The Big Steal was one of Don Siegel's first directorial efforts and it stands as a good preview of what was to become his specialty in the fifties - taut little B-movie thrillers and melodramas like Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), Baby Face Nelson (1957), and The Lineup (1958). While the plot of The Big Steal was fairly derivative of numerous other chase thrillers - an army lieutenant and his female companion race across Mexico in pursuit of a man who stole a $300,000 army payroll - it was the re-teaming of Mitchum and Jane Greer, his co-star from the film noir classic, Out of the Past (1947), and Siegel's breathless direction that elevated this melodrama above the standard B-movie.
Just as the film is one elaborate chase, the production on it was just as rushed. RKO studio owner Howard Hughes wanted to capitalize on Mitchum's current popularity in such films as Rachel and the Stranger (1948) and urged Siegel to complete the film before Mitchum's court sentencing for the marijuana incident in Santa Monica. After Lizabeth Scott was ruled out as the female lead in The Big Steal (Hal Wallis, who owned her contract, thought appearing opposite Mitchum would affect her career adversely), other actresses like Joan Bennett were considered until producer Sid Rogell got the bright idea of casting Jane Greer. Even though the actress had recently ended her romantic relationship with Hughes, the studio owner grudgingly approved her for the part in the interest of speeding along the production.
And so production began in earnest and Siegel was actually able to complete the interior sequences on the RKO backlot. The scenes set in Mexico were a different matter. Mitchum had to cancel filming there as soon as he was sentenced (The first verdict of one year in jail was reduced to sixty days in the clink with two years probation) so Siegel was forced to shoot around him until his release. The delay was crucial because Jane Greer was now noticeably pregnant and Mitchum, who had lost about twenty pounds in prison through an extensive exercise routine, was visibly trimmer than in his pre-jail scenes.
And there were other problems according to Don Siegel in his autobiography, A Siegel Film (Faber and Faber): "When Mitchum showed up on location in Tehuacan in Mexico with his probation officer, he had finished a bottle of tequila in the car from Mexico City. The probation officer was drunker than Mitchum. He passed out in his room. (Co-star) Pat Knowles and I made our first major mistake: we tried to sober up Mitchum....He was one tough hombre with a mean streak that we couldn't handle." Nevertheless, Siegel had a deadline to make and quickly learned how to work with this complicated actor: "Mitchum took pride in the fact that he never studied his lines. After rehearsals, he would be letter perfect. No matter who he was working with, he would play the scene without much vitality and generally in a low voice. This made the actor he was playing opposite appear to be overacting. Whenever I arrived in the morning with rewritten pages, Mitch would have a certain amount of trouble in memorizing the new lines. The more I got to know him, the more certain I was that his claim never to have studied his lines was an affectation. His attitude of not caring was a pretense. I was also aware that he was a talented actor with a most original style.... By the time Mitchum got out of jail, I had already shot the chase material with Pat(ric) Knowles, Bill Bendix and Ramon Navarro. At that time, the trees were bare. When Mitchum joined us and drove madly with Jane Greer after Knowles, the trees and flowers were in full bloom. No one at RKO ever noticed anything amiss. In fairness to the critics, there wasn't enough time to notice anything. Also, Jane Greer was four months pregnant. With a little care in how I shot her, no one was aware; but I must confess that at times, I worried about a miscarriage."
Producer: Jack J. Gross, Sid Rogell (executive producer)
Director: Don Siegel
Screenplay: Gerald Drayson Adams, Daniel Mainwaring (as Geoffrey Homes), Richard Wormser (story The Road to Carmichaels)
Cinematography: Harry J. Wild
Film Editing: Samuel E. Beetley
Original Music: Leigh Harline
Principal Cast: Robert Mitchum (Lieutenant Duke Halliday), Jane Greer (Joan 'Chiquita' Graham), William Bendix (Captain Vincent Blake), Patric Knowles (Jim Fiske), Ramon Novarro (Colonel Ortega).
BW-71m.
by Jeff Stafford
