The Scarface Mob
                                                                              
Director: Phil Karlson
Year: 1959
Rating: 6.0
This is the combined two-part pilot for the TV show The Untouchables produced by DesiLu. It was later shown theatrically. It begins with Desi Arnaz introducing the film and then handing it over to Walter Winchell to narrate the story at times. Winchell was a famous radio and print gossip journalist with a very distinctive tough guy voice that fits the TV show perfectly. It does not yet have the famous musical theme that opened all the TV episodes. This is the big one - Eliot Ness and the Untouchables vs Al Capone. Scarface. This episode is based on Ness's autobiography and is for the most part true. That couldn't be said for most of the 119 episodes in the series that ran from 1959 to 1963. I used to watch this as a child and seeing it as an adult I am amazed that it got onto TV and that my parents allowed me to watch it. It is very violent - lots of shootouts - smoky nightclubs, drinking, gambling, prostitutes, corrupt police and cops smacking around prisoners. In this one there is a scene when the Untouchables smash their iron truck into a brewery followed by a gunfight and then the camera pans the loads of dead bodies on the floor. Even now that feels shocking.



Most of the other episodes in the series are made up in the sense that it wasn't Ness who captured or gunned down the criminals. The FBI yes, but not Ness. If you watch the show you would think Ness was responsible for getting Ma Barker, Legs Diamond, Dutch Schultz and many other famous gangster names. I have to think that my fascination with the gangs of the 1930s began with this show. The real Ness unfortunately went on to a sad life after this. Strangely, he became a big drinker after his years as a prohibition agent. In a bit of irony, a year after Capone was sentenced to prison on tax evasion, the ban on alcohol was ended.



Ness was to die broke in 1957 before this show made him famous once again. Most of the actors other than Robert Stack as Ness in the Untouchables pilot did not return for the regular series - but two of the bad guys did - Neville Brand as Alphonso Capone and Bruce Gordon as Frank Nitti. The Italian community was not happy at how they were being portrayed - and they demonstrated and forced DesiLu to change things up - include an Italian agent and go after non-Italian criminals - but in truth most of the mob were Italians back then.



This starts at the beginning. Ness is a Fed and is tasked with forming a special group of honest men. Much of the Chicago police force were being paid by Capone. He searches through files and finds seven of them. When it became known that they refused bribes, the papers started calling them the Untouchables. It stuck through another film in 1987 and another TV series in 1993 that lasted for 42 episodes.  Both Ness and Capone have entered into myth. This is directed by Phil Karlson, a top director of low-budget crime films - Kansas City Confidential, The Phenix City Story.