Lawrence Tierney

Lawrence Tierney (March 15, 1919 – February 26, 2002) was an American actor, known for his many screen portrayals of mobsters and hardened criminals, which mirrored his own frequent brushes with the law.
Commenting on the DVD release of a Tierney film in 2005, a New York Times critic observed: “The hulking Tierney was not so much an actor as a frightening force of nature.”
Early in his career, he appeared in supporting roles in B-movies, including The Ghost Ship (1943), The Falcon Out West (1944), Youth Runs Wild (1944) and Back to Bataan (1945) before starring in the title role in 1945’s Dillinger. The role made him a star.
Tierney played the famous 1930s bank robber John Dillinger, in a film that was advertised as a tale “written in bullets, blood and blondes.” It was initially banned in Chicago and other cities where Dillinger had operated. Though a low-budget movie, with a budget of just $60,000, it proved popular, with Tierney “memorably menacing” in the title role, in the words of one recent commentator.
RKO assigned him to other tough-guy characters. He played Jesse James in Badman’s Territory (1946), a reformed prison inmate in San Quentin (1946), and an ex-marine falsely accused of murder in Step By Step (1946).