Baby Face Nelson is a 1957 American film noir crime film based on the real-life 1930s gangster, directed by Don Siegel, co-written by Daniel Mainwaring—who also wrote the screenplay for Siegel's 1956 sci-fi thriller Invasion of the Body Snatchers—and starring Mickey Rooney, Carolyn Jones, Cedric Hardwicke, Leo Gordon as Dillinger, Anthony Caruso, Jack Elam, John Hoyt and Elisha Cook Jr. Chicago mob boss Rocca manages to get Lester Gillis sprung from jail in Joliet.

He is relaxing, alone in his hotel room, when cops burst in, finding a gun Rocca has planted to frame Gillis for the labor leader's murder.

He goes to Doc Saunders (Cedric Hardwicke), whose patients include America's most wanted criminal, John Dillinger (portrayed by Leo Gordon).

Producer Al Zimbalist formed ZS Productions with Irving Shulman to make a film based on the latter's unpublished novel about Baby Face Nelson.

As a matter of fact, one of the few absorbing sights in this United Artists release, starring Mickey Rooney, is a continual procession of vintage jaloppys, chugging in and out of the proceedings ...

[11] The film was a financial success and kicked off a series of movies where Rooney played a tough guy, including The Last Mile and The Big Operator.

[12] Biographer Judith M. Kass locates Baby Face Nelson within a historical and social context in which Seigel’s protagonists are doomed: Even if they so desired, these [characters] are incapable of altering their life styles, of modifying their aberrant personalities to conform to “normal” society.