Burke also recruits Johnny Ingram, a nightclub entertainer, who doesn't want the job but who is addicted to gambling and deeply in debt.

Polonsky was blacklisted by the House Unamerican Activities Committee at the time, which had conducted extensive hearings on communist influence in the film industry.

I wanted a certain kind of mood in some sequences, such as the opening when Robert Ryan is walking down West Side Street...I used infra-red film.

[citation needed] The film score was composed, arranged, and conducted by John Lewis of the Modern Jazz Quartet.

[6] To realize his score, Lewis assembled a 22-piece orchestra, which included MJQ bandmates Milt Jackson on vibraphone, Percy Heath on bass, and Connie Kay on drums along with Bill Evans on piano and Jim Hall on guitar.

The track "Skating in Central Park" became a permanent part of the MJQ's repertoire[9] and was recorded by Evans and Hall on the album Undercurrent.

Bosley Crowther of the New York Times described Wise's direction as "tight and strong" and the film as a "sharp, hard, suspenseful melodrama," with a "sheer dramatic build-up...of an artistic caliber that is rarely achieved on the screen.

"[2] Time magazine wrote: The tension builds well to the climax—thanks partly to Director Robert Wise (I Want to Live!

), partly to an able Negro scriptwriter named John O. Killens, but mostly to Actor Ryan, a menace who can look bullets and smile sulphuric acid.

The spectator is left with a feeling that is aptly expressed in the final frame of the film, when the camera focuses on a street sign that reads: STOP—DEAD END.

[citation needed] A book of the screenplay titled Odds Against Tomorrow: A Critical Edition (ISBN 0963582348) was published in 1999 by the Center for Telecommunication Studies, sponsored by the Radio-Television-Film department at California State University, Northridge.