Real life gangster - Irving 'Big Gangy' Cohen

Recently watched this on DVD. Good acting from a very young William Holden, Barbara Stanwyck and Lee J. Cobb.

However the movie has gained some fame for the appearance of a real life gangster in the boxing audience near the end of the movie.

Irving 'Big Gangy' Cohen worked for the group of killers nicknamed Murder Inc. by the press. He was involved in the murder of Walter Sage but he fled the murder scene and unusually the mob did not hunt him down and kill him. He took up acting in Hollywood and rather foolishly appeared in this movie. He was spotted by the mob and the police who swiftly arrested him. Thanks to a sympathetic jury he was acquitted of the murder and resumed his acting career under the name of Jack Gordon, most notably as a hit man in Crime Inc (1945) and as a double for Hoss Cartwright in the Bonanza tv series.