JohnHowardReid Copyright 1 November 1951 by Paramount Pictures, Inc. New York opening at the Mayfair: 6 November 1951. U.S. release: November 1951. U.K. release: December 1951. Australian release: 15 August 1952. Paramount delayed the Australian release because they wanted the film showcased at the Prince Edward. Sydney opening at the Prince Edward: 15 August 1952 (ran six weeks, second only to Here Comes the Groom as that theater's highest-grossing picture of 1952. Yes, Detective Story sold many more tickets than A Place in the Sun). 9,314 feet. 103 minutes.NOTES: The stage play opened on Broadway at the Hudson on 23 March 1949, running a most successful 581 performances. Ralph Bellamy played McLeod. Lee Grant, Joseph Wiseman, Michael Strong and Horace McMahon reprized their Broadway roles for the film version. Also in the play were James Westerfield, Meg Mundy, Alexander Scourby, Maureen Stapleton, Edward Binns, our favorite actor Robert Strauss, Lou Gilbert, Jean Adair, Warren Stevens, Joan Copeland, Les Tremayne and Harry Worth. Playwright Kingsley directed, Boris Aronson designed the set, Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse produced.Nominated for AMPAS Awards for:— Best Actress, Eleanor Parker (won by Vivien Leigh in A Streetcar Named Desire); Best Supporting Actress, Lee Grant (Kim Hunter in A Streetcar Named Desire); Best Directing, William Wyler (George Stevens for A Place in the Sun); Best Screenplay (A Place in the Sun). Number 5 on the Ten Best American Films of 1951 selected by The National Board of Review. Number 4 on the composite list of the Ten Best Films of 1951 compiled by The Film Daily in its annual survey of U.S. film critics.COMMENT: Even today, Sidney Kingsley's Detective Story is a compellingly forceful piece of theater. Full credit must go to Wyler and his writers for retaining the structure, atmosphere and power of the play, yet making it seem so cinematic that we are rarely aware that we're watching a stage play not a film.Wyler is assisted in this masterful illusion by as fine a troupe of players as has ever been assembled for a transfer from Broadway to Hollywood. Kirk Douglas gives the performance of his career. So does Eleanor Parker; and also Horace McMahon (who was rarely handed a film role of comparable importance to this one). And if George Macready were not already one of our favorite villains, we would be giving him a Guernsey too.

kijii I just saw this great black and white movie for the first time last night. What a powerful movie and what a great cast!!! If someone had told me that this movie was a William Wyler movie, I would not have believed him, since it is so different from his other movies. Basically set in the intake and holding room of one NYC police precinct, it presents a large and diverse cast of powerful stories about miscreants (or would be miscreants) in a one basic location. This movie received Oscar nominations for: Best Actress--Elenor Parker Best Supporting Actres--Lee Grant in her first motion picture Best Director----William Wyler and Best Writing, Screenplay--Philip Yordan & Robert Wyler Is this movie the first of it kind in bringing many characters into (basically) a single room?? Kirk Douglas was at his best, as far as his raw physical acting is concerned. It came out about the same year as Billy Wilder's Ace in the Hole. William Bendix also gives one of his best performances here too. Lee Grant is in the room for shoplifting a $6 purse. She is great as an "observer" of all the things going on around her as she waits to be "booked." In that way, she acts as sort of a Greek chorus to the main events. If I had seen this movie as an 8-year-old kid, I would have totally missed the wonderful magic of the movie and the way it was constructed. One of the central parts of the story has to do with illegal abortion, yet the word "abortion" is never used in the movie and probably would have been misunderstood if it had been. In 1951, probably few people even talked about.

m10001 William Wyler brings his famous sensitivity to this film adaptation of a successful Broadway play of the time. The mores around 1950 are so different from ours, that the main conflict seems overwrought in 2015. Lee Grant debuts in a role so utterly unlike what she played in the rest of her career. If you look carefully at the supporting players, you'll see actors you remember from great TV and high-end movies performances in the 1970s. This movie was made before the inundation of cop shows we have to day, and those tropes look fresh here. Eleanor Parker gives a great performance that will not remind you in any way of the Duchess in The Sound of Music. William Bendix plays a tough cop straight-- not for laughs in any way. Frank Faylen (Dobie Gillis's TV father and the cab driver in It's a Wonderful Life) gives a refreshing turn as a detective.

winstonfg I'm 55 years old and I watched this film for the first time tonight, and ... well the title says it: Powerful, claustrophobic, intense, this is definitely 100 minutes you won't regret; and it could only ever have been done in black-and-white.Kirk Douglas is given reign to do what he does best without ever quite going overboard (as he was apt to do later on) and he's wonderfully supported by a cast that act out of their skins; particularly Horace McMahon, who I'd never heard of before watching this, but I'll be looking out for now, and a very young Lee Grant - probably more familiar to most as catch-all guest star of many 70's TV shows - who is almost unrecognisable in her role as the shoplifter/onlooker.Bendix, Parker, Wiseman, O'Donnell, Mohr... there are too many to list, but each plays their part to the hilt, and the result is a film-noir tale of the highest order. Yes, it has the feel of a play, and it might be difficult for younger viewers to understand the mores of the time; but it suspended my disbelief almost from the first frame and held it to the last.This is ensemble acting at its best, and if, like me, you somehow missed it along the way: go get a copy.