The film's director, Siegel, later wrote of the casting sessions, "When we finally saw Leo Gordon, a frightening man both physically and mentally, Walter flipped out, as did I. After listening to him read, we instantly gave him the part." Shot in 16 days, the film was a great success, and Gordon was in constant demand thereafter, his many films including Sign of the Pagan (1955), The Man with the Gun (1955), The Conqueror (1956) and Johnny Concho (1956). When Don Siegel was hired to direct Baby Face Nelson (1957), Gordon was the director's first choice to play the notorious John Dillinger, whose gang Nelson ultimately took over.Gordon had started to write scripts between acting assignments (sometimes billing himself as Leo V. Gordon), and in 1958 submitted Cry Baby Killer to Roger Corman. Gordon later explained, "I went to Roger with the goddam story. It was probably something I saw in a newspaper article or some damn something."It was the story of a teenager who believes he has accidentally killed someone and in panic takes hostages and attracts the attention of the media as well as the police "It was a Roman circus, for chrissakes!" said Gordon "The travesty of commercialism when human life is involved. Everything's for sale." Corman gave the title role to a young unknown he had spotted in an acting class, Jack Nicholson, but the film attracted little attention and it would be 10 years before the actor's breakthrough in Easy Rider.
Gordon was also in the cast, and gave himself the best line, "Teenagers! We never had 'em when I was a kid."Other screenplays Gordon wrote for Corman included Hot Car Girl (1958), Attack of the Giant Leeches (1959) and The Wasp Woman (1959), the latter boasting the advertising slogan, "A Beautiful Woman by Day, a Lusting Queen Wasp by Night!" Variety described the film as "slow and not very frightening" but added, "Gordon's screenplay does provide the actors with a gentle, believable humanity, which is a pleasant relief," and the Los Angeles Times called the script "smoothly urbane with nice surprising little touches here and there".Throughout his writing career, Gordon's dialogue was considered superior to his plots. His horror film Tower of London (1962) took its plot from Shakespeare's Richard III and starred Vincent Price, who had just had a string of hits in Edgar Allan Poe adaptations. The producer Gene Corman later related, Leo Gordon and I were trying to come up with a variation on that genre - not to do Edgar Allan Poe, because Vincent had done enough of those. Then I said to Leo, "Why don't we go to Shakespeare, and see where that takes us?" Macbeth didn't serve us, but the story of Richard III did. So that was how that came about - we were exploring the same genre but with a different author.Gordon was featured as an actor in Roger Corman's most personal film, The Intruder (1962). A lifelong liberal intensely concerned with the civil rights movement, Corman put his own money into the story of a bigot who stirs up racial prejudice in a southern town. Gordon played a travelling salesman whose wife is seduced by the charming villain (William Shatner).
The film was shot in the South, and Gordon later recalled the hostility they encountered "We filmed it in St Charles, Missouri They told us to pack up and get out with a police escort Hard-nosed goddam people. The bartender wore a pistol in his belt and had a blackjack in his pocket." The Intruder became the first of Corman's films to lose money, although it was critically praised.The Terror (1962), written by Gordon, is famously regarded as Corman's "three-day wonder", shot during a weekend on sets left over from his production The Raven. "He called me up," said Gordon, "and told me he needed scenes for Boris Karloff He didn't have a story. Just Karloff, a couple of actors, and the damn castle." When The Raven finished shooting on a Friday, Corman told everyone to leave the sets till Monday.
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