By Burt Kearns.
Tierney is another picture altogether…. He is a man who has had his head handed to him.”
Lawrence Tierney was twenty-six years old in April 1945, when he became an “overnight sensation” in the title role of the gangster film Dillinger. In the years to follow, his erratic and violent behavior, and dozens of arrests for drunkenness and fighting, led him to be closely identified with the big-screen bad guy, and derailed his Hollywood career. By 1958, Tierney had retreated to New York City, and was working in construction and as occasional “muscle” for a loan shark. He was also picking up acting roles, as there was always someone willing to give him another “second chance.” In October of that year, Tierney caused another sensation with his most violent and brutal picture yet. In this excerpt from his book Lawrence Tierney: Hollywood’s Real-Life Tough Guy published at Retreats from Oblivion: The Journal of NOIRCON, author Burt Kearns explains that it was not a motion picture, but a picture in the newspapers.
Read the excerpt here.
Burt Kearns is an author and writer who produces and directs nonfiction television and documentary films. A veteran print and broadcast journalist, he wrote the exposé memoir about his life in television, Tabloid Baby. He also cowrote the book, The Show Won’t Go On: The Most Shocking, Bizarre, and Historic Deaths of Performers Onstage.