murder case in which he was the defense attorney.
The film stars James Stewart, Lee Remick, Ben Gazzara, Eve Arden, George C. Scott, Arthur O'Connell, Kathryn Grant, Brooks West (Arden's husband), Orson Bean, and Murray Hamilton. The judge was played by Joseph N. Welch, a real-life lawyer famous for berating Joseph McCarthy during the Army-McCarthy hearings. This was one of the first mainstream Hollywood films to address sex and rape in graphic terms. It includes one of Saul Bass's most celebrated title sequences, a musical score by Duke Ellington, who also appears in the film, and has been described by a law professor as "probably the finest pure trial movie ever made".
In 2012, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".