Jack “Legs” Diamond – Episode Review

By Episode Review, Season 2

JACK “LEGS” DIAMOND

Airdates: October 20th, 1960 and May 15th, 1961
Story by Harry Essex
Teleplay by Charles O’Neal
Directed by John Peyser
Produced by Josef Shaftel
Director of Photography Charles Straumer
Co-Starring Steven Hill, Norman Crane and Suzanne Storrs.  Featuring Lawrence Dobkin, Robert Carricart, Peter Whitney, Oscar Beregi, Ted Berger, Lee Patrick, Tony Carbone.

“By 1931, the country’s era of wonderful nonsense was over. The Great Depression was steadily sinking its fangs deeper into the nation’s economic life with each passing day. Unaffected by the growing unemployment, gangster owned and operated speakeasies and nightclubs continued to flourish. Prohibition had spawned a new mobster aristocracy. Hoodlums with money had become knights of the submachine gun. One such prominent mobster was Jack “Legs” Diamond, known to the mobs as the Clay Pigeon, because of the great number of times he had been shot at and survived. Legs had a wife, but most of his time now was spent in the company of Dawn Dolan, young and glamorous nightclub canary.” Read More

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