A typically adventurous work from producer/director Joseph L. Mankiewicz, There Was a Crooked Man casts Kirk Douglas as the brains of a gang of frontier desperadoes. Arrested in a brothel after holding up merchant Arthur O'Connell, Douglas is carted off to territorial prison, where he quickly establishes himself as the lord of the flies. Idealistic new warden Henry Fonda vows to improve morale and living conditions in the prison, and to that end enlists the aid of Douglas, who pretends to be the warden's toady. In fact, Douglas is plotting a prison break along with Warren Oates, who'd previously crippled Fonda in a shoot out, and homosexual cellmates Hume Cronyn and Burgess Meredith. There's many a surprise and double-cross in store for all concerned before the wryly cynical finale. There Was a Crooked Man was co-scripted by David Newman and Robert Benton, who manage to inject a great deal of historical accuracy into their fictional yarn.