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Poster for A Criminal Is Born
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Released
1938 · FILM

A Criminal Is Born

Directed by
Written by
Runtime
21 min
CrimeDrama

Synopsis

Part of MGM's *Crime Does Not Pay* series, this short film recounts the true story of a young man neglected by his parents, who turns to a gang and embarks on a crime spree that ultimately results in murder.

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How many hands made this film

The scale of the collaboration

Principal cast & crew: 14

These are the principals we have on file — the full crew ran to the hundreds. Every film this size was made by far more hands than any credits list ever names.

Why a floor?

This is a minimum, not a total. We only count the credits we’ve captured so far, and coverage is uneven — a blockbuster might show a few hundred names while another of the same size shows a couple dozen. The real crews all ran into the thousands. The number here only grows as full credits are enriched — so we frame it as a floor, never a headcount.

Craft leads on file

Shot by Charles Lawton Jr

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