said, he still would be in the off-Broadway theater. Shooting Filming started 15 February 1960. It took place at Filmways Studio and location at Manhattan and Brooklyn. Falk chose his wardrobe for the film from second-hand clothing stores, going from store to store until he got the right coat and hat, to give him the "East Coast 'wise guy' look". He patterned his performance as Reles on would-be gangsters whom he knew in his youth at a pool hall named McGuire's. "I had a real feel for these guys – the way they talked – the gestures – the whole package." Falk said that he rewrote the part and that Rosenberg gave him the latitude to depart from the script. According to Falk, production of the movie was accelerated because of an impending actor's strike. Rosenberg was fired and replaced by Balaban, who had no experience as a director. Falk said that Balaban "stayed out of the way" while the crew and cast did their jobs. In Bullets Over Hollywood, a 2005 study of gangster movies, film scholar John McCarty stated that the "presence of two helmsmen may explain the uneven qualities of the film", in which scenes of powerful impact are "offset by long expanses of unexciting celluloid". Filming was to have taken 20 days, but because of the strike, it was decided to film it in nine days by extending the shooting days from 9 am to 11 pm, working on weekends, and rearranging the schedule. On 27 February 1960, Balaban took over as director from Rosenberg, and Gayne Rescher replaced Joseph Brun as cinematographer. Production of the movie took place up to the very last moments before the actor's strike. The last scene to be shot was the murder of Walter Sage, portrayed by Morey Amsterdam. Because of the shortage of time, the scene, set in the Catskill Mountains, was shot outside the studio on 126th Street in Harlem. The Sage execution was filmed minutes before the start of the strike at midnight. Reception Critical response New York Times film critic Bosley Crowther dismissed the film as a "new screen telling of an old story". Crowther singled out Falk's "amusingly vicious performance", and that when he appears "there is a certain dark frightfulness and terror" in the film. But "otherwise the traffic is that of an average gangster film that slacks off too much for proper tension