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| A
number of histories have been authored about various facets the Leopold
and Loeb case. Two of the better accounts are Hal Higdon's especially
detailed The Crime of the Century: The Leopold and Loeb Case
(Putnam, 1975) and Maureen McKernan's The Amazing Crime and
Trial of Leopold and Loeb (New American, 1957).
Historian Paula Fass' article on the trial, "Making and Remaking an Event : The Leopold and Loeb Case in American Culture," Journal of American History 80 (1993), 919-951, further examines the significance of the trial in American life both at the time and since. Several biographies of Clarence Darrow, the legendary attorney who helped defend the boys during their trial, have been written over the years, several of which focus primarily on his oratorical legacy. Two of the better biographies are Arthur and Lila Weinberg's Clarence Darrow: A Sentimental Rebel (Putnam, 1980) and Kevin Tierney's Darrow: A Biography (Crowell, 1979). A particularly stunning autobiography of Nathan Leopold was published in 1958 under the title Life Plus 99 Years and includes an introduction by Erle Stanley Gardner (Greenwood Press, 1958). Additional information and photographs relating to the sensational trial of 1924 may be found at UMKC law professor Douglas Linder's fine site, "Famous Trials of the 20th Century." The story of Leopold and Loeb has inspired several fictionalized adaptations, including a couple of plays and a recent movie, director Tom Kalin's Swoon (Fine Line Features, 1993). Kalin's film, it should be noted, is very stylized and impressionistic and takes a number of artistic liberties with the history of the case. The same caveat applies to Meyer Levin's novel, Compulsion (Simon and Schuster, 1956), which was itself made into a movie of the same name, directed by Richard Fleisher (Twentieth Century Fox, 1959). Playwright Patrick Hamilton's 1929 play Rope was likewise inspired by the 1924 case. In 1948, Alfred Hitchcock adapted Hamilton's play into a movie of the same name (Warner Bros., 1948). |
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Page authored: 18 July
1997 -
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