Director Elia Kazan really enjoyed directing the superb thriller, Panic in the Streets (1950) - "It's the first film I regard as really mine. Richard Murphy and I worked on the script every morning and re-wrote every scene to take advantage of the terrific color and photographic richness of New Orleans".
But as with "Boomerang", Kazan told me that he was still unhappy with the camerawork: "Visually, it could have been much stronger."
However, unlike his comments on many of the players in "Boomerang", Kazan had nothing but praise for his cast in Panic in the Streets: "Dick Widmark was a good friend of mine. I had directed him on the stage. He was typecast as vicious killers at this stage of his movie career, but I changed all that. He played a nice person in Panic, and he was like that in real life.
"Then I cast Barbara Bel Geddes. Jack Palance I knew when he was Brando's understudy for A Streetcar Named Desire. This was his first film. I also cast Zero Mostel who had made only one movie before - way back in 1943."
But as with "Boomerang", Kazan told me that he was still unhappy with the camerawork: "Visually, it could have been much stronger."
However, unlike his comments on many of the players in "Boomerang", Kazan had nothing but praise for his cast in Panic in the Streets: "Dick Widmark was a good friend of mine. I had directed him on the stage. He was typecast as vicious killers at this stage of his movie career, but I changed all that. He played a nice person in Panic, and he was like that in real life.
"Then I cast Barbara Bel Geddes. Jack Palance I knew when he was Brando's understudy for A Streetcar Named Desire. This was his first film. I also cast Zero Mostel who had made only one movie before - way back in 1943."