Leo Gordon (1922-2000)

The well-dressed hoodlum.

[To Don Siegel, after being cast in Riot in Cell Block 11]

�I don�t want to let you guys down. I can�t accept the part ... I�m an ex-con. Served five years in San Quentin for first-degree robbery. I was shot in my guts by the arresting officers. I had pulled my gun, but didn�t fire it.� (from the book A Siegel Film)

Dispensing prison justice in Riot in Cell Block 11 (1954).

�As the perennial �heavy,� I�ve died of everything except old age. When I�d get home from the studio at night my daughter would ask how I�d gotten bumped off that day.� (1966 Los Angeles Times interview)

Dispensing underworld justice in The Big Operator (1959).

�Westerns are fundamental ... the morality play. There�s a good guy and a bad guy. You know which is which. You don�t have to go into the psyche to find out his parents were abusive. [The heavy is] the guy people remember.�

Partnering Mickey Rooney in Baby Face Nelson (1957).

�You get more recognition, I think, as a bad guy than a lot of these guys who�ve played heroes on long-running television shows.�

Don�t make him angry.

�Thank God for typecasting.�

My favorite Leo Gordon films: Riot in Cell Block 11 (1954), Man in the Shadow (1957), Baby Face Nelson (1957), The Big Operator (1959), The Intruder (1962), Kitten with a Whip (1964), Tobruk (1967), The St. Valentine's Day Massacre (1967), Bonnie's Kids (1973)