The Scarface Mob

source: The Scarface Mob

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source: The Scarface Mob

Originally conceived as a two-part TV pilot, The Scarface Mob would go on to become one of TV's most famous shows, The Untouchables. It takes place in 1929 Chicago, as Al Capone's (Neville Brand) gang runs the city and is making money selling booze despite it being illegal. They pay off anyone they can but Federal Investigator Eliot Ness (Robert Stack) plans on brings together a team of men from across the country who he feels can't be bought. Desi Arnaz had optioned the rights to Eliot Ness' book about fighting Al Capone and decided to turn it into a two-part episode of his show, the Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse, under the title of The Untouchables. Westinghouse paid $200,000 for the two shows, but Arnaz put up his own money to get a better looking product and to hire Stack and Brand. He sold the rights to the film in Europe to make up the difference. Brand would return for two episodes of the show, which were also released as a movie, Alcatraz Express. There's also another two episodes that become a third film, The Guns of Zangara. Stack, who was most famous for this show until Airplane and Unsolved Mysteries, based Ness on the three bravest men he had met: Audie Murphy, his former roommate and war hero Buck Mazza and stuntman Carey Loftin. He said of the men, "All three had one thing in common. Tthey were the best in their fields and they never boasted!" Director Phil Karlson was a film noir director and he fits this story, which was written by Paul Monash, who created Peyton Place and wrote The Friends of Eddie Coyle and the Salem's Lot TV miniseries. According to the Italian-American Herald, "Italian-American actors and publishers who expose and perpetuate the stereotype image of Italians as mobsters, wife abusers, hitmen and cheats as it has since the debut of The Untouchables in 1959." This is where, as always, I remind you that there is no such thing as the Mafia, but I'm Italian. I am legally bound to write this. That said, everything about The Untouchables - good and bad - starts here. If anything, you can enjoy just how off the rails Neville Brand is.

As the world's biggest Untouchables fan it would pain me to write anything negative about this franchise. But this Pilot, at least the first part, though it does get a bit better, is pedestrian compared to the best episodes of the subsequent series, which of course we remember, forgetting the worst. First episode The Empty Chair a case in point. Of which the first few minutes even, are a step up in tempo. Its funny that some of the original Untouchables such as Paul Dubov later sit on Frank Nitti's council and Peter Leeds is as a con in 3000 suspects!!. Eddie Firestone an Untouchable!!!! (sorry Eddie), and Paul Picerni does a complete about turn. The series has the benefit of the great music played during the episodes which this does not have. Which always adds great substance. To me its ironic that the whole revolves around the prohibition of alcohol while most of the characters smoke like chimneys!!! Bruce Gordon, Neville Brand, and Frank (F. Troop) de Kova are some of my all time favourites but for the first two in proper larger than life form watch the Big Train Parts 1 and 2 and Bruce and Frank in The Frank Nitti Story , Nick Acropolis etc. Again a good watch but not a patch on the best of Series 1-3. but still way ahead of disappointing Season 4

"The Scarface Mob" is not a gangster film; that's what I claim puts it head and shoulders above all other anti-crime films. It's really about what motivates an Eliot Ness and what makes his sort of man different from the Al Capone's of this world. I have studied the era extensively; and those who called this "authentic-looking" Depression Era dramatized fiction have the case right; the direction by Phil Karlsen, as good as any director is at putting physical action on the screen, is very authentic. Nelson Riddle's jarring score and the great sets add much to the movie. Most of the acting, by stalwart Robert Stack, Keenan Wynn, Bruce Gordon and others is very good indeed. This is a story of the hardest sort to make-- a tale of an ethical man trying to bring down an evil one; it's the sort of story that many TV series have failed to carry off. In this feature-length film, scenes such as the harrowing setting of a wiretap in an alleyway by night, truckborne raids on breweries, a knife attack on Ness, nightclub scenes, Capone's return from serving a jail sentence to reestablish his rule over his cowed mobsters and many others are exceedingly memorable. The violence in the film is mostly honest, the camera-work and lighting amazing for a made-for-TV 1950's production. But the key to the film's extraordinary power is the keeping of context by Ness and his men--truly untouchable in a time when bribery was all-too-effective at corrupting many who had sworn to protect citizens from the Capones. It's hard to say enough nice things about such a memorable film experience.

