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Episode Review

A comprehensive, in-depth look at one of television’s most highly acclaimed – and despised – classics with a blow-by-blow episode guide of Desilu’s The Untouchables. From 1959-1963, the series brought to life the nightly wars between good and evil in the streets of Prohibition Chicago. With legendary lawman Eliot Ness (Robert Stack) and his band of incorruptible agents leading the way for justice, famed reporter Walter Winchell providing staccato narration and guest stars breathing life into colorful underworld characters, the true story of The Untouchables became legend in a film noir mix of true history and Emmy award-winning fiction.

Nov 10
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The Waxey Gordon Story – Episode Review

By Episode Review, Season 2

THE WAXEY GORDON STORY

Airdates: November 10th, 1960 and June 22nd, 1961
Written by Joseph Petracca
Directed by John Peyser
Produced by Josef Shaftel
Director of Photography Charles Straumer
Co-starring Frank De Kova. Special Guest Star Nehemiah Persoff. Featuring Elizabeth Hush, Terry Huntington, Sam Gilman, Adam Becker, Walter Reed, Edgar Stehli.

“On the night of April 16th, 1931, Waxey Gordon, public enemy number one, the unchallenged beer boss of New York, began his campaign to take over the illegal beer traffic in the entire State of New Jersey. It was controlled by Frankie Dunn, Bugs Donovan, and Roger Wyden.”

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Nov 03
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Nicky – Episode Review

By Episode Review, Season 2

NICKY

Airdates: November 3rd, 1960 and January 25th, 1962
Story by Joseph Petracca
Teleplay by Joseph Petracca and Harry Essex
Directed by Walter E. Grauman
Produced by Josef Shaftel
Director of Photography Charles Straumer
Costarring Micheal Ansara, Philip Pine, Joe DeSantis. Special Guest Star Luther Adler. Featuring Mario Roccuzzo, Malcolm Atterbury, A.G. Vitanza, Renata Vanni, Vincent Barbi, George Greco, Ronnie Haran.

“By the middle of 1933, Eliot Ness and his squad of Untouchables had almost checked the manufacture and sale of Illicit whiskey in Chicago. Yet, despite their success, one of the biggest and shrewdest operators continued to elude them. Through elaborate schemes and machinations, he continued to procure alcohol and process it. His name was Gus Marco, alias Guiseppe Marconi. On the surface, running a respectable taxi garage, but below the surface, under the cement floor of the garage, Gus Marco operated the largest illegal bottling and cutting plant in the country. A former gambler, he had been ruled off several race tracks for attempting a fix, Gus Marco had carried his habits into his current business. He believed in the payoff, the schmear, Gus was always one to put out a buck to make two.”

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Oct 20
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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

Oct 13
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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

Apr 28
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The Frank Nitti Story – Episode Review

By Episode Review, Season 1

THE FRANK NITTI STORY

Airdate: April 28th and September 22nd, 1960
Story by Harry Essex
Written by Lee Blair Scott
Directed by Howard W. Koch
Produced by Josef Shaftel
Director of Photography Charles Straumer and Robert B. Hauser
Co-starring Richard Anderson, Myron McCormick, Dick Foran
Special Guest Star Bruce Gordon
Featuring Frank de Kova, Phyllis Coates, Alex Gerry, Frank Wilcox,
Frank Albertson, Harry Harvey, Sr.

“In 1934, Prohibition had been repealed, and the Capone mob, without its leader, serving tune at Alcatraz Prison, was desperate for new sources of revenue. With the instincts of jackals for an easy kill, they picked the nation’s small theater owners for their prey. The type of operation used, was one they knew best: extortion.

“On a quiet street in Oak Park, Illinois, suburb of Chicago, Harold Coldman was closing his theater. Coldman was the owner and operator of two small motion picture houses. He thought he hadn’t an enemy in the world. But he was soon to learn that he was mistaken. To put their extortion plan into operation, the Capone mob had chosen Frank Nitti, long-time enforcer for Scarface Al Capone, and Nitti’s shadow and triggerman, Louis Campangna.” Read More

Apr 21
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Head of Fire – Feet of Clay – Episode Review

By Episode Review, Season 1

HEAD OF FIRE – FEET OF CLAY

Airdate: April 21st and September 29th, 1960 
Written by Ben Maddow 
Directed by Walter E. Grauman
Produced by Charles Russell
Director of Photography Charles Straumer 
Special Guest Star Jack Warden
Co-starring Nehemiah Persoff, Madeline Rhue
Featuring Leo Gordon, Virginia Christine, Adrienne Marden, Norm Alden, Lawrence Maldonado, George Chirello, Patsy Kelly

“Eliot Ness, chief of the special unit known as the Untouchables, had not eaten in twelve hours. These were the twelve hours that the jury had been out deciding the case that Ness had prepared so carefully against a mobster named Johnny Fortunato. At 9 p.m., the jury came back and delivered its verdict: not guilty.” Read More

