Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/1081203
20 CINEMONTAGE / Q1 2019 THIS QUARTER IN FILM HISTORY over $1.5 million dollars, a phenomenal amount for essentially a B-picture. The British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) nominated it for Best Film from Any Source and its star Neville Brand for Best Foreign Actor. Director Don Siegel was nominated for the DGA Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement. The movie also inspired Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller to write "Riot in Cell Block Nine," the Robins' (soon renamed the Coasters) first R&B hit single, released in June of that year. From its conception, producer Wanger intended Riot to speak directly to the 30 prison riots that had occurred in the United States in the previous three years. In a terse and exciting 80 minutes, the film's narrative focuses on the riot itself through a multi-dimensional view of the interactions of sharply drawn characters, offering a complex perspective of American society through the institution of prison. A month before the movie opened, Wanger told Variety, "I wanted to make a picture that would make the public realize what a failure the prison system is today." He blamed "vested interests" of the underworld and politics for supporting the system's major faults: "…idleness, failure to separate and medicate psychopaths, overcrowding and releasing prisoners before they are ready to resume normal life." The producer was motivated by personal experience. Like the film's character of the Colonel, a retired military officer in prison for manslaughter, Wanger realized, "…anyone can land in prison — just like that!" Late in 1951, certain that his wife, actress Joan Bennett, was having an affair with her agent, Jennings Lang of MCA, Wanger shot Lang in the groin in a Beverly Hills parking lot. Only slightly wounded and wary of damaging Bennett's career, Lang refused to file charges, but authorities prosecuted. A leading producer for 20 years and two-time president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Wanger had not recovered financially from his big-budget 1948 flop, Joan of Arc starring Ingrid Bergman, and his friends (among them, Samuel Goldwyn, Walt Disney, Darryl F. Zanuck and Walter Mirisch) contributed to his legal expenses. Despite pleading temporary insanity, the producer was sentenced to four months in the Los Angeles County Honor Farm in Castaic. According to Matthew Bernstein's 1994 biography, Walter Wanger: Hollywood Independent, upon his release in June 1952 after serving 98 days of the sentence, Wanger told the press that the prison system "is "the nation's number one scandal… I want to do a film about it." The difference between Castaic and San Quentin or Folsom was, he added, "a matter of degree not kind." Seeking backing for the project, the ex-convict producer approached Mirisch, head of production at the "poverty row" company, Monogram Pictures. With television taking audiences away from theatres, Mirisch was transforming Monogram into Allied Artists (AA), hoping to raise the quality of studio productions to break into the more profitable urban "early-run" market. Mirisch put Wanger in charge of other AA projects while he developed his prison script. Early in 1953, Wanger discussed the movie with Richard Collins, a writer Mirisch had hired for another project. A former Communist Party member, Collins was one of the original "Hollywood 19" subpoenaed by the House Un-American Activities Committee and blacklisted by the industry until, unlike the jailed "Hollywood 10," he named names as a co- operative witness in 1951. At Allied Artists, he earned $500 a week; before the blacklist he had made up to $1,500 a week. Collins started work on the screenplay in March with Wanger guiding the tone and the shape of the narrative. The story was drawn from the actual events of the Jackson, Michigan State Prison riot of April 1952, in which 2,600 convicts held nine guards hostage and caused $2.5 million in damages. The movie's riot leaders were based on the leaders of the Jackson riot, Earl Ward and "Crazy" Jack Hyatt, identified by prison authorities as psychopaths. Based on Jackson's assistant deputy warden Vernon Fox, the film's warden sees the need for CONTINUED ON PAGE 22 Poster art for Riot in Cell Block 11. Allied Artists Pictures/ Photofest