I Want to Live!
Theatrical release poster
Directed byRobert Wise
Screenplay byNelson Gidding
Don Mankiewicz
Based onArticles and letters
by Edward Montgomery and Barbara Graham
Produced byWalter Wanger
Starring
CinematographyLionel Lindon
Edited byWilliam Hornbeck
Music byJohnny Mandel
Production
companies
Figaro, Inc.
Distributed byUnited Artists
Release date
  • October 29, 1958 (1958-10-29)[1]
Running time
120 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$1.4 million[1]
Box office$3.5 million[2]—$5.6 million[1]

I Want to Live! is a 1958 American biographical neo noir drama film directed by Robert Wise and starring Susan Hayward, Simon Oakland, Virginia Vincent and Theodore Bikel. It follows the life of Barbara Graham, a prostitute and habitual criminal who is convicted of murder and faces capital punishment. The screenplay, written by Nelson Gidding and Don Mankiewicz, was adapted from personal letters written by Graham in addition to newspaper articles written by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ed Montgomery. The film presents a highly fictionalized version of the case, indicating the possibility that Graham may have been innocent.

Released in late 1958, I Want to Live! was a commercial and critical success, garnering favorable reviews from critics for Hayward's performance as well as the film's realistic depiction of capital punishment. The film earned a total of six Academy Award nominations, with Hayward winning a Best Actress Oscar at the 31st Academy Awards as well as the Golden Globe Award in the same category.

Plot

In 1950 San Francisco, petty criminal and prostitute Barbara Graham faces a misdemeanor charge for soliciting sex. She returns to her native San Diego, but is soon charged with perjury after she provides two criminal friends a false alibi. She subsequently returns to prostitution and other criminal activities to make a living and begins working for thief Emmett Perkins by luring men to his gambling parlor. Barbara manages to earn a significant amount of money, and quits working for Emmett to marry Hank, her third husband. The couple have a son, Bobby, but their marriage is in turmoil because of Hank's heroin addiction and physical abuse.

Barbara forces Hank to leave, but she is soon evicted from her apartment. Desperate, she leaves Bobby in the care of her mother and returns to working for Emmett, who is now associated with thugs John Santo and Bruce King. Police crack down on the operation and Barbara surrenders. During the interrogation, she is stunned when authorities accuse her of helping Perkins and Santo murder Mabel Monahan, an elderly Burbank woman. Barbara insists that she was home with her husband and son on the night of the murder but is indicted by a grand jury. Barbara's childhood friend Peg visits her in jail and agrees to help care for Bobby.

Attorney Richard Tibrow is assigned to Barbara's case and informs her that her alibi is meaningless unless Hank can corroborate it. Barbara furtively concocts a phony alibi with Ben Miranda, supposedly a friend of a fellow prisoner. At the trial, it is revealed that Ben is a police officer who recorded her confession with a hidden microphone during their meeting. Barbara insists that she sought the false alibi only to avoid the death penalty, and that her admission is false. She is ultimately convicted, along with Emmett and John, and all three are sentenced to death.

Tibrow withdraws from Barbara's case and is replaced by Al Matthews. In prison, Barbara is relentlessly defiant, refusing to wear her uniform and demanding a radio. Matthews has psychologist Carl Palmberg evaluate Barbara, hoping to ultimately administer a lie detection test. After visiting with her, Carl states that while Barbara appears to be amoral, she is averse to violence. He also observes that she is left-handed, and the murder was committed by a right-handed person. Journalist Edward Montgomery, who has covered Barbara's case all along, questions her conviction and publishes a sympathetic series of articles describing her troubled life. As her execution date draws near, Barbara grows increasingly anxious. A Supreme Court stay gives her hope that her sentence may be commuted, but it is overturned when Carl dies unexpectedly of heart disease. Al's petition for a retrial is denied, and Barbara's execution date is set.

