The Nick Acropolis Story – Episode Review

By Episode Review, Season 2

THE NICK ACROPOLIS STORY

Airdate: June 1st, 1961
Written by Curtis Kenyon and John Mantley
Directed by Don Medford
Produced by Lloyd Richards
Director of Photography Charles Straumer
Special Guest Star Lee Marvin.
Co-starring Bruce Gordon, Constance Ford,
Johnny Seven.
Featuring Carl Milletaire, Leonard Stone, Michael Granger, Lindsay Workman, Arthur Kendall.

“In the late summer of 1931, while the Capone organization reaped a golden harvest through the sale of illegal beer and booze in a hundred Chicago speakeasies, an obscure bookmaker, whose headquarters was a small flower shop on the west side of the city, was quietly developing into a new underworld titan. In eighteen months, he had organized the bookmakers of Illinois and half a dozen surrounding states, into a mammoth combine, which brought him a gross business of over $2 million a month. It also brought his interstate organization into the jurisdiction of Eliot Ness and the Untouchables. By the end of August, in an attempt to discover the identity of this new underworld power, Eliot Ness had two of the largest bookmaking parlors under surveillance, and Ness succeeded in tapping the phone lines of a third.”
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Stranglehold – Episode Review

By Episode Review, Season 2

STRANGLEHOLD

Airdate: May 4th, 1961
Written by Harry Kronman
Directed by Paul Wendkos
Produced by Alan Armer
Director of Photography Charles Straumer
Special Guest Star Ricardo Montalban.
Co-starring Philip Pine, Kevin Hagen.
Featuring Trevor Bardette, Robert J. Wilke, Oscar Beregi, Burt Miller,
Adrienne Marden, Gene Roth, Frank Puglia.

“The Prohibition years wrote a dark page in our history. Americans who had once defied a king, refusing to pay a tax on tea, now paid a tax to the underworld on everything they drank or ate. From booze to bacon, from medicine to milk, racketeers poked their greedy fingers into every corner of the nation’s business. One little pig was going to market: The Fulton Fish Market in New York. A wholesale market, serving the entire east, shipping as far as Mississippi; a business of fantastic totals turning over $200 million a year, weighing out 700 million pounds of fish and one man’s thumb resting heavy on the scale.” Read More

Mr. Moon – Episode Review

By Episode Review, Season 2

MR. MOON

Airdates: April 20th, 1961 and  August 24, 1961
Written by Charles O’Neal and John Mantley
Directed by Paul Wendkos
Produced by Josef Shanel
Director of Photography Charles Straumer
Co-starring Victor Buono, Bruce Gordon, Karl Svenson.
Featuring Ellen Madison, Robert Osterloh, Russ Conway, Tommy Nello, Stewart Bradley, Byron Morrow

“On a dark night in the fall of 1934, an armored truck carrying the special paper used in the printing of United States currency was speeding towards Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Its ultimate destination was the Bureau of Engraving in Washington, D. C. Waiting at a crossroads a mile ahead was a group of men about to make the first overt move in the greatest counterfeiting swindle in the history of the world. The execution of this ingenious plan had been in preparation for over two years.

In less than two minutes, the first step in a plan to defraud the people of the United States of $100 million dollars was completed and three men lay dead. Within 48 hours, Eliot Ness and five other top crime experts of the federal government had been flown to Washington, and were in conference with the men whose job it was to protect the nation against the economic cancer of counterfeiting.”
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Testimony of Evil – Episode Review

By Episode Review, Season 2

TESTIMONY OF EVIL

Airdates: March 30th, and August 17th, 1961, February 12th, 1963
Written by Joseph Petracca
Directed by Paul Wendkos
Produced by Joseph Shaftel
Director of Photography Charles Straumer
Special Guest Star David Brian.
Co-starring Fay Spain, Jack Elam, John Marley.
Featuring Johnny Seven, Robert Brubaker, K. L. Smith, Robert Comthwaite, Ross Elliott, Paul Genge.

“On the night of October 11th, 1932, less than a month before the people of Chicago went to the polls to elect a state’s attorney, David Mantley, heading the reform ticket to dissolve the marriage of gangsters and politicians, addressed a small crowd from the back of his campaign truck.” Read More

The Antidote – Episode Review

By Episode Review, Season 2

THE ANTIDOTE

Airdates: March 9, 1961 and Dec. 24, 1962
Written by David Z. Goodman
Directed by Walter E. Grauman
Produced by Lloyd Richards
Director of Photography Charles Straumer
Special Guest Star Joseph Wiseman
Co-starring Bruce Gordon, Telly Savalas. Featuring Gale Robbins, Jeff Lorey, John Mitchum, Ben Wright, Jason Wingreen, Loma Thayer, Byron Morrow.

