The St. Louis Bank Robbery 1959

     This film is based on a true incident in St. Louis.  A tough gang is planning to rob a bank in St. Louis on a Friday morning.  The bank is expected to have $100,000 to cash payroll checks from the local workers.  George Fowler is supposed to be the driver but that changes later.  Gino draws him into the plan and he is the older brother of George’s former girlfriend, Ann.  George and Gino will need to come up with the money to live on for two weeks before they rob the bank.  Ann gives George the money they need.  George wants to go back to college and the robbery money will go a long way to help him with this plan.  The gang leader is John Egan and he’s ruthless!!  He doesn’t trust George to keep his nerve because he doesn’t know him.

      How can this gang hope to pull off this robbery when they are frustrated and jealous of each other every day?  There is no trust because they lack any integrity in order to have trust.  Their common denominator is that they don’t want to go back to prison but the odds are high with this job that they will??  I don’t know anything and I’m not interested in planning a bank robbery but I could do a better job!!  In this time period there wasn’t any sophisticated electronic equipment to protect the bank from a robbery!!  The fear exhibited by the people in the bank is very real.  The robbers are heartless and they do not mind killing people or taking hostages.  Steve McQueen started his film career in 1952 so this was not his first film.  He must have improved greatly over time because he is not very good in this film??  3* (This movie is OK)

99 min, Crime directed by Charles Guggenheim and John Stix with Steve McQueen, Crahan Denton, David Clarke, James Dukas, Molly McCarthy, Martha Gable, Larry Gerst, Boyd Williams, Frank Novotny, Nell Roberts, Bob Holt.

Note:  Imdb 5.9 out of 10, 46% audience on Rotten Tomatoes, TCM Leonard Maltin 1 1/2* out of 4*, Amazon 3.3* out of 5* with 61 reviews,

Special Note:  Filmed in St. Louis, Missouri.  This is the first film to show a toilet in a scene?  Psycho of 1960 was the first film to show a toilet flushing?  Many of the St. Louis Metropolitan Police officers, bank employees and residents play themselves. Policeman Mel stein was a hero for shooting one of the bank robbers and saving a woman hostage.  He just recently died in 2016 at the age of 102.  The movie American Heist of 2014 was based on this robbery.