Produced by Don Murray and Walter Wood. Written by Murray (as Don Deer) and Joseph Landon. Directed by Irvin Kershner. Featuring:

Don Murray as Rev. Charles Dismas Clark

Larry Gates as Louis Rosen

Logan Ramsey as George McHale

Don Joslyn as Pio Gentile

Cindi Wood as Ellen Henley

Keir Dullea as Billy Lee Jackson

Opening scene: A train is arriving in a prison town. Jackson, who has been escorted by a police officer, gets on. Another dark-haired man sneaks around to follow him on. They greet each other and go on to St. Louis together. They go to another man's apartment with plans for a burglary. Jackson has done two years in the prison at Jeff City: a $19 armed robbery. When the man puts him down for being an amateur, Jackson runs off. The man goes to his closet and puts on his jacket: he turns around to reveal that he is a priest (9:30). (Would Jackson come to a priest with a crime scheme?)

The father goes into a jail where he is apparently well-known. An inmate--Sam--asks him for stronger drugs; he says no, he wants the man out of jail. He helps another black inmate get a lawyer; we see his up-close-and-personal style.

Fr. Charles Clark is a teacher at a Jesuit high school. Another priest tells him that some of the ladies are upset with his extracurricular activities. Clark begs off from a parent-teacher meeting that night: "I have to be with my parishioners." He goes to a strip bar in his collar to give a waitress a bus ticket and a job reference for her convict husband. Pio appears again.

Fr. Clark goes into a back room where a dice game is in progress (17:00), with Billy Lee Jackson participating. Jackson is winning. "Smart guys know when to pull back," Fr. Clark tells him. Jackson makes his point, a nine, but the guys running the game accuse him of cheating--using fake dice--and a fight breaks out with Fr. Clark in the middle of it.

Jackson is arrested. Fr. Clark goes to see a big-shot criminal lawyer, who reluctantly agrees to represent Jackson for free. Jackson goes to court for assault and disturbing the peace. Jackson says he has no rights because he's a felon. Then Louis Rosen, his lawyer, appears. Everyone wonders how he got attached to Jackson. McHale appears in the back of court.

There is a trial. Weasel testifies. He claims Jackson was drunk; police say no. Stern rises to make a point; he doesn't want it known that he is running a gambling joint. The boy is acquitted.

A reporter, George McHale, of the Times-Herald, follows them outside. He want to make Fr. Charles Dismas Clark, the hoodlum priest, famous. Fr. Clark declines and leaves with Jackson. McHale tells an assistant DA he wonder about Fr. Clark hanging out with criminals: "compassion or complicity?" ". . . when I see someone who walks like a duck and talks like a duck and is seen continually in the company of ducks, I can only assume that he is a duck."

Fr. Clark gets Jackson some new clothes and tries to help him find a job. The owner of a produce stand gives him a watermelon. Fr. Clark finally gets him a job working in an Italian produce company, Mazziotti. The owner's brother Mario takes an instant dislike to the "priest-boy."

McHale is gong around gathering information on Fr. Clark. Fr. Clark is trying to get $40,000 to buy a building to house 60 ex-convicts. He already has four to manage. He takes Louis Rosen around the place. Next we see Rosen hosting a cocktail party fundraiser. Jackson in there. McHale arrives and sees him admiring a fancy car: "Nice hubcaps, huh?"

Jackson meets a young woman who lives at the house. Fr. Clark is speaking to the women at the party. To a con, he says, "there are only two kinds of people in the world: hoods and squares. You're squares." The women giggle.

Jackson is talking to the girl. He is suspicious of her motives. Fr. Clark, he says, has got the biggest angle of all--the Church. He helps cons to help himself get a better break in heaven.

Fr. Clark tells the women that 65% of the men released from prison without a job or a home go back, while 95% with a job and home don't. The women offer to help with donations. McHale sabotages Fr. Clark's talk by asking about one convict convicted of murder that was placed with a single woman who did not know about his crime. Fr. Clark is unexpectedly defensive.

McHale is seen parading through the courthouse. He gives the assistant DA the dirt on Fr. Clark, who he says is a duck after all. The jailer won't let Fr. Clark back in the jail. He can't help his convicts.

Jackson is working in the produce company. The rich girl comes down to see him. They agree to have dinner later. The owner's brother doesn't like him--is giving him a hard time.

"Hoodlum Priest Harbors Murderer," McHale's headline reads. There is some kind of inquiry about Fr. Clark's role in assisting criminals--that he helps them and not the law. And the halfway house? A place filled with ex-convicts, where criminality would flourish. The assistant DA wants to charge Fr. Clark with a crime for attempting to influence witnesses, pressuring the court and acting as an accomplice before the fact. He wants a warrant issued.

