Trailer
Plot summary
Marilyn Gregor comes to the police station for her brother Don, held for carrying a handgun without a license. She posts his bail, and the police keep the weapon. Inspector Johns suspects Don has fallen in with the gangster Vic Brady and works the case with Lieutenant Bob Lawrence. At home, Don lifts a revolver hidden inside a book; his father, the plastic surgeon Dr. Boris Gregor, finds the hiding place empty. In a bar, Brady hands Don his cut from an earlier robbery and lays out the next job, the payroll at the Monterey Theatre. Don has doubts, yet the two go through with the break-in, surprising the night watchman at gunpoint.
Cast
- Clancy Maloneas Don Gregor
- Don Nagelas Detective Davis
Show all 14 cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Jail Bait (1954)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Herbert Rawlinson's turn as Dr. Gregor in Jail Bait was his swan song: the silent-era leading man died of lung cancer the night after the film completed shooting.
- The role of Dr. Gregor was originally intended for Bela Lugosi but went instead to Herbert Rawlinson, a silent-film leading man whose career had lasted about 40 years.
- According to George Weiss's recollections, the producers took advantage of Ed Wood: in exchange for the film's modest budget, Wood agreed to give up any demands on its box-office earnings.
- The production company padded Jail Bait with footage of Cotton Watts, a white actor who performed in blackface at Panama City Beach nightclubs from 1947 to 1959, taken from one of his stage shows to lengthen the running time.
- Clancy Malone, who plays the delinquent Don Gregor, was a grocery-store delivery boy before he told Ed Wood he wanted to be an actor, and Jail Bait was his first and only role.
- Bodybuilder Steve Reeves made his first major screen appearance in Jail Bait, and it was one of the few films in which he used his own voice; his later Italian films were dubbed by other actors.
- Theodora Thurman, a famed model and radio star, made her only motion picture credit in Jail Bait before entering a career in radio soon after.
- The music in Jail Bait, composed by Hoyt Curtin, had already been used in another film, Mesa of Lost Women (1953).
