On this day in movie and book history - Somebody Up There Likes Me:

Somebody Up There Likes Me

directed by Robert Wise,

written by Ernest Lehman,

based on the autobiography by Rocky Graziano with Rowland Barber,

was released in the United States on July 4, 1956.

Music by Bronislau Kaper.

Cast:

Paul Newman, Pier Angeli, Everett Sloane, Eileen Heckart, Harold J. Stone, Joseph Buloff, Sal Mineo, Ray Stricklyn, Robert Loggia, Steve McQueen, Angela Cartwright, Jack Orrison, Frank Campanella, Dean Jones.

Recommended reading:

Somebody Up There Likes Me

by Rocky Graziano with Rowland Barber.

Filmed as Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956), directed by Robert Wise.

Published by Ecco Press.
Published 1954.

Paperback

ISBN 13: 9780880013932
ISBN 10: 0880013931
ASIN: 0880013931

Description:
The blood-soaked autobiography of a fist-happy hoodlum…

Rocky’s right hand saw him through three stretches in reform school, four man-size prisons, the middle-weight championship of the world, and a career as a television comedian with Martha Raye.

We get a view of what it’s like to be on the lam from truant officers, probation officers, goons, cops, and creeps too stupid to be anything but legitimate. What it’s like to hit first or get hit! – Saturday Review.

On this day in movie and book history - The Great Escape (1963)

The Great Escape

directed by John Sturges,

written by James Clavell and W. R. Burnett,

based on the book by Paul Brickhill,

was released in the United States on July 2, 1963.

Music by Elmer Bernstein.

Cast:

Steve McQueen, James Garner, Richard Attenborough, James Donald, Charles Bronson, Donald Pleasence, James Coburn, Hannes Messemer, David McCallum, Gordon Jackson, John Leyton, Angus Lennie, Nigel Stock, Robert Graf, Jud Taylor, Hans Reiser, Harry Riebauer, William Russell, Robert Freitag, Ulrich Beiger, George Mikell, Lawrence Montaigne, Robert Desmond, Til Kiwe, Heinz Weiss, Tom Adams, Karl-Otto Alberty, Arthur Atkinson.

Recommended reading:

The Great Escape

by Paul Brickhill.

Filmed as The Great Escape (1963), directed by John Sturges.

Published by W. W. Norton & Company.
Published 1950.

ISBN-10: 0393325792
ISBN-13: 9780393325799
 
Description:

"One of the great true stories of the war, and one of the greatest escape narratives of all time." – San Francisco Chronicle.

"Absorbing... spine-tingling... puts the average war book so far in the shadow it's not even funny." – Dallas Times Herald.

"For sheer suspense, puts the fictioneers to shame." – Boston Globe.

"A tense, thrilling, fabulous tale." – Philadelphia Inquirer.

They were American and British air force officers in a German prison camp. With only their bare hands and the crudest of homemade tools, they sank shafts, forged passports, faked weapons, and tailored German uniforms and civilian clothes. They developed a fantastic security system to protect themselves from German surveillance.

It was a split-second operation as delicate and as deadly as a time bomb. It demanded the concentrated devotion and vigilance of more than six hundred men – every one of them, every minute, every hour, every day and night for more than a year.

Made into the classic 1963 war film of the same name starring Steve McQueen, James Garner, and Richard Attenborough.

16 pages of photographs.

Born on this day – Steve McQueen:

Steve McQueen

Actor

March 24, 1930 – November 7, 1980

Credits:

Adam at Six A.M. (1970); AFI Life Achievement Award (1974); Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1959–1960); An Enemy of the People (1978); Armstrong Circle Theatre (1955); Baby the Rain Must Fall (1965); Beverly Hills Easter Parade (1959); Bruce Lee: The Man and the Legend (1973); Bullitt (1968); ‘Bullitt’: Steve McQueen’s Commitment to Reality (1998); Climax! (1958); Dixie Dynamite (1976); Family Affair (1952); Girl on the Run (1953); Goodyear Playhouse (1955); Hell Is for Heroes (1962); Here’s Hollywood (1962); Honda CR250: Steve McQueen (1971); Inside the Movie Kingdom – 1964 (1964); Junior Bonner (1972); Kraft Theatre / The United States Steel Hour (1956); Lamp Unto My Feet (1955); Le Mans (1971); Le Mans Documentary Featurette (1971); Love with the Proper Stranger (1963); Matinee Theatre (1956); Nevada Smith (1966); Never Love a Stranger (1958); Never So Few (1959); On Any Sunday (1971); Papillon (1973); Perry Como’s Kraft Music Hall (1960); Playwrights ‘56 (1955); Soldier in the Rain (1963); Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956); Studio One (1957); Superstunt (1977); Tales of Wells Fargo (1958); The 20th Century-Fox Hour (1957); The 24th Annual Golden Globe Awards (1967); The 36th Annual Academy Awards (1964); The 37th Annual Academy Awards (1965); The 39th Annual Academy Awards (1967); The 43rd Annual Academy Awards (1971); The Big Story (1957); The Blob (1958); The Bob Hope Show (1960); The Cincinnati Kid (1965); The Coming of the Roads (1966); The Dick Powell Theatre (1963); The Ed Sullivan Show (1958–1968); The Getaway (1972); The Great Escape (1963); The Honeymoon Machine (1961); The Hunter (1980); The Joey Bishop Show (1967); The Juke Box Jury (1959); The Magnificent Rebel (1973); The Magnificent Seven (1960); The Reivers (1969); The Sand Pebbles (1966); The St. Louis Bank Robbery (1959); The Thomas Crown Affair (1968); The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson (1966–1968); The Towering Inferno (1974); The War Lover (1962); Think Twentieth (1967); Tom Horn (1980); Trackdown (1958); Wanted: Dead or Alive (1958–1961); West Point (1957); What’s My Line? (1966).

On this day in movie history – Papillon (1973 movie & books):

Papillon

directed by Franklin J. Schaffner,

written by Dalton Trumbo and Lorenzo Semple Jr.,

based on the book by Henri Charrière,

released in the United States on December 16, 1973.

Music by Jerry Goldsmith.

Cast:

Steve McQueen, Dustin Hoffman, Victor Jory, Don Gordon, Anthony Zerbe, Robert Deman, Woodrow Parfrey, Bill Mumy, George Coulouris, Ratna Assan, William Smithers, Val Avery, Gregory Sierra, Ron Soble.

Recommended reading:

Papillon

by Henri Charriere.

ASIN: B01N8YET21

Published by William Morrow.

First published 1969.

Henri Charrière, called "Papillon," for the butterfly tattoo on his chest, was convicted in Paris in 1931 of a murder he did not commit. Sentenced to life imprisonment in the penal colony of French Guiana, he became obsessed with one goal: escape. After planning and executing a series of treacherous yet failed attempts over many years, he was eventually sent to the notorious prison, Devil's Island, a place from which no one had ever escaped . . . until Papillon. His flight to freedom remains one of the most incredible feats of human cunning, will, and endurance ever undertaken. Charrière's astonishing autobiography, Papillon, was published in France to instant acclaim in 1968, more than twenty years after his final escape. Since then, it has become a treasured classic -- the gripping, shocking, ultimately uplifting odyssey of an innocent man who would not be defeated.

Banco:
The Further Adventures of Papillon

by Henri Charrière.

Published by Granada Publishing Limited.

First published 1972.

ISBN 13: 9780586040102

ISBN 10: 0586040102

ASIN: 0586040102

The sensational sequel to Papillon. Banco continues the adventures of Henri Charriere – nicknamed Papillon – in Venezuela, where he has finally won his freedom after thirteen years of escape and imprisonment. Despite his resolve to become an honest man, Charriere is soon involved in hair-raiding exploits with goldminers, gamblers, bank-robbers and revolutionaries – robbing and being robbed, his lust for life as strong as ever. He also runs night clubs in Caracas until an earthquake ruins him in 1967 – when he decides to write the book that brings his international fame.

