Murder, Inc. (film)

Murder Inc.

Title from the trailer
Directed by Burt Balaban
Stuart Rosenberg
Produced by Burt Balaban
Written by Burton Turkus
Sid Feder
Screenplay by Mel Barr
Irve Tunick
Based on Murder, Inc. (book) by Burton Turkus & Sid Feder
Starring Stuart Whitman
May Britt
Henry Morgan
Peter Falk
Music by Frank De Vol
Cinematography Gayne Rescher
Edited by Ralph Rosenblum
Distributed by Twentieth Century-Fox
Release dates
 June 28, 1960 (1960-06-28)
Running time
 103 minutes
Country United States
Language English

Murder, Inc. is a 1960 American gangster film starring Stuart Whitman, May Britt, Henry Morgan, Peter Falk, and Simon Oakland. The Cinemascope movie was directed by Burt Balaban and Stuart Rosenberg. The screenplay was based on the true story of Murder Inc., a Brooklyn gang that operated in the 1930s.[1]

Falk plays Abe Reles, a vicious thug who led the Murder Inc. gang and was believed to have committed thirty murders, for which he was never prosecuted.[2] The film was the first major feature role for Falk, who was nominated for a best supporting actor Academy Award for his performance. In his 2006 autobiography, Just One More Thing, Falk said that Murder Inc. launched his career.[3]

The movie was the first film directed by Rosenberg, who later won acclaim for films that included Cool Hand Luke (1967), and also launched Stuart Whitman's career as a leading man.

A more highly fictionalized film on the same basic events, The Enforcer (1951), starring Humphrey Bogart, was released in the United Kingdom with the title Murder, Inc.

Plot summary

Abe Reles (Peter Falk) and Bug Workman (Warren Finnerty), two killers from Brooklyn's Brownsville district, meet in the Garment District to meet with Louis "Lepke" Buchalter, kingpin of an organized crime mob, who hires them as the syndicate's hit men.[4]

Their first job is to kill Walter Sage (Morey Amsterdam), a Catskill resort owner who has been holding back slot machine profits from Lepke. To get close to Sage, Reles forces singer Joey Collins (Stuart Whitman), an old crony of Sage who owes Reles money, to help him. Reles and his henchman kill Sage. Reles visits Joey and threatens to kill him and his dancer wife Eadie (May Britt) if they tell anyone about the murder. Eadie throws Reles out. Reles later returns to the apartment when Joey is gone and brutally rapes her. Despite her urging Joey refuses to run away, and this causes him and Eadie to split up.[4]

Reles continues to carry out assassinations at Lepke's direction. Reles reconciles with the couple by giving them a luxurious apartment filled with stolen goods. Under police pressure, Lepke hides out from the police at Joey and Eadie's new apartment. He treats Eadie like a maid.[4]

District Attorney Burton Turkus (Henry Morgan) takes over the law enforcement campaign against Murder, Inc., enlisting local Brownsville police detective Tobin (Simon Oakland). Lepke orders the death of the entire Brownsville gang as well as Joey and Eadie. Eadie visits Turkus and becomes an informant, as does Joey. He then confronts Reles, who has been arrested, in his cell, and threatens to testify against him. In fear of that, Reles agrees to testify against Lepke in exchange for reduced charges. He provides a detailed account of the activities of Murder, Inc.[4]

Turkus puts Joey and Reles in protective custody and hides them at the Half Moon Hotel in Coney Island. Eadie comes to visit Joey, imploring him to testify against Lepke. Joey is reluctant, fearing the mob will kill Eadie in revenge. Despondent, Eadie slips her police escort and wanders alone on the beachfront, where she is murdered. Later that night, Reles is thrown out the window by an assassin. Joey avenges his wife's death by testifying against Lepke, who is executed.[4]

Cast

The film was the screen debut of Sylvia Miles, Seymour Cassel and Sarah Vaughan. Vincent Gardenia, who later became an acclaimed actor for his performance in Moonstruck, plays a small role.[1]

Background

Twentieth Century-Fox based Murder, Inc. on a book of the same title by Burton Turkus, which was published in 1951. It is similar in style to the popular TV series The Untouchables, which may have inspired the studio to make the movie.[5] Murder, Inc. is more factual than The Enforcer, and uses real names.[5]

