Murder, Inc. (film)
| Murder, Inc. | |
|---|---|
Title from the trailer
|
|
| Directed by |
Burt Balaban Stuart Rosenberg |
| Produced by | Burt Balaban |
| Written by |
Burton Turkus Sid Feder |
| Screenplay by | Mel Barr Irve Tunick |
| Based on | Murder, Inc. (book) by Burton Turkus & Sid Feder |
| Starring |
Stuart Whitman May Britt Henry Morgan Peter Falk |
| Music by | Frank De Vol |
| Cinematography | Gayne Rescher |
| Edited by | Ralph Rosenblum |
| Distributed by | Twentieth Century-Fox |
|
Release date
|
June 28, 1960 |
|
Running time
|
103 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
Murder, Inc. is a 1960 American gangster film starring Stuart Whitman, May Britt, Henry Morgan, Peter Falk, and Simon Oakland. The Cinemascope movie was directed by Burt Balaban and Stuart Rosenberg. The screenplay was based on the true story of Murder, Inc., a Brooklyn gang that operated in the 1930s.
Falk plays Abe Reles, a vicious thug who led the Murder, Inc. gang and was believed to have committed thirty murders, for which he was never prosecuted. The film was the first major feature role for Falk, who was nominated for a best supporting actor Academy Award for his performance. In his 2006 autobiography, Just One More Thing, Falk said that Murder, Inc. launched his career.
The movie was the first film directed by Rosenberg, who later won acclaim for films that included Cool Hand Luke (1967), and also launched Stuart Whitman's career as a leading man.
A more highly fictionalized film on the same basic events, The Enforcer (1951), starring Humphrey Bogart, was released in the United Kingdom with the title Murder, Inc.
Abe Reles (Peter Falk) and Bug Workman (Warren Finnerty), two killers from Brooklyn's Brownsville district, meet in the Garment District to meet with Louis "Lepke" Buchalter, kingpin of an organized crime mob, who hires them as the syndicate's hit men.
Their first job is to kill Walter Sage (Morey Amsterdam), a Catskill resort owner who has been holding back slot machine profits from Lepke. To get close to Sage, Reles forces singer Joey Collins (Stuart Whitman), an old crony of Sage who owes Reles money, to help him. Reles and his henchman kill Sage. Reles visits Joey and threatens to kill him and his dancer wife Eadie (May Britt) if they tell anyone about the murder. Eadie throws Reles out. Reles later returns to the apartment when Joey is gone and brutally rapes her. Despite her urging Joey refuses to run away, and this causes him and Eadie to split up.
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