The Devil's Disciple (1959 film)

The Devil's Disciple
Original window card
Directed by	Guy Hamilton
Produced by	Harold Hecht
Screenplay by	John Dighton Roland Kibbee
Based on	The Devil's Disciple by George Bernard Shaw
Starring	Burt Lancaster Kirk Douglas Laurence Olivier Janette Scott
Narrated by	Peter Leeds
Music by	Richard Rodney Bennett
Cinematography	Jack Hildyard
Edited by	Alan Osbiston
Distributed by	United Artists
Release date	20 August 1959
Running time	83 minutes
Country	United Kingdom United States
Language	English
Budget	$1.5 million
Box office	$1.8 million (est. US/ Canada rentals)

The Devil's Disciple is a 1959 film adaptation of the 1897 George Bernard Shaw play The Devil's Disciple. The Anglo-American film was directed by Guy Hamilton who replaced Alexander Mackendrick and starred Burt Lancaster, Kirk Douglas and Laurence Olivier. Mary Grant designed the film's costumes.

Lancaster and Douglas made several films together over the decades, including I Walk Alone (1948), Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957), Seven Days in May (1964) and Tough Guys (1986), which fixed the notion of the pair as something of a team in the public's imagination. Douglas was always second-billed under Lancaster in these films but, with the exception of I Walk Alone, in which Douglas played a villain, their roles were usually more or less the same size.

Richard "Dick" Dudgeon (Kirk Douglas) is apostate and outcast from his family in colonial Websterbridge, New Hampshire, who returns their hatred with scorn. After the death of his father by mistakenly being hanged by the British as a rebel in nearby Springtown, Dick rescues his body from the gallows, where it had been left as an example to others, and has it buried in the parish graveyard in Websterbridge, then returns to his childhood home to hear the reading of his father's will, much to his family's dismay. Local minister Rev. Anthony Anderson (Burt Lancaster), who almost got arrested for trying to talk the British into taking the body down, treats him with courtesy despite Dick's self-proclaimed apostasy, but Dick's "wickedness" appalls Anderson's wife Judith (Janette Scott). To everyone's surprise, it is revealed that Dick's father secretly changed his will just before he died, leaving the bulk of his estate to Dick. Much to his shock, Dick's mother (Eva Le Gallienne) refuses to stay with him (a change from the stage play, wherein he promptly evicts his mother from her home). Dick proclaims himself a rebel against the British and scorns his family as cowards when they flee his home. In the meantime, the British discover the father's grave.