Al Capone versus Eliot Ness--Evil versus Good--Darkness versus Light... The late 'Fifties brought B&W television to its highest point and "The Untouchables" was a case in point. People have a way of forgetting that the series--with its graphic violence--was controversial in its own time. Robert Stack(as Eliot Ness) was here the perfect film noir hero--tough, laconic and utterly loyal to his subordinates. Neville Brand, no slouch himself, lit up the screen as Al Capone--sadistic, as tough as Ness and totally without concern for his own people(or anyone else, for that matter). The reconstruction of mood and ambiance in this movie(re-edited from the TV series) is flawless. The mythic world which you see here is one that psychologist Carl Jung would have approved of. It was the "world" in which my own Dad had grown up--as seen through a child's eyes. But, as history, it is woefully wide of the mark. The real Eliot Ness left Federal service after a few short years and was much less moral and self-possessed than the character played by Robert Stack. The real Al Capone had a weakness for beautiful women which ultimately killed him. While Ness put the Chicago Gangsters under financial pressure, an accountant from the IRS actually put this multiple murderer behind bars--for income tax evasion. I saw this as a kid, with my Dad at my side. It made me feel that there is, in the end, no issue more important than simple justice. Since that time, like most folks, I've learned to live with moral ambiguity. But that's not all good news, by any means.

This was a HUGE TV EVENT when it first came on. Yes, it functioned as the pilot of the subsequent TV series, with Eliot Ness played by Robert Stack. But it was longer, and a lot better. Many epic scenes of tank-like trucks with snowplows on them BASHING through the gates of the warehouses where the bad guys brewed illegal beer. Then the feds would jump out of the truck and spray everybody with Tommy Gun fire. (Of course TV shows like this in the 1950s made America more than eager to do the same thing in third world countries--Korea, Guatemala, Vietnam, the mid-East --you name it). Neville Brand as Al Capone was not in the TV series, because he'd already been vanquished by Ness at the end of this TV movie. He was distinguished for his schtick in this film, of laughing and then turning angry and surly in a split second, as his henchmen mobsters sat around a banquet table trying to keep up with his mood swings, alternately laughing and glowering along with him. Bob Hope later did a satire of this scene on one of his TV specials--the laughing and glowering. It was pretty funny. I was a dorky pre-teen in the local Methodist Youth Fellowship when the most memorable scene of the film came on: --Ness had a sweet girlfriend in the movie, who pure as she was, didn't seem to wear a bra under her sweaters, all of which seemed to unbutton down the front. In the key scene, several hulking Italian-American criminals bash down the door to her single-woman's apartment, security chain and all, and then rip open her sweater and "admire" the merchandise. Pretty hot stuff for 1950s family-hour viewing! In the next scene she and Ness are getting married and Ness organizes a parade of Capone's confiscated beer trucks, to get back at him for feeling up his girlfriend, craven non-Anglo animal that he is. Now that's American justice! --Pretty good for the same company that brought us I LOVE LUCY for so many years. Anyway--if you want a TAPE of this movie, be sure it's the original film with Neville Brand, and not just episodes of the later TV show.-B2

There are many classic TV anthology episodes that ended up being remade for the big screen, and only in a couple of circumstances would any TV show ends up rereleased to the big screen as is. It took three years, but this two-parter of the Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse did, and perhaps it really was too violent or TV at the time, very gritty and tough, certainly not appropriate for the family hour. There had been several big screen movies that finally showed the girls on of organized crime in the 1920's and '30s, but this one is far better, even the 1959 "Al Capone" starring Rod Steiger. Here, Capone is played by Neville Brand, far less angry and stereotypical than Steiger did, less emotional than DeNiro in 1987's variation of the same story, only topped by Jason Robards in "The St. Valentine's Day Massacre". This is the predecessor to the TV series "The Untouchables", starring Robert Stack in his signature role as Elliot Ness. While Stack was always consistent in his performance, series didn't always seem consistent with the time period, but this one did, with the women appropriately coiffed, the suits looking timely, and every emotional feeling including the music perfect for the setting. Playing another one of her trampy floozies, Barbara Nichols is perfect, performing a seductive "Ain't Misbehavin'", and bashed around when she dares get in the way of business by interfering with a phone call. She is epitome of the smart dumb girl, knowing exactly what she wants but not always wise in how she goes about trying to achieve it. There's also Patricia Crowley as Stack's fiancee, threatened by Capone's gang several times, Keenan Wynn as Ness's loyal partner, Joe Mantell as a stool pigeon and Bruce Gordon as Frank Nitti. How appropriate for Walter Winchell to narrate as he was there. Desi Arnaz is completely serious in his opening introduction for both parts, the one time his accent didn't create laughs. Everything about this screams for the story to be continued, as well as inspiring the excellent 1987 remake. Enough has been changed from the real story, just as the Kevin Costner film did, but that doesn't change how thrilling this is. One of the greatest TV dramas of all time.

I used to love this series growing up. But as I got older I knew most of it was false. No way was Ness going around slapping gangsters, and talking down to them. Ness wanted to be important again, so he wrote this mostly fictional account. The IRS brought Capone down, not Ness. Read the true story. All in all this was light entertainment.