Glenn Ford is no stranger to the dark streets of film noir, he’s walked them many times before, in “Gilda”, “The Big Heat” and “Human Desire.” In Joseph H. Lewis’ 1949 film, “The Undercover Man,” a low rent though first-class crime drama filmed in a semi-documentary nourish style. Treasury Agent Frank Warren (Glenn Ford) who is out to bring down the gangland syndicate leader known only as “The Big Fellow” leads a criminal investigation. It would sound ludicrous if it were not true that the IRS brought to justice real life gangster Al Capone, whose story this film tells a fictionalize version of. Based on a Collier’s magazine article called “Undercover Man: He Trapped Capone” by Frank Wilson, it tells the story of how the federal government finally caught Al Capone on income tax evasion. The screenplay is credited to Sidney Boehm and Jack Rubin, though independent producer Robert Rossen is said to have had a say in the script. Boehm would go on to write many noir films including “The Big Heat”, “Violent Saturday”, “Mystery Street” and “Side Street.”
Burnett Guffey’s gritty dark lit cinematography is filled with murky overcrowded city streets, dark movie theaters and seedy hotel rooms not fit for a two-dollar hooker but good enough for federal enforcement officers to shack up in during the investigation. It is a dark dingy world filled with squealers, bookies and murderers. In this part of town, the bookies are dropping dead, quicker than flies attacked by a blast of bug spray.
Glenn Ford is a dour actor who barely breaks a smile here until the film’s ending. His government agent is at times tormented, driven, paranoid and almost beaten. He’s prepared to give up his job, until the mother of slain bookie Salvatore Rocco, hands over her son’s books, and tells him how she and many others came to America to get away from the Mafia in Italy, and how thanks to brave men like him, she and others no longer have to live in fear. The woman’s story brings tears to Agent Warren’s eyes and he decides stay on the case. Joseph H. Lewis states in an interview with Peter Bogdanovich that this scene was shot in one take using three cameras. He felt it was the only way he could capture the realistic emotions as portrayed by the actors. Nina Foch, who would have the lead role in Lewis’ “My Name is Julia Ross” is Judith, Warren’s wife. While she has some nice moments, Foch is generally wasted in a role that is of minor importance to the film. James Whitmore is on hand, in his film debut, as fellow T-Man George Pappas.
Lewis spent most of his career in the bargain basement department of filmmakers, though he proved himself a master of camera placement with some of the most unconventional shots to come out of poverty row. He was given the name “Wagon Wheels Joe” after he did one low budget oater that had more cowboys than actors in the cast. Since they could barely read their lines, Lewis, in order to distract the audience from the lack of talent, shot a scene with the camera looking through a wagon wheel. The shot was considered so artistic; it gave Lewis a reputation for placing his camera at unusual angles.
While “The Undercover Man” was a second feature, it had a budget of about one million dollars and turned out to be the film on the double bill everyone wanted to see. Lewis’ noir films like the aforementioned “My Name is Julia Ross”, along with “So Dark the Night”, “Gun Crazy” and “The Big Combo” are required viewing for any serious film enthusiast.. Along with his noir work, Lewis’ filmography consisted of westerns, generally starring Bob Baker or Johnny Mack Brown. In the 1950’s he made two westerns with Randolph Scott however, his oddest western was the 1958 film “Terror in a Texas Town”, that opens with Sterling Hayden walking down the town street carrying a harpoon! There were war films like “Retreat Hell,” films of intrigue and even the East Side Kids in Poverty Row stuff like “Boys of the City”, “Pride of the Bowery” and “That Gang of Mine.” In the 1960’s, Lewis spent the final days of his career in television doing mostly western series like “The Rifleman”, “Bonanza”, “Gunsmoke” and “The Big Valley.” He died in 2000.
“The Undercover Man” is a good crime thriller. It will not make you forget “My Name is Julia Ross” or “Gun Crazy” or “The Big Combo”, though it will remind you of what a large talent can do with just a small amount of money.
The Undercover Man will be on TCM on August 7th at 10PM EST.
“Roadblock” waste no time as it starts with an enticing opening scene that grabs you and holds your attention from the start as Joe Peters (Charles McGraw) and his partner Harry (Louis Jean Hyendt) fake a shooting to frighten a suspect into surrendering stolen insurance money. After this opening setup, Insurance Investigator Peters heads back to L.A. At the airport Joe meets a flirty Diane (Joan Dixon), who weasels a half price ticket by telling the ticket seller Joe is her husband. On the plane, she purposely sits next to Joe, playing it both cold and flirty at the same time. The plane runs into stormy weather and is forced to make an unscheduled landing forcing everyone to stay overnight at a hotel. Mr. and Mrs. Peters must share a room. Like most noir saps, Joe falls quickly for the seductive Diane, but soon discovers she has expensive taste and is using Los Angeles crime boss Kendall Webb, a suspect in a recent fur company robbery, as her fix. Despite her affiliation with the underworld, Joe is still stuck on the dame and continues to pursue her. His only strategy to get enough money to support her lifestyle is to plan a robbery using inside information he has about a train carrying over one million dollars in cash with the help of Webb and his men to pull it off. For his part Joe gets a percentage of the action. With the robbery set to go, an unexpected turn happens when Diane, realizes she’s in love with Joe and living on a cops salary is good enough. Joe tries call off the robbery but it is too late. While Joe and Diane are on their honeymoon the robbery goes off without a hitch. When Joe receives his share of the money, Diane is stunned that he was involved. The insurance company assigns Joe, and his partner Harry, to the case. He attempts to lead the investigation away from him and his partners but one of the robbers is arrested and talks. The couple are now are on the run, as his partner, Harry has figures out Joe is implicated in the robbery and is tracking him down. There’s a climatic car chase through the streets of L.A. ending with the shooting of Joe in the middle of a dry Los Angles riverbed.