The day before her execution, a demoralized Barbara is transferred to San Quentin Prison, where she meets with a priest. That evening, she is angered to hear that multiple couples are seeking to adopt her son. She stays awake all night, wistfully recounting to a prison nurse her marriage with Hank. In the morning, 45 minutes before Barbara's scheduled execution, California governor Goodwin J. Knight declares a stay, but Al's writ is invalidated and the execution is ordered to proceed. Barbara is taken to the gas chamber, but the execution is again halted when Al's amended writ is declared.

The uncertainty and desperation surrounding her fate reduces Barbara to hysterics. She is returned to her cell, where she and the prison staff wait several minutes for a response to Al's writ. They are informed that it has again been rejected and that Barbara's execution is to proceed immediately. Before entering the gas chamber, Barbara demands a mask, as she does not want to see the faces of the witnesses to what she regards as her murder. She is strapped to the chair and executed with cyanide gas. After Barbara is pronounced dead, a despondent Edward leaves the prison. On his way out, he is met by Al, who gives him a note from Barbara thanking him for his efforts to help her.

Cast

Accuracy

According to historian Kathleen Cairns, I Want to Live! "implied that Graham's guilt or innocence was largely irrelevant, that the real crime was committed by a justice system that framed her and a media that abetted the effort... In reality, the film took liberty with many facts of the case."[3] The film also suggests that Graham, though believed to have sociopathic tendencies in real life, was dangerous only to herself as a result of her loveless childhood and abusive mother.[3]

A prologue and epilogue contributed to the film by Edward Montgomery, the journalist who covered Graham's case, characterize the film's content, which largely portrays Graham as innocent of the murder, as factual. However, there may have been substantial evidence of Graham's complicity in the crime, including her taped confession to an undercover officer.[4] In an interview with Robert Osborne, Susan Hayward admitted that her research on the evidence and letters in the case led her to believe that Graham was guilty.[5]

Despite some of the liberties taken with Graham's story, the film's depiction of the California gas chamber was regarded as accurate.[6][7]

Production

Susan Hayward in the trailer for I Want to Live!

Development

The film's screenplay was originally written by Don Mankiewicz based on letters by convicted murderer Barbara Graham, who was executed in 1955, and a series of articles by journalist Edward S. Montgomery.[8] In early 1958, after a draft of the screenplay was completed, Nelson Gidding was commissioned to write a redraft and tighten the narrative as it "lacked focus" and contained too many pages concentrating on Graham's troubled childhood.[9] Gidding's redraft omitted any depiction of the murder of Mable Monohan as well as Graham's months spent at San Quentin State Prison during her appeals.[9]

Casting

When questioned about taking the controversial role, Susan Hayward said: "I just had to play her. If I hadn't thought they should make [the film], I wouldn't have played the part."[9]

Filming

Principal photography began in March 1958. Production was stopped after Hayward contracted measles.[10]

To ensure that the execution sequence was depicted as accurately as possible, Wise attended a public execution at San Quentin.[9] Hayward commented after completing filming that her simulated experience of execution convinced her that the practice was "medieval."[9]

Musical score

In addition to Mandel's score, the film features jazz themes performed by Gerry Mulligan's combo. Two soundtrack albums were released by United Artists Records in 1958.[11]

Release

Box office

Although some sources state that the film grossed $3.5 million,[2] the Walter Wanger biography Walter Wanger, Hollywood Independent indicated that the film grossed $5,641,711, with a net profit of $2,455,570.[1] Hayward was entitled to 37% of the film's overall profit.[12]

Critical response

Hayward received an Oscar for her portrayal of Barbara Graham.

