RetroClips

Beat the Devil was written day-by-day during shooting -- John Huston and a 29-year-old Truman Capote reworking pages each morning for that day's scenes, with Humphrey Bogart (who co-produced and financed it) reportedly baffled by what the finished film was even supposed to be. Contemporary audiences mostly agreed, and it flopped; decades later it's better understood as an early spoof of the prestige-thriller genre Bogart himself helped define, deadpan enough that people still argue about which lines are meant to be jokes.