The unconvincing transformation of Diane from a gold digging femme fatale to decent woman in love with her regular working stiff is the weakest link in the film, a femme fatale who credentials disappear halfway through the film. The problem is twofold, it is with the script but also in the casting of Joan Dixon, a limited actress, whose career mostly under the misguidance of Howard Hughes, lasted about a short eight years. She is unimpressive as a femme fatale, and will not make you forget Gloria Grahame, Ann Savage or other tough no-nonsense dames who have walked and lived on these dark city streets.
Canadian Richard Hannay (Robert Donat) is mistakenly implicated in the murder a woman, Annabelle Smith (Lucie Mannheim); he met at the music hall while watching an act called Mr. Memory. She admits to being a spy selling herself to the highest bidder and right now, the British were paying the best. She is being followed by foreign agents who are on the verge of smuggling top-secret papers out of the country. In a Hitchcock film, it does not really matter what the papers are, this is the MacGuffin, a red herring that gets the story moving. Taking sanctuary in Hannay’s apartment, Annabelle tells the skeptical Canadian that two men are following her. After looking out his window, seeing two shadowy figures standing out on the street Hannay become’s a believer. Unfortunately, her time is short, as Hannay sleeps; Annabelle is knifed in the back. With Annabelle leaving few details before her death, something about “39 Steps” a map of Scotland with the area known as Alt-na Shellach marked on the map as the location she believes the ring leader of the spies is located, Hannay heads for Scotland with the police on his trail as the accused murderer of Annabelle Smith. Along the way, Hannay ends up handcuffed to Pamela (Madeleine Carroll) who turns him into the police or so she thought, as they turned out to be foreign agents kidnapping both Hannay and Pamela. The plot leads up back to London and the famed Palladium where Hannay comes to the realization how the foreign agents are going smuggle the secret plans out of the country.
This quickly paced episodic film runs from one short descriptive scene to another. Filled with suspense and humor, some risqué for its time, the film is a rollercoaster ride that does not stop for 85 minutes. The opening music hall scene get things off to a rousing start filled with laughter and a marvelous setup; the meeting of Hannay and Annabelle that sets the rest of the film in motion. Hannay’s relationship with Pamela is another highlight. Taking an instant dislike to him after he burst into her compartment on the train and begins kissing her in order to hide from the pursuing police, she quickly turns him in. The couple will soon meet again and find themselves handcuffed together in a series of scenes that are both suspenseful and comedic. Hitchcock liked pushing the censors’ buttons even as far back as 1935 when the British board did not allow unmarried couples to share a bed. Hitchcock gets away with this through some clever direction and skillful performances by Donat and Carroll including the scene where Pamela removes her stocking and Hannay, his hand handcuffed to Pamela’s, is “forced” to rub up against her leg. Left unsaid, but still it must be in the back of filmgoers mind is how did they go to the bathroom? The film is actually filled with sexual innuendo. The salesmen Hannay meets on the train heading Scotland, displayed their samples, women’s under garments. When Hannay takes refuge in a Scotsman farmhouse, the farmer at one point insinuates Hannay and his wife have slept together. Even at the beginning of the film when Hannay meets Annabelle, one of the first things she says to him is “May I come to your home.” Hannay quickly agrees, and when Hannay tries to sneak out of his apartment after Annabelle’s murder, the only way he can convince the milkman to switch clothes with him so he can sneak past the two men watching outside is to tell him he has just spent the night with a married woman.
Speed is of the essence in this film, with swift cuts and lightening transitions from one scene to the next. Note how quick the editing is when the housekeeper finds Annabelle’s body and screams, her scream blending together with the train whistle of the next scene. Hitchcock and his editors do this so well the train’s whistle seeming coming from the woman’s mouth as she screams.
Robert Mitchum as the doomed Eddie gives one of his most beautiful understated performances. It is a work is equal to anything else in his portfolio. Just watch him toward the end of the film sitting in the nosebleed seats watching the Boston Bruins play. It is a simple scene, yet so perfectly executed scene. He’s semi drunk from too many beers and he suddenly yells out to no one in particular “Number 4, Bobby Orr! The greatest hockey player ever.” It’s a perfect Boston moment at the now gone Boston Garden. Soon after the game, Eddie’s “friends” will take him for a final ride. Though Mitchum is the star, his part is just one of many excellent integrated roles. Surprisingly he sometimes remains off camera for long periods of time, still it is his quiet unassuming performance that grabs you and holds you to the screen. 
