Recommended reading - The Asphalt Jungle (novel & screenplay):

The Asphalt Jungle

By W. R. Burnett.

Filmed as The Asphalt Jungle (1950), directed by John Huston.

Published by Prion Books Ltd

First published 1949.

Paperback.

ISBN-10: 1853753467

ISBN-13: 978-1853753466

Description:

So successful in evoking [the city's] aura that the reader breathes the air of menace that emanates from its implacable personality and shivers at the unmistakeable evidence that blind chance plays a considerable part in determining the course of every life within the city's confines. – New York Times.

The Asphalt Jungle is a gripping tale of the planning and execution of a jewellery store heist in a dark and corrupt Midwestern metropolis. Set amid a seedy urban wasteland of crooks, killers and con-artists, the various members of the gang are steadily undone by personal obsessions, double-crossing and cruel fate.

First published in 1949, W.R. Burnett's hardboiled classic was made into the definitive heist movie by John Huston in 1950, starring Sterling Hayden, Sam Jaffe and Marilyn Monroe. Its screenplay, co-written by Huston was nominated for an Oscar.

A master and pioneer of the gangster genre, W.R. Burnett is the author of over thirty novels - including Little Caesar and High Sierra - and sixty screenplays. He was twice nominated for Academy Awards.

The Asphalt Jungle: A Screenplay

By Ben Maddow & John Huston.

Screenplay Library.

Published by Southern Illinois University Press.

Published 1980.

First Edition.

Paperback.

ISBN-10: 0809309467

ISBN-13: 978-0809309467

Description:

Dore Schary, then head of production at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, bought The Asphalt Jungle while it was still in manu­script in an effort to match the success Warner Brothers had enjoyed with Burnett’s Little Caesar and High Sierra. The choice of Ben Maddow and John Huston as screenwriters assured the artistic success of the screenplay, for few writer/directors could have matched Huston’s ability to develop these characters cinematically.

It was a case of strength building upon strength. Burnett’s fully developed characters were transformed by Maddow and Huston into a screenplay of impressive immediacy. Indeed, the portrayal of the criminals in splendid performances from Louis Calhern, Sam Jaffe, Sterling Hayden, James Whitmore, and Jean Hagen, led Bosley Crowther to lament, “If only it all weren’t so corrupt!” But the characters of Burnett, Maddow and Huston, don’t permit us to romanticize about them or their activities. We share their professional pride in a robbery well planned and are silent accomplices to their mutual treachery.