Which film is the story of Willie Stark (played by Broderick Crawford) who starts with well meaning ambition to enter politics, is corrupted by power on his way to becoming a US state governor, and is assassinated?
Broderick Crawford in Monogram's "Anna Lucasta" (1949) with Paulette Goddard. In 1949, Crawford reached the pinnacle of his acting career when he was cast as Willie Stark, a character inspired by and closely patterned after the life of Louisiana politician Huey Long, in "All the King's Men", a film based on the popular novel by Robert Penn Warren. The film was a huge hit, and Crawford's performance as the bullying, blustering, yet insecure Governor Stark won him the Academy Award for Best Actor. The film was made by Columbia who put Crawford under contract. He co-starred with Glenn Ford in "Convicted" (1950),
Broderick Crawford series during his career and remained an especially durable presence in television. Crawford is mentioned in the 1977 film Smokey and the Bandit in the scene where a patrol officer angrily confronts Sheriff Buford T. Justice (Jackie Gleason) and his damaged vehicle. When Justice starts to introduce himself, the trooper interrupts him and barks, "I don't care if your name is Broderick Crawford!" His last role was as a film producer who is murdered in a 1982 episode of the "Simon and Simon" television series. The actor who played the part of the suspected murderer was Stuart Whitman, who had