The Devil's Disciple

The Devil's Disciple is a 1959 British-American film adaptation of the 1897 George Bernard Shaw play The Devil's Disciple. The Anglo-American film was directed by Guy Hamilton, who replaced Alexander Mackendrick, and starred Burt Lancaster, Kirk Douglas and Laurence Olivier. Mary Grant designed the film's costumes. Lancaster and Douglas made several films together over the decades, including I Walk Alone (1948), Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957), The List of Adrian Messenger (1963), Seven Days in May (1964) and Tough Guys (1986). Plot Richard "Dick" Dudgeon (Kirk Douglas) is apostate and outcast from his family in colonial Websterbridge, New Hampshire, who returns their hatred with scorn. After the death of his father, who was mistakenly hanged by the British as a rebel in nearby Springtown, Dick rescues his body from the gallows, where it had been left as an example to others, and has it buried in the parish graveyard in Websterbridge. He then returns to his childhood home to hear the reading of his father's will, much to his family's dismay.