By David in TN
friday, june 6, 2025 at 4:39:00 p.m. edt
TCM's Film Noir of the Week Saturday Night-Sunday Morning at Midnight and 10 a.m. ET is Joseph H. Lewis' The Undercover Man (1949), with Glenn Ford, Nina Foch, James Whitmore, Barry Kelley and Anthony Caruso
Film Noir Guide: "Despite the film's misleading title, nobody goes undercover in this one. Ford plays a Treasury agent out to bust a mobster referred to only as 'the Big Fellow,' but who obviously is supposed to be real-life gangster Al Capone. Foch is Ford's long-time suffering wife, and Whitmore, in his film debut, plays a hot-headed agent eager for some action.
"Kelley is appropriately despicable as the mob's attorney, and noir veteran Caruso is good as the deadbeat dad and mob bookkeeper who tries to make a deal with Ford. Witnesses are rubbed out, juries bribed, and agents' families threatened. But in the end, as we all know, the Big Fellow goes up on income tax evasion charges.
"Director Lewis does a fine job with this suspenseful drama, also known as The Chicago Story."
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3 comments:
Been meaning to post this for some time, but never got around to it.
https://archive.org/details/the-scarface-mob-1959?
THE SCARFACE MOB was made as a feature film (and has the quality of a theatrical film), released as same in Europe, and was edited into a 2-part episode of CBS anthology series DESILU PLAYHOUSE. It was never intended as a pilot film, but the reaction to it was so tremendous that it was developed by ABC into the series we know and love called THE UNTOUCHABLES. It's one of the best things ever made for television. Directed by Phil Karlson, written by Paul Monash (who later developed PEYTON PLACE for TV). Great production, terrific cast (Barbara Nichols makes Marilyn Monroe look like Shirley Temple!), Walter Winchell's narration... And for TV, it really IS violent!
Worth a look, or a second look if you've already seen it.
-RM
I should have added: one of the delightful things about THE SCARFACE MOB is that the gangsters all speak in heavy Italian accents; Frank Nitti talks-a like-a Chico Marx! This was NOT carried over to the series, which didn't prevent the real-life mobsters from raising Hell and crying "Defamation!" (The old version of "Racist!") Thug Frank Sinatra nearly had a public fistfight with producer Desi Arnaz! Someone once noted that after the huge success of THE GODFATHER, it became "cool" to be a Mafioso, but back then, racial pressure groups as well as "anti-violence" groups (abetted by who else but Democrat senators) played havoc with the series. Which survived and became a classic.
-RM
TCM's Film Noir of the Week Saturday Night-Sunday Morning at 12:15 and 10 a.m. ET is Irving Reis' Crack-Up (1946) with Pat O'Brien, Claire Trevor, Herbert Marshall, Wallace Ford, Ray Collins.
Film Noir Guide: "Ex-G.I. O'Brien, who served as an art expert in postwar Germany exposing Nazi forgeries, now conducts art appreciation seminars at a New York museum. After he's arrested for breaking into the museum, seemingly while intoxicated, he tells detective Ford that he was aboard a train that was involved in a head-on collision with an oncoming train.
"After being dismissed as a kook because there have been no recent train wrecks, O'Brien investigates on his own and discovers that he owns the key to breaking up an art smuggling ring.
"Trevor plays his newspaper reporter girlfriend, Marshall is a mysterious art expert visiting the States from England, and Collins is a physician employed by the museum. The convoluted plot is difficult to follow, but O'Brien and Trevor are enjoyable and the photography so wonderfully eerie that you might not notice the holes in the script. Or if you do, you won't care.
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