There Was a Crooked Man

A typically adventurous work from producer/director Joseph L. Mankiewicz, There Was a Crooked Man casts Kirk Douglas as the brains of a gang of frontier desperadoes. Arrested in a brothel after holding up merchant Arthur O'Connell, Douglas is carted off to territorial prison, where he quickly establishes himself as the lord of the flies. Idealistic new warden Henry Fonda vows to improve morale and living conditions in the prison, and to that end enlists the aid of Douglas, who pretends to b...