The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond **** (1960, Ray Danton, Karen Steele, Elaine Stewart, Jesse White) – Classic Movie Review 6430

Director Budd Boetticher’s classic cult 1960 gangster B-movie, with lots of action and an authoritative, career-best performance by Ray Danton as the hoodlum Jack ‘Legs’ Diamond in prohibition-era Twenties New York, deserves its fame and reputation.

It is directed at a fast and compelling pace by Boetticher, famous for his Fifties series of Randolph Scott Westerns, with impressive black-and-white cinematography from the talented Lucien Ballard, as well as clever, smoothly integrated use of newsreel footage of the period.

A very smart and sparky job all round, it was one of the era’s chain of such films begun by Baby Face Nelson in 1957. Simon Oakland and Robert Lowery play the key support roles of Lieutenant Moody and the gangster boss Arnold Rothstein.

Also in the cast are Karen Steele, Elaine Stewart, Jesse White, Warren Oates, Judson Pratt, Dyan Cannon, Frank DeKova, Gordon Jones, Joseph Ruskin, Richard Gardner, Sid Melton, Roy Jenson, Dorothy Neumann, Bob Herron and Jack Legs Diamond.

It is written by Joseph Landon, produced by Milton Sperling, scored by Leonard Rosenman and designed by Jack Poplin.

Seven Men from Now (1956) launched Scott and Boetticher into a successful collaboration that totalled seven films, including The Tall T (1957), Decision at Sundown (1957), Buchanan Rides Alone (1958), Westbound (1959), Ride Lonesome (1959) and Comanche Station (1960).

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 6430

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