Kiss of Death is a 1947 American film noir directed by Henry Hathaway and written by Ben Hecht and Charles Lederer from a story by Eleazar Lipsky.

The story revolves around ex-con Nick Bianco (played by Victor Mature) and another hoodlum, Tommy Udo (Richard Widmark in his first film).

The Assistant District Attorney Louis D'Angelo tries to persuade Nick to name his accomplices in exchange for a light sentence.

Confident that his partners in crime and his lawyer, Earl Howser, will look after his wife and two young daughters while he is incarcerated, Nick refuses and is given a twenty-year sentence.

Howser arranges for Tommy Udo, a psychopathic killer who did time with Bianco, to take care of Rizzo.

Hathaway didn't send the test ahead to studio head Darryl F. Zanuck because he wanted a nightclub piano player called "Harry the Hipster" to play Udo.

A Fox production manager named Charlie Hill liked the test and sent it to Zanuck, who immediately signed Widmark.

Frank Gorshin, who played The Riddler in the 1960s television series Batman, modeled his deranged cackle after Widmark's Udo.

[9] Attorney Earl Howser was played by Taylor Holmes, while Howard Smith was cast as a prison warden.

Character actor Karl Malden got the part of Sergeant William Cullen while in the Broadway run of Arthur Miller's breakthrough play All My Sons.

Mildred Dunnock played Mrs. Rizzo, a woman in a wheelchair pushed down a flight of stairs to her death by psychotic Udo.

[12] Non-NYC locations include: A deleted scene involving Nick's wife Maria (who was played by Patricia Morison) was cut from the film.

[17] Writers Raymond Borde and Etienne Chaumeton wrote: "From Henry Hathaway's Kiss of Death (1947), one will remember that nasty little creep with the wild eyes and high-pitched laugh, neurotic to the core, which Richard Widmark has turned into one of his finest roles.

"[18] Critic Nick Schager wrote: "It would be no surprise to learn that Richard Widmark was a big 'Batman' fan, as his star-making screen debut in Kiss of Death as grinning, cackling psychopath Tommy Udo (for which he received an Academy Award nomination) seems heavily indebted to the Caped Crusader's arch-nemesis The Joker.

Certainly, the live-wire actor's amoral lunatic, a fiend who delights in pushing crippled wheelchair using women down stairs, is the primary (and perhaps only) reason to sit through Henry Hathaway's over-praised 1947 noir, a jumbled piece of cinematic crime fiction that's visually elegant (having been neorealistically shot on-location throughout Manhattan) but regularly confused about its own point of view.

[20][21] The effect of Widmark's performance as Tommy Udo found expression in a number of unusual ways.

"[22] For years, people handed the actor blank phonograph disks on which they wanted him to record the maniacal laugh he used in the film.

[23] Widmark's performance in Kiss of Death inspired the name of mystery and crime writer Donald E. Westlake's best-known continuing pseudonym, Richard Stark, under which he wrote some of his darkest, most violent books.