On January 28, 1936, Richard Loeb was killed in prison. Loeb was half of the infamous murdering pair Leopold & Loeb. The two men and their crime inspired both the Alfred Hitchcock movie Rope (1948) and a later film, Compulsion (1956).
In 1924, the media focused on the issue of the death penalty due to the high-profile crime and the “trial of the century.” Two young students from the University of Chicago — Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb – were charged with the murder of 14-year-old Bobby Franks.
The Crime and Trial
It was a ridiculous crime. Leopold and Loeb were intelligent, but fashioned themselves as superior to everyone else. So, they wanted to see if they could accomplish “the perfect crime.” They couldn’t. Police soon found them because Leopold had dropped his rare type of glasses next to the body.
Clarence Darrow, the attorney for the two students, turned the murder case into a referendum on the death penalty after Leopold and Loeb both pleaded guilty. When the 67-year-old Darrow argued for the students’ lives, the local paper reported that a mob “fought like animals to . . . hear Darrow speak.”
In Attorney for the Damned, Arthur Weinberg explained that several newspapers from around the country published Darrow’s twelve-plus hour plea in whole or in part. The attorney was successful. The two were sentenced to life for the murder and ninety-nine years for kidnapping, but no death penalty.
After the Sentencing
Loeb was killed in prison after nine years of incarceration. But Nathan Leopold lived to be paroled in 1958 at the age of fifty-three. Leopold apparently was quite remorseful for the murder and tried to give something back to society.
While in prison, Leopold volunteered to be infected with malaria for a study of the disease. After parole, he moved to Puerto Rico, worked at a church-operated hospital helping others until his death. He eventually married and earned a master’s degree at the University of Puerto Rico.
Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope
Alfred Hitchcock’s movie Rope (1948), which was originally a play, has parallels to the Leopold & Loeb crime. But the movie is highly fictionalized.
Rope features two students who murder another student to show they are superior intellectuals. They hide the body in a trunk. Then, they use the trunk as a table for a dinner party as a way to show how they are more clever than everybody else.
The movie stars Jimmy Stewart as a teacher who attends the party. Do the boys get away with murder? I am not going to ruin it for you.
Alfred Hitchcock filmed the movie in a unique style with extended takes between cuts. Ultimately, though, he referred to Rope as a failed experiment. Jimmy Stewart was not happy with his performance either.
Rope received mixed reviews. It also faced problems as some cities banned it for perceived homoerotic content. Today, though, many critics, like Roger Ebert, praise the movie and argue it is underrated, especially for the way the movie was filmed.
Filmmakers do not make cheesy trailers like this one anymore. The trailer for Rope features one of the actors in character talking directly to you about the movie. I wish they still made trailers like this one.
The trailer for Rope sort of ruins the ending of the movie, so be warned.
Compulsion With Orson Welles
The movie Compulsion (1956), directed by Richard Fleisher, also was loosely based on the Leopold & Loeb case. In the movie, Orson Welles played defense attorney Jonathan Wilk, a character inspired by Clarence Darrow.
Below is a video featuring the defense attorney’s argument before the court. Wilk’s argument is much shorter than Darrow’s 12-hour speech.
Because modern movie directors think we have short attention spans, the 10-minute speech here is probably longer than you would see in most modern movies, which is a shame. As Darrow knew, it sometimes takes some time to tell a moving story.
What do you think of the movies Rope and Compulsion? Leave a comment.
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