Upon release, I Want to Live! was met with a largely favorable critical response, with many critics heralding the film as an "indictment against capital punishment," citing its clinical, harrowing depiction of execution.[13] Producer Walter Wanger received numerous congratulatory letters praising the film after its release, including those from writers Arthur Miller, Paddy Chayefsky, Leon Uris and Albert Camus, all of whom were ardent opponents of capital punishment.[14]

Variety magazine published a favorable review: "There is no attempt to gloss the character of Barbara Graham, only an effort to understand it through some fine irony and pathos. She had no hesitation about indulging in any form of crime or vice that promised excitement on her own, rather mean, terms ... Hayward brings off this complex characterization. Simon Oakland, as Montgomery, who first crucified Barbara Graham in print and then attempted to undo what he had done, underplays his role with assurance."[15]

Film critic Bosley Crowther of The New York Times wrote: "Miss Hayward plays it superbly, under the consistently sharp direction of Robert Wise, who has shown here a stunning mastery of the staccato realistic style. From a loose and wise-cracking B-girl she moves onto levels of cold disdain and then plunges down to depths of terror and bleak surrender as she reaches the end. Except that the role does not present us a precisely pretty character, its performance merits for Miss Hayward the most respectful applause."[16]

Gene Blake, the reporter who covered the actual murder trial for the Los Angeles Daily Mirror, called the film "a dramatic and eloquent piece of propaganda for the abolition of the death penalty."[17]

By March 1959, Billboard noted that the popularity of the film and of Mandel's and Mulligan's albums "prompted a rush of jazz film scores" and cited as examples Duke Ellington's score for Anatomy of a Murder, the release of The Five Pennies (a biopic about the jazz band leader Red Nichols) and the 1960 documentary Jazz on a Summer's Day.[18]

In a 1993 reappraisal, film critic Danny Peary wrote that Hayward is "...the actress of that era [the 1940s and '50s] who most needs rediscovery, and the best film to start with is I Want to Live!."[19]

The review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reports a 94% approval rating based on 16 reviews, with an average rating of 7.9/10.[20]

Awards and honors

Award Year Category Nominee(s) Result Ref.
Academy Awards 1958 Best Director Robert Wise Nominated [21]
Best Actress Susan Hayward Won
Best Screenplay – Based on Material from Another Medium Don Mankiewicz and Nelson Gidding Nominated
Best Cinematography – Black-and-White Lionel Lindon Nominated
Best Film Editing William Hornbeck Nominated
Best Sound Gordon E. Sawyer Nominated
American Film Institute's 10 Top 10 2008 Courtroom Drama Film Nominated [22]
British Academy Film Awards 1959 Best Foreign Actress Susan Hayward Nominated [23]
David di Donatello Awards 1959 Best Foreign Actress Won
Directors Guild of America Awards 1959 Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Motion Pictures Robert Wise Nominated
Golden Globe Awards 1959 Best Motion Picture – Drama Nominated [24]
Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama Susan Hayward Won
Best Director – Motion Picture Robert Wise Nominated
Grammy Awards 1959 Best Sound Track Album, Dramatic Picture Score or Original Cast Johnny Mandel Nominated
Laurel Awards 1959 Top Drama Nominated
Top Female Dramatic Performance Susan Hayward Nominated
Top Cinematography – Black-and-White Lionel Lindon Nominated
Best Score Johnny Mandel Nominated
Mar del Plata International Film Festival 1958 Best Film Robert Wise Nominated
Best Actress Susan Hayward Won
New York Film Critics Circle Awards 1958 Best Actress Won
Sant Jordi Awards 1958 Best Foreign Actress Won
Writers Guild of America Awards 1959 Best Written American Drama Nelson Gidding and Don Mankiewicz Nominated

Home media

MGM Home Entertainment released I Want to Live! on DVD on May 7, 2002.[25] Kino Lorber reissued the film on DVD featuring a restored print in October 2015.[26] In November 2016, Twilight Time released the film on Blu-ray disc in a limited edition of 3,000 units.[27]