Louis Rosen speaks for Fr. Clark. Fr. Clark then speaks for himself. He says he has to maintain the convicts' trust. Fr. Clark says he grew up in the coal mines of Pennsylvania. His father was one of the original Molly Maguires, a union organizer. He saw 13 men hanged by the company goon squad as a child. He says he has spent his entire life with outcasts. He knows he is offensive to many people, but he knows convicts: "You can't change a man by punishing him." "I don't have any illusions about these guys I work with."

Fr. Clark says he wants criminals housed humanely and treated. Hale yawns, saying he's "heard you before." Fr. Clark calls him a hypocrite: "You condemn the criminal but you glorify crime." The media exploits crime and violence for its benefit. Hate and fear generate more crime.

Should the halfway house be abandoned? The halfway house will reduce crime, not increase it, Fr. Clark says. He denies the secular court's jurisdiction over his life. Being a Jesuit means everything to him, but he would tell the church to take his collar, or the state to take away his life, but "give these poor lost human beings a chance."

McHale is very cynical. He doesn't want the halfway house opened. Rosen shames him to silence. His Jesuit superior tells him: Fr. Clark is removed from teaching to work full-time with his cons.

Renovations on the house proceed; money is apparently no longer a problem. Rosen is a convert; he is supervising the building. Jackson is roaming around the zoo with the rich girl. They kiss (59:10). Next the police come to question him at work: someone stole ten cases of meat from the cold room. Mario hits him and calls him a thief when he refuses to give the girl's name and address for his alibi. The boss says maybe he better go.

The rich girl is at the halfway house. She asks about St. Dismas on the cross. Would Billy be happy with a girl like her? Fr. Clark says her goodness is a rare thing.

Meantime Billy and his pal Pio are climbing over the fence to break into Mazziotti, the produce warehouse where Billy used to work. They are trying to knock the dial off the safe when the owner's brother appears. He hears the drill and calls the police. Then he takes a crowbar upstairs and whacks Pio with it. Jackson has found a gun in the office earlier. He covers Mario and tells Pio to run away. When Mario attacks him with the crowbar, Jackson shoots him instinctively. Pio calls Fr. Clark immediately. Jackson is running away.

St. Louis police come to the railyard. They seek Jackson running away and chase him into a slum being cleared nearby. Police start a house-by-house search. Jackson shoots a cop. The police call for him to come out. He is scared to death. Fr. Clark arrives at the scene in a taxi.

Fr. Clark runs by the police and enters the house where Billy Lee Jackson is holed up. Jackson threatens him, but Fr. Clark points out he is the last friend Jackson has. Fr. Clark aligns himself with Jackson: "Are we in a mess!" No way out. Three slugs and all those cops outside. Fr. Clark tells him what to do when the police come; how to be shot down like a dog. Jackson screams that he doesn't want to hurt anyone. He breaks down sobbing. Fr. Clark leads him out.

Billy Lee Jackson is given the death penalty for murder, in a trial we don't see. Fr. Clark and Rosen meet with the governor to ask him to spare Jackson's life. The girl goes to meet with Jackson one last time (1:27:00). At least she stuck with him to the end. She tells him she loves him. He says he wishes he was just being born.

Fr. Clark comes to Death Row. Another priest has been praying with Jackson. The guards come in to take Jackson to the execution chamber. He is very scared. Pio, on the street, goes into a liquor store.

Fr. Clark starts telling Billy the story of St. Dismas, who spoke up against the other convict when Jesus was crucified. "Today you will be with me in paradise," Jesus told him. "The only one in the Bible we know for sure got to heaven was a convict just like you."

Jackson is seated in the Missouri gas chamber in his shorts. He is sweating and nervous. The belt is too tight. Fr. Clark loosens it. "Look me in the eye and think about Dismas," Fr. Clark tells him as he is about to leave.

Jackson looks around nervously, until he sees Fr. Clark. The gas is released (1:37:00).

Dissolve into Fr. Clark walking in the rain back to Dismas House--street address 903. Pio comes in drunk, waving his bottle around and muttering: "Finally got Billy Lee into heaven. Grand opening of Dismas House, where cons come to be conned." Pio tears up one of the dormitories while Fr. Clark watches, doing nothing. He says nothing through this entire episode. Finally Pio falls down on the floor. Fr. Clark picks him up and puts him in bed. Then he starts to pick up the mess.

Epilogue: "On May 16, 1959, out of deep despair a new hope was born with the opening of Dismas House." (1:43:00)