Too Late Blues is a 1961 black-and-white American film directed by John Cassavetes and starring Bobby Darin, Stella Stevens and Everett Chambers.

It is the story of jazz musician "Ghost" Wakefield and his relationship with both his fellow band members and his love interest, Jess, a beautiful would-be singer.

Cassavetes wanted Montgomery Clift and Gena Rowlands, his wife and frequent leading lady, for the main roles, and the production of the film was rushed.

In 1955 they both co-starred as escaped convicts in Andrew L. Stone's The Night Holds Terror and the following year portrayed brothers in conflict over their father's legacy in "The Last Patriarch", the November 28, 1956, episode of The 20th Century Fox Hour.

Another familiar face among the cast of Too Late Blues, playing a member of the band, was Seymour Cassel, who appeared in most of Cassavetes films over the years.

New Yorker critic Richard Brody observed in 2012, when a DVD of the film was released, that "there’s something Beckett-like in the incantatory force of Cassavetes’s dialogue and images, as well as in his blend of degradation and exaltation.

But the Cassavetes hallmarks ("the delicate way of handling emotional messiness, the tough but ultimately generous view of human behavior") were evident in the film.

James's previous published work included over 300 short stories sold to crime, mystery, adventure and men's-interest pulp magazines; five original novels of a "higher order" for paperback houses that specialized in soft-core "adult" reading, two under the pseudonym "Max Gareth"; and novelizations of Jack the Ripper, The Stranglers of Bombay, and The Enemy General, the last also as Gareth.