Padme's Library: 📘🎥Friday's Film Adaptation🎥📘: The Killing by Lionel White

Friday, April 17, 2020

📘🎥Friday's Film Adaptation🎥📘: The Killing by Lionel White

Summary:
The boys said it couldn't be done -- knocking over a racetrack. Too much security. Too much money to handle. Too many obstacles. But Johnny Clay knew, if anyone did, how to mastermind a daring robbery. You just had to have the right people to work with, a few ringers on the inside who could keep their mouths shut, and a diversion. A big diversion. Like taking out the favorite horse on the most anticipated race with a high-powered rifle. Things can go right, and things can go wrong. But Johnny knew his plan could work. If only everyone did his part without cracking.

The Killing (originally titled Clean Break) by the master of capers, Lionel White, is what many people consider the greatest heist novel of all time. Stanley Kubrick liked the book enough to option it and make a classic noir film of it, co-scripted with the great Jim Thompson. Now available from Chalk Line Books in an illustrated, premium quality edition.

A team of specialists plots a daring racetrack robbery, but they don't reckon with human frailty.

Release Date: May 19, 1956
Release Time: 85 minutes

Cast:
Sterling Hayden as Johnny Clay
Coleen Gray as Fay
Vince Edwards as Val Cannon
Jay C. Flippen as Marvin Unger
Elisha Cook Jr. as George Peatty
Marie Windsor as Sherry Peatty
Ted de Corsia as Policeman Randy Kennan
Joe Sawyer as Mike O'Reilly
James Edwards as track parking attendant
Timothy Carey as Nikki Arane
Joe Turkel as Tiny
Jay Adler as Leo the Loanshark
Kola Kwariani as Maurice Oboukhoff
Dorothy Adams as Mrs. Ruthie O'Reilly

Trailer

Clips

Author Bio:
Lionel White was born July 9, 1905 in New York City. He started his career as a police reporter and true crime magazine editor, and turned those experiences toward fiction writing with his first novel, The Snatchers, in 1953, about a failed kidnapping. He wrote more than 35 books, many of them translated into different languages and turned into films like The Night of the Following Day, The Money Trap, The Big Caper, Pierrot le Fou and perhaps most famously, The Killing, adapted by Stanley Kubrick from White’s novel, Clean Break. He was considered the master of the big caper, and was credited by director Quentin Tarantino with the inspiration for his film, Reservoir Dogs. White died December 26, 1985, in Asheville, North Carolina.