Beat the Devil (film)

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Beat the Devil is a 1953 adventure comedy film directed and produced by John Huston, and starring Humphrey Bogart, Jennifer Jones and Gina Lollobrigida in her English-language film debut. Huston and Truman Capote wrote the screenplay, loosely based upon the 1951 novel by British journalist Claud Cockburn writing under the pseudonym James Helvick. The script, written and revised as the shooting progressed, concerns the adventures of a group of swindlers and their associates who try to claim land rich in uranium deposits in Kenya as they wait in a small Italian port to travel aboard a tramp steamer to Mombasa. The film was an international co-production between British, American, and Italian companies. Huston intended the film as a sort of loose parody of his 1941 film The Maltese Falcon, which also starred Bogart. Capote said, "John [Huston] and I decided to kid the story, to treat it as a parody. Instead of another Maltese Falcon, we turned it into a... [spoof] on this type of film."

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