Adaptation

I Want to Live! was remade for television in 1983. The television film features Lindsay Wagner, Martin Balsam, Pamela Reed, Harry Dean Stanton, Dana Elcar, Ellen Geer, Robert Ginty and Barry Primus.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 Bernstein 2000, p. 446.
  2. 1 2 Cairns 2013, p. 123.
  3. 1 2 Cairns 2013, p. 114.
  4. ↑ Gilmore 2005, pp. 288–291.
  5. ↑ Osborne, Robert (February 20, 2009). I Want to Live! (Telecast of film with commentary). Turner Classic Movies.
  6. ↑ Papke 2012, p. 440.
  7. ↑ Stafford, Jeff. "I Want to Live". Turner Classic Movies. Archived from the original on June 3, 2020. Retrieved December 15, 2015.
  8. ↑ Cairns 2013, pp. 111–112.
  9. 1 2 3 4 5 Cairns 2013, p. 112.
  10. ↑ "Star Gets Measles". Variety. April 2, 1958. p. 2. Retrieved May 6, 2023 – via Archive.org.
  11. ↑ "United Artists UAL-40000/UAL 4000 mono/UAS 5000 stereo Series" (PDF). Both Sides Now Publications. Retrieved August 18, 2015.
  12. ↑ "Susan Hayward". Variety. November 12, 1958. p. 5 – via Archive.org.
  13. ↑ Cairns 2013, p. 120.
  14. ↑ Cairns 2013, p. 121.
  15. ↑ "I Want to Live!". Variety. December 31, 1957. Retrieved March 24, 2008.
  16. ↑ Crowther, Bosley (November 19, 1958). "Vivid Performance by Susan Hayward; Actress Stars in I Want to Live". The New York Times. Retrieved March 24, 2008.
  17. ↑ Blake, Gene (November 28, 1958). "Barbara Graham case revisited, November 28, 1958". Los Angeles Daily Mirror. Retrieved July 19, 2018 – via Los Angeles Times.
  18. ↑ Bundy, June (March 9, 1959). "Late 50s Bid for Posterity Fame as Real 'Jazz Age'". Billboard. p. 42. Retrieved August 11, 2010.
  19. ↑ Peary 1993, p. 146.
  20. ↑ "I Want to Live! (1958)". Rotten Tomatoes. Fandango Media. Retrieved November 13, 2022.
  21. ↑ "The 31st Academy Awards | 1958". Oscars.org. Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Retrieved August 21, 2011.
  22. ↑ "Official Ballot" (PDF). AFI's 10 Top 10. American Film Institute. Archived from the original (PDF) on July 16, 2011. Retrieved August 19, 2016.
  23. ↑ "Film: Foreign Actress in 1960". BAFTA Awards. Archived from the original on June 3, 2020. Retrieved June 3, 2020.
  24. ↑ "Golden Globe Awards for 'I Want To Live!'". Hollywood Foreign Press Association. Archived from the original on June 3, 2020. Retrieved June 3, 2020.
  25. ↑ Ordway, Holly E. (May 19, 2002). "I Want to Live!: DVD Talk Review of the DVD Video". DVD Talk. Archived from the original on June 3, 2020. Retrieved June 3, 2020.
  26. ↑ Pewenofkit, Scott (November 12, 2015). "I Want to Live!: DVD Talk Review of the DVD Video". DVD Talk. Archived from the original on June 3, 2020. Retrieved June 3, 2020.
  27. ↑ Harrison, William (December 30, 2016). "I Want to Live! (Limited Edition Series) (Blu-ray)". DVD Talk. Archived from the original on June 3, 2020. Retrieved June 3, 2020.

Sources

  • Bernstein, Matthew (2000). Walter Wanger: Hollywood Independent. Minneapolis, Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press. ISBN 978-0-816-63548-1.
  • Cairns, Kathleen (2013). Proof of Guilt: Barbara Graham and the Politics of Executing Women in America. Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press. ISBN 978-0-803-23009-5.
  • Gilmore, John (2005). L.A. Despair: A Landscape of Crimes and Bad Times. Los Angeles, California: Amok Books. ISBN 978-1-878-92316-5.
  • Papke, David Ray (2012). Law and Popular Culture: Text, Notes, and Questions. New York City, New York: LexisNexis. ISBN 978-0-769-84753-5.
  • Peary, Danny (1993). Alternate Oscars: One Critic's Defiant Choices for Best Picture, Actor, and Actress — From 1927 to the Present. New York City, New York: Delta. ISBN 978-0-385-30332-3.
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