Apr 14
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The Underworld Bank – Episode Review

By Episode Review, Season 1

THE UNDERWORLD BANK

Airdate: April 14th and August 18th, 1960
Written by Aben Kandel
Directed by Stuart Rosenberg
Produced by Josef Sbaftel
Director of Photography Charles Straumer
Special Guest Star Thomas Mitchell
Co-starring Virginia Vincent, Peter Falk
 Featuring Val Avery, Ernest Sanacino, Penny Santon, Raymond Bailey, Frank Gerstle, Bernard Kates, Vince Barbi, Lennie Bremen

“On the afternoon of September 23rd, 1933, at a fashionable midtown hotel in New York City, a secret meeting of financial giants was scheduled to take place. The six men gathering at this secret meet were modest in their speech and very circumspect in their behavior, but a sharp-eyed detective with a memory for mug shots could have named them all: Harold Vishman, behind the scenes operator and political power in the State of Louisiana; Ralph Louchey, old-time rum-runner, once a leader of Detroit’s Purple Gang; Big Augie Epstein, Kansas kingpin of Miami gambling; Dino Matero, pinball and slot machines, Kansas City; Art Martin, jukeboxes, numbers, prostitution, Seattle and the northwest. And Milo Sullivan, retired hoodlum. His shrewd manipulations had made him business consultant for the nation’s underworld. These six men were meeting to organize the underworld bank. At their control were the lush profits acquired during the Prohibition days. Now with Prohibition and its illicit offspring, bootlegging, nearing their dismal finish, they sought other profitable fields of investment for their illegal millions.”
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Apr 07
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Portrait Of A Thief – Episode Review

By Episode Review, Season 1

PORTRAIT OF A THIEF

Airdate: April 7th, 1960
Written by Herbert Abbott Spiro
Directed by Walter E. Grauman
Produced by Joseph Shaftel
Director of Photography Charles Straumer
Featuring Henry Jones, Charles McGraw, Edward Andrews

“1931 found America and the world hitting the depths of Depression. Men begged for jobs when there were none to be had. In the larger cities, bread lines formed and soup kitchens fed the hungry and the homeless. Apples were sold on street corners. But 1931 also saw man soaring to the heights: the Empire State Building was rising fourteen hundred feet to tower above the island of Manhattan. In Chicago, Eliot Ness and his Untouchables had cracked the bootleg empire of Al Capone, only to learn that thousands of gallons of illegal alcohol were flowing into the city from some mysterious source. Ness took his problem to Beecher Asbury, the federal district attorney.” Read More

Mar 31
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The Doreen Maney Story – Episode Review

By Episode Review, Season 1

THE DOREEN MANEY STORY


Airdate: March 31st, 1960
Written by Jerome Ross
Directed by Robert Florey
Produced by David HeUweil
Director of Photography Charles Straumer
Special Guest Star Anne Francis
Co-starring Christopher Dark, Connie Hines. Featuring George Mitchell, Richard Rust,Robert J. Stevenson, Jim Hayward, Lovyss Bradley

“On the evening of June 8th, 1933, at the Yankee Stadium in the Bronx, New York City, Max Baer knocked out Max Schmelling in the tenth round of their scheduled fifteen-round fight. At the gate, $240,000. One hour later an armored truck left the stadium. It was on its way to the warehouse where the box office receipts would be kept until morning for deposit in the bank. As the truck turned onto Cromwell Avenue, a female pedestrian stepped off the curb. What was seemingly an accident was really the first step in a well-planned hold-up. A tear gas bomb dropped into the rear of the truck forced the guards out of the vehicle. Then, in complete silence, but with well-rehearsed precision, the transfer of the money began. The four members of the holdup gang were Doreen Maney, Glen Carson and the leader of the gang, Shiek Humphries. Picked up for this particular job was Jake Logan, triggerman.” Read More

Mar 24
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Three Thousand Suspects – Episode Review

By Episode Review, Season 1

THREE THOUSAND SUSPECTS


Airdate: March 24th, 1960
Written by Jerome Ross
Directed by John Peyser
Produced by Charles Russell
Director of Photography Charles Straumer
Special Guest Star Leslie Nielsen
Featuring Bruce Gordon, Mary Sinclair, Burt Freed, Peter Leeds, Ned Glass, James Flavin

“September, 1932; the federal penitentiary al Leavenworth, Kansas, 430 miles from Chicago. In this violent period, law enforcement had become a big game hunt. The quarry was the most dangerous marauder of them all: the big-time racketeer. For Eliot Ness and his Untouchables, the trophy room was a federal prison. And, one of their prizes was a man named Nick Segal. Because of collusion and protection in political circles, this vicious killer of at least six people was serving three years for violation of the Volstead Act. And, Nick Segal was now eligible for parole after serving one year of this sentence.” Read More