On this day in movie and book history - The Getaway (1972)

The Getaway

directed by Sam Peckinpah,

written by Walter Hill,

based on the novel by Jim Thompson,

was released in the United States on December 13, 1972.

Music by Quincy Jones.

Cast:

Steve McQueen, Ali MacGraw, Ben Johnson, Sally Struthers, Al Lettieri, Slim Pickens, Richard Bright, Jack Dodson, Dub Taylor, Bo Hopkins, Roy Jenson, John Bryson.

Recommended reading: The Getaway

The Getaway

by Jim Thompson.
 
First published 1958.
Published by Mulholland Books.
Paperback.

ISBN-10: 0316403970
ISBN-13: 978-0316403979
 
Description:

Doc McCoy is the most skilled criminal alive. But when for the first time in Doc's long criminal career, his shot doesn't hit the mark, everything begins to fall apart. And Doc begins to realize that the perfect bank robbery isn't complete without the perfect getaway to back it up.

THE GETAWAY is the classic story of a bank robbery gone horribly wrong, where the smallest mistakes have catastrophic consequences, and shifting loyalties lead to betrayals and chaos. The basis for the classic Steve McQueen film of the same name, as well as a 1994 remake with Alec Baldwin, Thompson's novel set the bar for every heist story that followed - but as Thompson's proved time and again, nobody's ever done it better than the master.

On this day in movie history - The Magnificent Seven (1960)

The Magnificent Seven

directed by John Sturges,

written by William Roberts,

was released in the United States on October 12, 1960.

Music by Elmer Bernstein.

Cast:

Yul Brynner, Eli Wallach, Steve McQueen, Horst Buchholz, Charles Bronson, Robert Vaughn, Brad Dexter, James Coburn, Jorge Martínez de Hoyos, Vladimir Sokoloff, Rosenda Monteros, Rico Alaniz, Pepe Hern, Natividad Vacío, Mario Navarro, Danny Bravo, John A. Alonzo, Enrique Lucero, Alex Montoya, Robert J. Wilke, Val Avery, Whit Bissell, Bing Russell, Manuel Alvarado, Henry Amargo, José Chávez, Roberto Contreras, Jim Davis, Valentin de Vargas, Larry Duran, Victor French, Edwin Max, Lalo Rios, Joseph Ruskin.

On this day in movie history - The Blob (1958)

 

The Blob

directed by Irvin S. Yeaworth Jr. and Russell S. Doughten Jr.,

written by Theodore Simonson and Kay Linaker,

based on an idea by Irvine H. Millgate,

was released in the United States on September 10, 1958.

Music by Ralph Carmichael.

 

Cast:

Steve McQueen, Aneta Corsaut, Earl Rowe, Olin Howland, Stephen Chase, John Benson, George Karas, Lee Payton, Elbert Smith, Hugh Graham, Vincent Barbi, Audrey Metcalf, Jasper Deeter, Tom Ogden, Elinor Hammer, Pamela Curran, Ralph Roseman, Charlie Overdorff, David Metcalf, Josh Randolph, George Gerbereck, Julie Cousins, Keith Almoney, Eugene Sabel, Robert Fields, James Bonnet, Tony Franke, Molly Ann Bourne, Diane Tabben, Russ Conway, Howard Fishlove, Jack H. Harris, Vincent J. Mastrangelo, Theodore Simonson.

On this day in movie history - The Great St. Louis Bank Robbery (1959)

The Great St. Louis Bank Robbery

a.k.a. The St. Louis Bank Robbery

directed by Charles Guggenheim and John Stix,

written by Richard Heffron,

was released in the United States on September 10, 1959.

Music by Bernardo Segáll.

Cast:

Steve McQueen, Crahan Denton, David Clarke, James Dukas, Molly McCarthy, Martha Gable, Larry Gerst, Boyd Williams, Frank Novotny, Nell Roberts, Bob Holt, May Kohn, Jay Elliot, Robert Klauss, Barney Barnett, Nancy Lyon.