Word: algren
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...with the Golden Arm. Nelson Algren's tale of a hot dealer who deals himself a cold card: heroin. A painful, powerful story of human bondage, in which Frank Sinatra is unforgettable (TIME...
...with the Golden Arm. Nelson Algren's tale of a hot dealer who deals himself a cold card: heroin. A painful, powerful story of human bondage, in which Frank Sinatra is unforgettable (see below...
...office. On the screen, however, the picture provides much more than the cheap thrill it promises. The hero is a man who gets lost on the West Side of Chicago and does not bother to go looking for himself. The script, mild enough in comparison with Nelson Algren's cruel, powerful novel (TIME, Sept. 2, 1949) on which it is based, has nevertheless the crudeness of a thing scraped off some metropolitan sidewalk. But it has a human splendor, too-as the story of what happens to a man who cannot bear to let life itself happen...
...heroic theme gets severely heroic treatment. Director Otto Preminger has dulled the sociological backdrop that Author Algren daubed so brilliantly, has edged his major characters more starkly against the mass. As a result, the picture is no intellectual slumming party but a hard-eyed study of human character, and the actors serve this end with a well-directed will. Arnold Stang, as Sparrow the dog stealer, looks as woebegone and unhealthy as a tenement torn just starting his ninth life on the garbage-can circuit, but he seldom hides the human quality of his part behind his television false face...
...After viewing a rough cut of Otto Preminger's The Man with the Golden Arm, United Artists decided to release the picture whether it receives Production Code approval or not. The story from the Nelson Algren novel deals with a young Chicago gambler (Frank Sinatra) who becomes a drug addict; thus it conflicts with the code's anti-narcotics clause. U.A. may have been influenced by the fact that Preminger's The Moon Is Blue, which it released without a code seal, made a killing at the box office. ¶The box-office success of Universal...