Beat the Devil

Beat the Devil is a 1953 adventure comedy film directed by John Huston and starring Humphrey Bogart, Jennifer Jones and Gina Lollobrigida in her American debut. Huston and Truman Capote wrote the screenplay, loosely based upon the 1951 novel of the same name by British journalist Claud Cockburn writing under the pseudonym James Helvick. 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." The script, written on a day-to-day basis as the film was shot, 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.