Let No Man Write My Epitaph

With the recent death of Shelley Winters, all the principals in this movie are now gone, with the exception of Montalban. Having looked it up, I had forgotten what a fine cast it had, including the surprise of Ella Fitzgerald playing a heroin-addicted blues singer. Sadly, although this was a remake of a previous film, this great film could not be remade or even updated for today's market---simply because our society has changed to where the story in this picture (compelling as it is) would no longer be something people would consider important or even divisive. This plot could not even make the producers of Jerry or Maury take notice. Still, this picture will always be one of my two or three personal all-time favorites, and I will recommend it to anyone who reads these words I write: This is greatness that Hollywood can create...when it really wants to.

This film is one of the favorite memories from my childhood. My memory said that Sal Mineo was in it, so I was a little surprised to see that it was actually James Darren. Not as good an actor as Sal, but a good looking kid, who could sing. Shelley Winters is beautiful in it, but very needy. Ella is a bonus. Burl Ives is bigger than life. And, you get to see Ricardo Montalban as a pre Mr. Roarke, pre Chrysler New Yorker ("Fine Corinthian leather"), bad guy. The climatic finale has stayed with me all these years. I always thought it was an older movie, but I guess it was just the genre and the cinematography. A little hokey, by today's standards, but a classic none the same.

Kind of a cross between "West Side Story" (though it's Chicago's West Side) and "Golden Boy" without Clifford Odets' lyricism, this sleaze-obsessed melodrama benefits from location filming that shows how awful the Chicago slums looked in 1960 and a motley, oddball cast. James Darren is the sensitive hood/concert pianist (and though he's proficient at the keyboard, he's hardly the prodigy the script makes him out to be), being raised by Shelley Winters at her Shelley Wintersiest, screaming and sobbing and unhinging easily. She and an assembly of longtime slum pals, including an uninteresting Burl Ives as a drunken ex-judge, are trying to give the kid a decent upbringing amid all the squalor. There are also Ricardo Montalban, excellent as an insidiously evil-charming dope peddler; Ella Fitzgerald, who gets to act a bit and isn't bad; and Jean Seberg, not quite credible as the Lake Shore girl Darren loves. The direction is uninspired, and the screenplay a little contrived (when it wants us to know Ives loves Winters, it just has him confess to the camera), but what's fascinating is the brio with which the filmmakers depict all the sex and violence and addiction and grimness. It's as if they were trying to show how grownup they are by thrusting all that misery in your face. It moves fast, and if your attention starts to wander, be assured, Shelley Winters will be erupting again soon.

a real thriller, montalban is eerie as a 1960's "pusher" and sadistic heroin addict, a must for those into drug culture and film noir. the fact that it is b/w only adds to the urban scurge of drugs use ,espcially horse in the 1960's also exceeding their actting abilities are shelley winters as a drug ravaged mother, and burl ives as the "heavy" handed dudley do right....

I am very pleased to see all of the positive responses here at IMDb to a film that was not considered to be much in its day. Very well done, and a lot more frank then you would expect from the era.

Not really a sequel to KNOCK ON ANY DOOR---the relationship is minor at best, non-existent at worst. You don't have to see the first movie to understand this one.

A very positive thing is the relationship between the lead (James Darren) and his alcoholic mother (Shelley Winters). He knows all about her past but loves her anyway, and the dialogue is good. Far too many movies perpetuate the stereotype that parents and children of the opposite sex cannot, or should not, discuss serious "adult" issues intelligently.

Strongly recommended bit of film noir.