On which novel is this based?
The movie credits say it's based on a story called "The Pentacle" by Robert Siodmak & Alfred Newman, but I cannot find it in amazon.com.
Does anybody know how to get the story/novel?
Amazon doesn't have everything in the world, much as we've become accustomed to. However, more than likely, the story written by Alfred Neumann and Robert Siodmak was probably just that -- a story written as the precursor to the screenplay so it was never published independently as a novel or short story.
Sorry -- two years late w/ response!
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The world doesnt owe you a damn thing.
Lauren Bacall
Thank you so much for your belated answer. I think you must be right. They probably invented the story to create a pretty unusual film noir.
BTW recently I read "Dark Passage" by David Goodis. It's readable, but the movie with Bogart & Bacall is much better.
If it was never published it likely wouldn't have a title, but it does -- "The Pentacle" -- and IMDB lists the the story as being written by Siodmak alone.
So my guess is, it was a story Siodmak wrote and published in his native Europe back in the 20s or 30s, and, when he became a filmmaker in America, he sold it to Warners and Americanized it with Neumann, and Warner Bros. then turned it over to other writers to render the finished screenplay.