Against the wishes of his law partners, lawyer Andrew Morton takes the case of Nick Romano, a troubled young man from the slums, partly because he himself came from the same slums, and partly because he feels guilty for botching the criminal trial of Nick's father years earlier. Nick is on trial for viciously killing a policeman point-blank and faces execution if convicted. Nick's history is shown through flashbacks showing him as a hoodlum committing one petty crime after another. He even robbed Morton of $100 after a fishing trip that Morton's wife Adele convinced him to take Nick on in order to make Nick a better person. Shortly after that, Nick marries Emma, and he tries to change his lifestyle. He takes on job after job but keeps getting fired because of his recalcitrance. He wastes his paycheck playing dice, wanting to buy Emma some jewelry, and then walks out on another job after punching his boss. Feeling a lack of hope of ever being able to live a normal life, Nick decides to return to his old ways, sticking to his motto: "Live fast, die young, and have a good-looking corpse." He leaves Emma, even after she tells him that she is pregnant. After he commits a botched hold-up at a train station, he returns to Emma so as to take her with him as he flees. He finds that she had committed suicide by gas from an open oven door. Morton's strategy in the courtroom is to argue that slums breed criminals and that society is partly to blame for crimes committed by people who are forced to live in such miserable conditions. Morton argues that Romano is more a victim of society than a natural-born killer. Yet, his strategy does not have the desired effect on the jury, thanks to the badgering of District Attorney Kernan who delivers question after question until Nick shouts out his admission of guilt. Morton is shocked by Nick's confession, yet he still manages to arouse sympathy for the plight of those trapped by birth and circumstance in a dead-end existence. He pleads with the jury that if you "knock on any door" you may find a Nick Romano. Nevertheless, Nick is found guilty and is sentenced to die in the electric chair. Morton visits Nick prior to the execution and watches him walk the last mile.
Producer Mark Hellinger purchased the rights to Knock on Any Door and Humphrey Bogart and Marlon Brando were to star in the production. However, after Hellinger died in late 1947, Robert Lord and Bogart formed a corporation to produce the film: Santana Productions, named after Bogart's private sailing yacht. Jack L. Warner was reportedly furious at this, fearing that other stars would do the same and major studios would lose their power. According to critic Hal Erickson, the often-repeated credo spoken by the character Nick Romano--"Live fast, die young, and have a good-looking corpse"—would become the "clarion call for a generation of disenfranchised youth."
Reception
Critical response
, film critic for The New York Times, called the film "a pretentious social melodrama" and blasted the film's message and the screenplay. He wrote, "Rubbish! The only shortcoming of society which this film proves is that it casually tolerates the pouring of such fraudulence onto the public mind. 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." 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."
