R.I.P., 'Six Bridges to Cross' director Joseph Pevney

Joseph Pevney, who passed away several days ago, was a journeyman director who became very prolific in TV during the 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s. Most of his obits labeled him a Star Trek director, as he did several episodes of that series. But he also directed one of the earliest movies to use Boston locations, 1955's Six Bridges to Cross. Loosely based on the real Brink's robbery, Six Bridges is an odd movie that tries to take that real event and turn it into a very light drama, banking highly on the presence of Tony Curtis to keep the career criminal at its center likable (in his film debut, Sal Mineo plays Curtis' character as a boy so, amusingly, they both have the same wrong Bronx accent for the Bostonian). But the movie never really finds a convincing tone, so it doesn't quite work (it's certainly inferior to 1978's The Brink's Job, which took an overtly comic approach to the events and had a Runyonesque flair to it). Six Bridges has a few interesting sights to see of the city, pre-urban renewal, but otherwise it's not all that memorable. It has never come out on video.