Knock on Any Door is a 1949 American courtroom trial film noir directed by Nicholas Ray and starring Humphrey Bogart.

Morton's strategy in the courtroom is to argue that slums breed criminals and that society is to blame for crimes committed by people who live in such miserable conditions.

Uncredited Knock on Any Door, based on Willard Motley's 1947 novel of the same name, was Hollywood's second major-studio movie adapted from a novel by an African-American author.

[5]) Producer Mark Hellinger purchased the rights to Motley's novel, and intended Humphrey Bogart and Marlon Brando to star in the production.

This book was also filmed, as Let No Man Write My Epitaph (1960), produced and directed by Philip Leacock and starring Burl Ives, Shelley Winters, James Darren, and Ella Fitzgerald, among others.

Not only are the justifications for the boy's delinquencies inept and superficial, as they are tossed off in the script, but the nature and aspect of the hoodlum are outrageously heroized.

"[8] The staff at Variety magazine was more receptive of the film, writing: "An eloquent document on juvenile delinquency, its cause and effect, has been fashioned from Knock on Any Door...Nicholas Ray's direction stresses the realism of the script taken from Willard Motley's novel of the same title, and gives the film a hard, taut pace that compels complete attention.