General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

The Great St. Louis Bank Robbery

The Great St. Louis Bank Robbery is a 1959 American black-and-white crime drama based on a real St. Louis bank robbery, directed by Charles Guggenheim and John Stix and starring Steve McQueen as a young getaway driver drawn into a heist planned by three ex-convicts. Reviews list the title with "Great," but the onscreen credits read The St. Louis Bank Robbery.¹ The film was shot almost entirely on location in St. Louis, Missouri, and its opening prologue states: "This story is based on a true incident. Men of the St. Louis Police Department play the same parts they did in the actual crime."¹

Key fact	Detail
Release	Theatrical release in the United States on September 10, 1959; the AFI Catalog lists a February 1959 release date²^•¹
Directors and writer	Charles Guggenheim and John Stix; screenplay by Richard Heffron¹
Principal cast	Steve McQueen (George Fowler), Crahan Denton (John Egan), David Clarke (Gino), James Dukas (Willie), and Molly McCarthy (Ann, credited as "Introducing")¹
Production	Guggenheim Associates; distributed by United Artists; copyrighted by Columbia Broadcasting System, Inc., on 29 January 1959 (LP14000)¹
Format	Sound, black and white; the AFI Catalog lists 86 minutes, while IMDb lists a 1h 29m (89 min) runtime¹^•³
Real event	Based on the robbery of the Southwest Bank in St. Louis; IMDb trivia dates the incident to 1953, while AFI publicity materials refer to the 1954 robbery site³^•¹
Reception	Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer 41%; IMDb rating 5.8 from roughly 1,900 votes²

Spoilers

Plot

George Fowler, once a college football standout, teams up with three ex-convicts named John Egan, Willie, and Gino in a scheme to rob the local bank in St. Louis, Missouri. Gino vouches for the novice crook but does not tell the woman-hating Egan that George once dated his sister Ann. Willie, whose long association with Egan began when they met as prison inmates, resents George's inclusion and grows angrier when Egan assigns George his usual role as getaway driver. Egan tells the men they must case the bank for several days to learn its daily routine, and, wary of George's commitment, takes him to steal a license plate for their car.¹

Money and suspicion. Upon discovering that they are broke, Gino directs George to get in touch with Ann and request money from her. George meets her at a local bar, explains that Gino is in Chicago and needs money, and the disappointed but suspicious Ann writes Gino a check. That night Gino admits he is afraid of being captured and returned to prison, while Willie complains to Egan about his role in the heist and is further dismayed when Egan considers taking George to Mexico after the robbery.¹ TV Guide's summary adds that the gang expects the bank to have $100,000 on hand on an upcoming Friday, and that Egan, not trusting George to keep his nerve, moves him to the inside; the robbery does not go off as planned.⁴

Production

The film was produced in 1958 by Guggenheim Associates, the company of Charles Guggenheim, and was copyrighted by CBS; the AFI Catalog notes that the role CBS played in the production is unknown.¹ Victor Duncan was the cinematographer and Warren Adams the editor.¹

Real locations and participants. According to publicity materials, actual locations were used, including the real site of the robbery.¹ Documented filming locations include the Southwest Bank at 2301 S. Kingshighway Boulevard at Southwest Avenue; the intersection of Chippewa Street and South Kingshighway, where the license plate is stolen; and the Sons of Rest Pavilion at 4257 Northwest Drive in Tower Grove Park, where the gang meets several times.⁵^•⁶ Many of the St. Louis Metropolitan Police officers and bank employees who took part in the actual robbery play themselves doing what they did during it.³

The real robbery and the film's aftermath

The film dramatizes the Southwest Bank robbery of St. Louis, which IMDb trivia dates to 1953 and a Waymarking entry dates specifically to April 24, 1953; the St. Louis Police foiled the robbery.³^•⁷ The AFI Catalog's account of the publicity materials instead refers to "the real site of the 1954 robbery site."¹

Guggenheim's career. For Charles Guggenheim, the film was the first feature of his own small St. Louis production studio, founded by 1954 after he had served as the first general manager of St. Louis public television station KETC in 1953.⁸ The film helped launch the career of actor Steve McQueen, then largely unknown.⁸^•⁹ Guggenheim subsequently turned to documentaries, winning his first Academy Award for Documentary Short Subject for 1964's Nine from Little Rock and three more for Robert Kennedy Remembered (1968), The Johnstown Flood (1989), and A Time for Justice (1995), with 12 Oscar nominations in total.⁸

Reception and legacy

The film is remembered chiefly as an early starring role for McQueen, in what St. Louis Magazine calls his second film, following The Blob.¹⁰ Its Tomatometer score on Rotten Tomatoes is 41 percent, and audience reviews frequently single out the documentary-style realism of the on-location shooting and the participation of actual police officers, while criticizing the slow pacing of the long preparation sequences.² A Film Noir Foundation interview places the film in the lineage of later crime filmmakers such as Jean-Pierre Melville and Michael Mann for its themes of the detail-obsessed career criminal and fatal entanglement with a woman.¹¹

The film remains widely available: it streams on services including fuboTV, MGM+, Philo, and Pluto TV, and is offered free with ads on several platforms including The Roku Channel, Tubi, and Plex.¹² The bank building at South Kingshighway and Southwest Avenue, now a BMO Harris Bank, is largely unchanged, and the Sons of Rest Pavilion in Tower Grove Park still stands, which has made the film a record of 1950s South City streetscapes.⁶^•¹³

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026