While little seems to happen, Boetticher and screenwriter Burt Kennedy draw out every bit of tension and nuance from the story and their actors. It is a minimalist work with a small cast and little action, with only the rough western landscape looming large over the entire canvas. Unlike John Ford, Boetticher’s western presents a colder version of the west, there is little, if any sentiment in his work. His characters kill without emotion or trepidation. For example, early in the film we find out the outlaws killed a stationmaster and his young son dumping their bodies unceremoniously into a well.
Richard Boone gives a standout performance as the top outlaw, Frank Usher who deludes himself into thinking he could have a life similar to Brennan however, sees the desperado life as his only avenue there. Boone gives us so many nice touches to his character that Usher is the most sympathetic character in the film.
His story centers on young Larry Lapinksy (Lenny Baker) a Brooklyn College graduate who has always wanted to be an actor. He moves out of his parents’ apartment, much to the despair of his over protective mother Fay (Shelley Winters) and complacent father (Mike Kellen), in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn to Greenwich Village. Here he gets a job in a deli working for Lou Jacobi and attends acting classes where he meets other young hopefuls all vying for a piece of the artistic pie. Among Larry’s inner circle are his girl friend,a free spirited girl named Sarah (Ellen Greene). She’s intelligent, witty and incapable of committing to a relationship. When Lenny asked her if she loves him, she could only respond by saying, she wears a diaphragm. Sarah is also attracted to Robert (Christopher Walken), a self-absorbed playwright/poet who draws women like flies yet remains emotionally cold. Other village eccentrics include Lois Smith as Anita, a depressed suicidal type, Antonia Fargas as Bernstein, a gay black man and a young Jeff Goldblum as Clyde Baxter already a phony leading man type looking for his break.
Lenny may have left home but his over emotionally attached mother Fay (Shelley Winters) will not leave him. Inappropriately appearing at his apartment, she barges in during a rent party, charging in like a hippo in a Yardro factory embarrassing Lenny to no end. On another occasion, she unexpectedly appears when he is attempting to make love to Sarah and blindly going into a tirade insisting that they now have to get married. Lenny gets a bit part in a Hollywood movie and is ready to fly off to Hollywood. Saying goodbye to his parents, his mother gives him a bagful of apple strudels to eat on the plane. She is a Jewish mother to be reckoned with; all love and terror wrapped up in a loud uncontrollable big heart spitting out guilt to for the world to share. Lenny Baker’s performance holds the film together and it is a shame his career was cut short when he was struck with cancer three years later and died prematurely in 1982. He was 37 years old. Shelley Winters is ideal as a lovable bear of a woman who is fearful of letting go of her baby. Ellen Greene is tantalizing as Sarah and Christopher Walken is prefect as the unemotional Robert.
The film’s focus is on four of The Wanderers, Richie, Joey (John Friedrich), Perry (Tony Ganios) and Buddy (Jim Youngs). Though the screenplay, written by Philip and Rose Kaufman, is as episodic at Price’s novel, the film never goes much beyond the boys’ current life and does not reveal any dreams or aspirations they may have beyond their present existence. In his novel, Price ventures to suggest what the future could offer, what they as individuals, want out of life beyond hanging out on the Grand Concourse and Fordham Road. True, Joey and Perry drive off to San Francisco at the end however; they do not seem to have any plans other than to get out of their current individual situations. The boys’ families are dysfunctional, Joey, an artistic type, is brutalized by his over macho father, Emilio (William Andrews), and Perry (Tony Ganios), a new kid on the block, just moved from New Jersey, has an alcoholic mother who sleeps around. As for Richie, he seems destined to marry his recently knock-up girlfriend Despie (Toni Kalem) and live a life of eating pasta and wearing Hawaiian shirts, similar to his Mafia like future father-in-law.
Unfortunately, the film goes off course in other scenes, particularly when Kaufman films a bizarre atmospheric episode where Richie and his friends spot Nina walking down the street and follow her in Perry’s car. They end up in an eerie fog filled, oddly lit world controlled by the bat swinging Ducky Boys. It is such a strange out of context scene that I almost expected one of the Wanderers to say, “I don’t think we’re in The Bronx anymore, Toto” as they drive deeper into this strange Oz like landscape gone wrong. Outnumbered, the four are beaten up, though they eventually manage to escape the villainous Ducky Boys.
The cast was filled, at the time, with talented unknowns. This was Ken Wahl’s first film; he would later star as Vinnie in Stephen Cannell’s TV series “Wiseguy.” Karen Allen, of course, would hit it big in “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” Toni Kalem would later appear in “The Sopranos” as Angie Bonpensiero, Big Pussy’s wife. I especially found Wahl’s characterization of Richie and Toni Kalem’s, Despie the real highlights along with EricVan Lidth De Jeude who played Terror, the gigantic intimidating 350 pound, 6’6” imposing leader of the Baldies. Terror’s girlfriend was played by 4’ 10” Linda Manz. In filming the couple, polar opposites in size, Kaufman’s camera presents an idiosyncratic Fellini like images of the two.
Twenty Four Frames 