Director: Robert Wise

Keywords: Drama, Documentary, Prison, Death Row

Name	Occupation	Birth	Death	Known for
Raymond Bailey	Actor	6-May-1904	15-Apr-1980	Milburn on Beverly Hillbillies
Theodore Bikel	Actor	2-May-1924		The Defiant Ones
Dabbs Greer	Actor	2-Apr-1917	28-Apr-2007	Rev. Alden on Little House
Susan Hayward	Actor	30-Jun-1918	14-Mar-1975	I Want to Live!
Gavin MacLeod	Actor	28-Feb-1931		Capt. Stubing on Love Boat
John Marley	Actor	17-Oct-1907	22-May-1984	Godfather horsehead recipient
Gerry Mulligan	Jazz Musician	6-Apr-1927	20-Jan-1996	Greatest jazz baritonist of all time
Simon Oakland	Actor	28-Aug-1915	29-Aug-1983	Tony Vincenzo on Kolchak
Frank Rosolino	Jazz Musician	20-Aug-1926	26-Nov-1978	Jazz trombonist, Turn Me Loose!

REVIEWS

Review by DP Advocate (posted on 14-Feb-2005)

I would have given this movie 4 stars just because of the fabulous sound track with Gerry Mulligan, Frank Rosolino, Pete Jolly, Shelly Manne, Art Farmer, et al. The opening scene with several of them on stage was pure magic, as was the ability of the arranger (Mandel) and producer (Wanger) to weave jazz in and out of the film in a most excellent and innovative manner.

The movie also was useful in that it archived for posterity the grim mechanics of execution via lethal gas, a method no longer used anywhere.

Now for the bad stuff. The movie opens and closes with a statement about it being "factual". What an absolute crock. The Barbara Graham as documented by a number of others is unrecognizable in this movie. Clearly, the producer wanted to make an anti-death penalty statement, and he was willing to butcher the truth to do it.

Not that it really matters 50 years later, but the kind old warden Teets, the guy who covered the chamber before her arrival so she wouldn't see it until the very end, told two different people a couple of years after the execution that Barbara admitted to him she laid Mrs. Monahan's head open. He agonized over keeping that information to himself for so long. His reason for not going public with it was to spare Barbara's family and friends -- in case they thought she was innocent, he didn't want to be the one who ruined that for them. He believed that prison wardons should not concern themselves with guilt or innocence, but just carry out their court orders.

The movie tried hard to paint Barbara as a different kind of victim than that of reality. The movie would leave you with the idea that she was a victim of the legal system. In real life, she was a victim of a bad childhood and the poor choices she made as an older teenager, which led to a life of crime and drug addiction. In real life she was a heroin addict when she left her husband. The movie showed her leaving home with the baby, when in fact she took her money and drugs and left the baby with her addict husband. She most certainly had no baby with her when she moved in with Perkins. Perkins then asked her to join the Monahan caper because it was felt that Mrs. Monahan would only answer the door late at night if a woman rang the bell. The police knew she had been with Perkins and Santo. A few weeks after the murder, they spotted her while she was making a heroin buy. They waited for her to shoot up and then tailed her on the bus trip back to the apartment.

Two separate accomplices told police they saw Barbara hitting Mrs. Monahan when they followed her into the house. Perkins killed one of them for talking. The other one turned state's evidence in exchange for immunity. You only saw the latter in the movie.

Barbara's childhood friends couldn't believe the Barbara they knew was capable of murder. That's because they didn't know Barbara the heroin addict. Justice was served in the gas chamber in 1955. Justice was mocked in 1958 when I Want to Live was released.

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