Compulsion [1959] with Orson Welles

Compulsion (1959)


http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0052700/

WIDESCREEN

Compulsion, directed by Richard Fleischer, was a film made in 1959, based on the 1956 novel Compulsion by Meyer Levin, which in turn was based on the Leopold and Loeb trial. It was the first film Richard D. Zanuck produced.


Orson Welles ... Jonathan Wilk
Diane Varsi ... Ruth Evans
Dean Stockwell ... Judd Steiner
Bradford Dillman ... Arthur Straus
E.G. Marshall ... Dist. Atty. Harold Horn
Martin Milner ... Sid Brooks
Richard Anderson ... Max Steiner
Robert F. Simon ... Lt. Johnson (as Robert Simon)
Ed Binns ... Tom Daly (as Edward Binns)
Robert Burton ... Mr. Straus
Wilton Graff ... Mr. Steiner
Louise Lorimer ... Mrs. Straus
Gavin MacLeod ... Padua

Artie Strauss and Judd Steiner (Bradford Dillman and Dean Stockwell) kill a boy on his way home from school in order to commit the "perfect crime". Strauss tries to cover it up, but they are caught when police find a key piece of evidence — Steiner's glasses, which he left at the scene of the crime. Famed attorney Jonathan Wilk (Orson Welles) takes their case, and saves them from hanging by making an impassioned closing argument against capital punishment.

BAFTA Awards
1960 Nominated BAFTA Film Award Best Film from any Source Richard Fleischer USA.

Cannes Film Festival
1959 Won Best Actor Dean Stockwell Bradford Dillman Orson Welles
1959 Nominated Golden Palm Richard Fleischer

Directors Guild of America, USA
1960 Nominated DGA Award Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Motion Pictures Richard Fleischer

Laurel Awards
1960 Nominated Golden Laurel Top Drama 5th place.

Writers Guild of America, USA
1960 Nominated WGA Award (Screen) Best Written American Drama Richard Murphy

Leopold and Loeb

Nathan Freudenthal Leopold, Jr. (November 19, 1904 – August 29, 1971) and Richard A. Loeb (June 11, 1905 – January 28, 1936), more commonly known as "Leopold and Loeb", were two wealthy University of Chicago students who murdered 14-year-old Bobby Franks in 1924, and were sentenced to life imprisonment.

The duo were motivated to murder Franks by their desire to commit a perfect crime. Once apprehended, Leopold and Loeb retained Clarence Darrow as counsel for the defense. Darrow’s summation in their trial is noted for its influential criticism of capital punishment and retributive, as opposed to rehabilitative, penal systems.

Leopold and Loeb have been the inspiration for many works in film, theater and fiction, such as the 1929 play Rope by Patrick Hamilton, which served as the basis for Alfred Hitchcock's film of the same name. In 1956, Meyer Levin revisited the case in his novel Compulsion, a fictionalized version of the actual events in which the names of the pair were changed to "Steiner and Strauss." Three years later, the novel was made into a film of the same name. Never the Sinner, a theatrical recreation of the Leopold and Loeb trial, was written by John Logan in 1988.

Other works inspired by the case include Tom Kalin's more openly gay-themed 1992 film Swoon; Michael Haneke's 1997 Austrian film Funny Games, with an American shot-for-shot remake produced in 2008; Barbet Schroeder's Murder by Numbers (2002); and Stephen Dolginoff's 2005 off-Broadway musical Thrill Me: The Leopold and Loeb Story.

The case has also inspired episodes of the TV crime drama Law & Order. One episode involving a thrill kill by two young men, each refusing to implicate the other (they know neither can be definitively proven to have fired the murder weapon) elicits a reference from Jack McCoy's assistant: "Darrow got Leopold and Loeb. What do we get?" McCoy's reply: "Beavis and Butt-head."

The Leopold and Loeb case is a theme in Daniel Clowes' 2005 graphic novel Ice Haven, which includes a short story about the criminal duo, as well as references to the incident in other stories


http://www.leopoldandloeb.com/