“In mid-October of 1932, two events had the nation’s capitol buzzing with excitement. The first was the election campaign between the incumbent president of the United States, Herbert Hoover, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who was climaxing his great personal triumph over polio, as the standard-bearer of the Democratic Party. The second event was a special meeting of the most important federal agents from the leading cities in the country.” Read More

The Organization – Episode Review

By Episode Review, Season 2

THE ORGANIZATION

Airdate: January 26th, 1961
Written by Harry Kronman
Directed by Walter E. Grauman
Produced by Alan Armer
Director of Photography Charles Straumer
Special Guest Star Richard Conte
Co-starring Susan Oliver, Milton Selzer, Oscar Beregi
Featuring Richard Karlan, Thom Carney, Grant Richards, John Harmon, Russ Bender, Robert Beecher

“The bookies had given four-to-one against him, but on May 3rd, 1932, through the efforts of Eliot Ness and the Untouchables, Al Capone was convicted and taken out of circulation. Out of circulation, but not out of business. Frank Nitti was holding the organization together. Although the Capone mob still made a big noise, it wasn’t the same. The lion was down and the jackals were already slashing at his flanks. But there were other lions. One of the biggest was Joe Kulak, from St. Louis. Kulak, the one they called The Teacher, because he had trained so many underworld big shots. He had given them their start. He still gave them their orders. On November the 9th, 1932, alerted by federal authorities in St. Louis, the Untouchables watched Kulak arrive. Their job: to find out what he was doing in Chicago. ” 

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The Masterpiece – Episode Review

By Episode Review, Season 2

THE MASTERPIECE

Airdates: January 19th, 1961 and August 31, 1961
Written by David Z. Goodman
Directed by Walter E. Grauman
Produced by Lloyd Richards
Director of Photography Charles Straumer
Special Guest Star Rip Torn
Co-starring Bruce Gordon, George Voskovec, Robert Middleton
Featuring Harry Shannon, Joseph Ruskin, Addison Richards, Alexander Lockwood

“With the conviction and jailing of Al Capone, the richest plum of the Capone empire, the operation of the speakeasies and the breweries in the heart of Chicago, was split into two parts. The speakeasies were acquired by Meyer Wartel. Wartel was a Capone lieutenant. Distinguishing characteristics: killer, and hypochondriac. The breweries and distilleries were acquired by Carl Positan. Positan, too, was a Capone lieutenant. Distinguishing characteristic: killer. In a bold effort to take over the entire operation, Positan had withheld the whisky and beer, which Wartel needed to run his speakeasies. As a result, the number of speakeasies flourishing in Illinois’ largest city, dropped to an all-time Prohibition low. The tremendous loss in speakeasy revenue brought Frank Nitti, Capone’s collector, face to face with Meyer Wartel.” 

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Part One of The Big Train – Episode Review

By Episode Review, Season 2

PART ONE OF THE BIG TRAIN

Airdate: January 5th, 1961
Written by William Spier
Directed by John Peyser
Produced by Josef Shaftel
Director of Photography Charles Straumer
Special Guest Star Neville Brand
Co-starring Bruce Gordon
Featuring Richard Carlyle, Gavin MacLeod, Lewis Charles, Frank London, Lalo Rios

“On October 17th, 1931, in a federal district courthouse, the trial of Scarface Al Capone, which had lasted eleven days, came to an end. The man responsible for the arrest and conviction of Capone was Eliot Ness. Ironically, the two men, opposing chiefs in a bitter warfare, had never met. And although Capone, as he was taken from the Chicago courtroom on November 24th, 1931, passed within a few yards of Ness, he did not recognize the leader of The Untouchables.”

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The Rusty Heller Story – Episode Review

By Episode Review, Season 2

THE RUSTY HELLER STORY

Airdates: October 13th, 1960 and March 2nd, 1961
Written by Leonard Kantor
Directed by Walter E. Grauman
Produced by Josef Shaftel
Director of Photography Charles Straumer
Co-Starring Elizabeth Montgomery, Harold J. Stone, David White and introducing Paul Picerni. Featuring Normal Fell, John Duke, Rita Duncan, Linda Watkins, John Close, Betty Garde, Pete Candoli, Allison Hayes, George Di Normand

“In the last weeks of March 1931, Eliot Ness and his Untouchables were hitting hard at the Capone empire. Every day, gunshots rattled the concrete as Ness led his men in raid after raid. While prosperity stayed around the corner for most of us, it came out and licked the hands of mobsters, bootleggers, and hoods. For them, it had been Rome at its height, under Emperor Al Capone, until Eliot Ness moved in to clean up. Each speakeasy knocked out by Ness, each brewery put out of commission, each Capone man lost made it more obvious: Capone’s throne was tottering. It was a first-rate opportunity for someone with brains and cunning to use the battle to set his own table. But who had the guts to move in? There was still a lot of fight left in the old Emperor. Read More

Part One of The Unhired Assassin – Episode Review

By Episode Review, Season 1

PART ONE OF THE UNHIRED ASSASSIN

Airdates: February 25th and September 8th, 1960
Teleplay by William Spier
Directed by Howard W. Koch
Produced by Joseph Sbaftel
Director of Photography Charles Straumer
Special Guest Star Robert Middleton Featuring Joe Mantel, Bruce Gordon, Claude Akins, Lee Van Cleef, Frank de Kova, Richard Deacon, George Neise, John Duke, Eleanor Audley Ray Kellogg, Charles Watts, Robert Anderson, and Argentina Brunetti

”November 9th, 1932. At 15 minutes past midnight, Eastern Standard Time, the Associated Press from Palo Alto, reported this three-word flash: ‘Hoover concedes defeat’. Three years of depression had thrust Herbert Hoover and the Republicans from control of the government and elected New York Governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt, President of the United States. The Volstead Act was doomed. Repeal of the 18th amendment, prohibition, was inevitable. At 2:15 a.m. Chicago time, the Untouchables led by their chief, Eliot Ness, celebrated the beginning of the end of prohibition by destroying the last of the breweries operated by Al Capone and company. ”
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