On this day in movie history - Force of Evil (1948 movie & novel):

Force of Evil

directed by Abraham Polonsky,

written by Abraham Polonsky and Ira Wolfert,

based on the novel Tucker's People by Ira Wolfert,

was released in the United States on December 25, 1948.
Music by David Raksin.

Cast:

John Garfield, Beatrice Pearson, Thomas Gomez, Marie Windsor, Howland Chamberlain, Roy Roberts, Paul Fix, Stanley Prager, Barry Kelley, Beau Bridges, Paul McVey.

Recommended reading:

Tucker’s People

By Ira Wolfert.

aka The Underworld.

Filmed as Force of Evil (1948), directed by Abraham Polonsky.

Published by Black Curtain Press.

First published 1943.

Hardcover.

ISBN-10: 1515426157

ISBN-13: 978-1515426158

Description:

When Tucker's People was published in 1943 it was praised by the New York Times for its "blowtorch intensity." The idea for Tucker's People stemmed from Ira Wolfert's coverage as a reporter of the trial of James "Jimmy" Hines, a Tammany Hall district leader who was prosecuted by Thomas E. Dewey for letting Dutch Schultz take over the numbers game in New York. It is "a penetrating, sympathetic novel of frustration and insecurity, a story of little people, many of them decent people, battling against forces they are too feeble to resist and too simple to understand," according to the Saturday Review of Literature.