The Good Die Young


The Good Die Young is a 1954 British film noir crime thriller film made by Remus Films, featuring a number of American characters. It was directed by Lewis Gilbert. The screenplay was based on the book of the same name written by Richard Macaulay.
The cast includes Laurence Harvey, Gloria Grahame, Joan Collins, Stanley Baker and Richard Basehart.

Plot

The film opens with four men in a car, apparently about to commit a serious crime. How each of the previously law-abiding men came to be in this position is then explored.
Mike is an ageing boxer, in love with his wife but injured and unable to find a job. Joe is an out-of-work clerk who needs to fly to the United States with his young wife to escape her clinging and unstable mother. Eddie is an AWOL American airman with an unfaithful actress wife. The last man, 'Rave' Ravenscourt, is a 'gentleman' sponger and a scoundrel with gambling debts and the unscrupulous leader who lures the other three. The film reaches a bloody climax at Heathrow Airport.

Principal cast

The film was shot on location in London and at Shepperton Studios, with other scenes of BOAC Boeing Stratocruiser aircraft at Heathrow Airport and the District Line around Barbican. Laurence Harvey subsequently married Margaret Leighton, who played his wife in the film.
The film's screenwriters changed the setting of Richard Macauley's original novel from America to 1950s England. The British bank financing the film also required that the novel's bank robbery be switched to a post office in the film version.
The film opened in the UK on 2 March 1954, with general release following on 5 April.