Trailer
Plot summary
Six months after escaping from prison, Johnny McQueen remains hidden in the house of Kathleen Sullivan and her grandmother, in a city of Northern Ireland, where he leads a nationalist group. His men doubt that he is fit for the job he has been ordered to do, and Dennis offers to go in his place, but Johnny refuses. He enters a mill office with Nolan and Murphy, holds the clerks at gunpoint and takes the money. An armed cashier confronts him as they leave, and Johnny is shot in the arm. Pat, the driver of the getaway car, pulls away before Johnny is fully inside, and Johnny falls into the street.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Odd Man Out (1947)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Richard Burton wrote in his diaries that Stewart Granger was sent Carol Reed's script for Odd Man Out, read only the pages carrying dialogue and judged the part too short, so he turned it down; James Mason took the role instead.
- The bar seen in Odd Man Out was a studio set built at D&P Studios in Denham, Buckinghamshire, modeled on the Crown Bar in Belfast; the copy was so authentic that tourists for years visited the real Crown Bar thinking it was the film's bar.
SPOILER
Hoping for US distribution, the producers sent the Odd Man Out script to Joseph Breen of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America, who advised that the original ending, a murder-suicide, violated the Hollywood Production Code.- Odd Man Out received the first BAFTA Award for Best British Film, and was also nominated for the Academy Award for Best Film Editing.
- Roman Polanski said Carol Reed's Odd Man Out was one of the best movies he had ever seen and that it made him want to pursue a film career more than anything else.
- F. L. Green's 1945 novel behind Odd Man Out followed wartime IRA action in Belfast, after which Northern Ireland carried out its first and only execution of an Irish Republican, 19-year-old Tom Williams.
- Carol Reed used real sounds instead of standard sound effects in Odd Man Out, recording the actual drum of mill machinery and the echo of hoof beats.
- Odd Man Out went over budget and over schedule, and although the film was successful the overrun damaged Carol Reed's relationship with the Rank Organisation.
