Trailer
Plot summary
In 1941, gangster Ben 'Bugsy' Siegel travels to Los Angeles and falls for the Hollywood starlet Virginia Hill. He has been in crime with Meyer Lansky and Charlie Luciano since childhood. His wife Esta and their daughters stay in Scarsdale, New York, while he buys a house in Beverly Hills. Luciano and Lansky put him in charge of protecting their bookmaking rackets, with Jack Dragna, the weak Los Angeles boss. When Mickey Cohen robs Dragna's operation, Bugsy chooses to work with Cohen. A visit to a rough Nevada gambling joint inspires him to build a casino resort in the desert.
Cast
- Bill Grahamas Charlie Luciano
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Bugsy (1991)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Warren Beatty was not the first to try to film Bugsy Siegel's life. Jean-Luc Godard had written a Siegel script called The Story, envisioning Robert De Niro as Siegel and Diane Keaton as Virginia Hill.
- James Toback spent six years writing a 400-page document on Siegel's life and then lost the entire thing under strange circumstances. With Warner Bros. holding a rival Siegel script ready to produce, Beatty pressed Toback to write a screenplay based on the lost document.
- After seeing Annette Bening's audition for Virginia Hill, Warren Beatty phoned director Barry Levinson and told him: "She's terrific. I love her. I'm going to marry her". Levinson assumed he was just excited by the audition; Beatty and Bening both said their relationship began only after the film was finished.
- Michelle Pfeiffer was considered for the role of Virginia Hill before Annette Bening was cast in it, but Pfeiffer turned the part down.
- Beatty originally played Siegel with a heavy New York City accent, which can still be heard in the film's trailer. Levinson and Toback thought the accent was wrong, so Beatty dropped the voice he found charming and used his own.