The story of the Murder, Inc. crime group was first told on the screen in the Warner Brothers film The Enforcer, a semi-fictional film that was released as "Murder, Inc." overseas. The film starred Humphrey Bogart, in his last role for the studio, as a crusading district attorney in the mold of Turkus. A Lepke-type character was played by Everett Sloane. Ted De Corsia played a character loosely based on Reles. The films differ in that Murder, Inc. is factual and dealt with a Mafia kingpin's establishment of a contract murder organization within that framework and The Enforcer is fictional and had a free-lance group willing to work for anyone, in or out of the mob. The 1951 film begins with De Corsia falling off a ledge, despite Bogart's attempt to save him, and includes gruesome scenes based on fact.[5]

Production notes

Murder Inc. was filmed in and around New York City, and the cast consisted largely of actors from the off-Broadway theater. Peter Falk recalled in his autobiography Just One More Thing that the film was "no big deal for Twentieth Century Fox. They hired second-tier stars, nobody had ever heard of them. The cast of off-Broadway stage actors, including me, came cheap. A few dollars a week and a bag of peanuts." [3]

Robert Evans, who later became head of production at Paramount Pictures Corporation but at the time was a young actor, was offered the part of Reles and turned it down. In an interview with The Guardian in 2002, Evans said:

I was hot as an actor for a few minutes and I turned down parts that got guys nominated for Academy Awards. For example, there was a picture called Murder, Inc which was to star Stuart Whitman, May Britt and myself. I said, "If I'm not going to lead, then I'm not going to play the part." and got a suspension. And they hired an actor who had never been north of 14th Street in New York and had never been to Hollywood - this guy called Peter Falk. And he was nominated for the part that I went on suspension for.[6]

Falk said that "for me, Murder Inc. was more than a big deal – it was a miracle. Like being touched from above. Of all the thousands of obscure actors, they picked me." Were it not for being cast in the film, he said, he would not have been cast in his subsequent films A Pocketful of Miracles (1961) and Robin and the Seven Hoods (1964). He said Murder Inc. "made my career." Had he not been selected to portray Reles, he said, he would still be in the off-Broadway theater.[3]

Falk chose his wardrobe for the film from second-hand clothing stores, going from store to store until he got the right coat and hat, to give him the "East Coast 'wise guy' look." He patterned his performance as Reles on would-be gangsters whom he knew in his youth at a pool hall called McGuire's. "I had a real feel for these guys - the way they talked - the gestures - the whole package." Falk said that he rewrote the part, and that Rosenberg gave him the latitude to depart from the script.[3]

According to Falk, production of the movie was accelerated because of an impending actor's strike. Rosenberg was fired and replaced by Balaban, who had no experience as a director. Falk said that Balaban "stayed out of the way" while the crew and cast did their jobs.[3] In a 2005 study of gangster movies, Bullets Over Hollywood, film scholar John McCarty said that the "presence of two helmsmen may explain the uneven qualities of the film," in which scenes of powerful impact are "offset by long expanses of unexciting celluloid."[5]

Production of the movie took place up to the very last moments before commencement of the actor's strike. The last scene to be shot was the murder of Walter Sage, portrayed by Morey Amsterdam. Because of the shortage of time, the scene, which was set in the Catskill Mountains, was shot right outside the studio on 126th Street in Harlem. The Sage execution was filmed just minutes before the start of the strike at midnight.[3]

Critical reaction

New York Times film critic Bosley Crowther dismissed the movie as a "new screen telling of an old story." Crowther singled out Falk's "amusingly vicious performance," and that when he appears "there is a certain dark frightfulness and terror" in the film." But "otherwise the traffic is that of an average gangster film that slacks off too much for proper tension and runs a great deal too long." Crowther praised the other leading performances but said that Morgan, a radio and TV personality known mainly for his sharp wit, "does better when he is telling jokes."[7]

Describing Falk's performance, Crowther wrote:

Mr. Falk, moving as if weary, looking at people out of the corners of his eyes and talking as if he had borrowed Marlon Brando's chewing gum, seems a travesty of a killer, until the water suddenly freezes in his eyes and he whips an icepick from his pocket and starts punching holes in someone's ribs. Then viciousness pours out of him and you get a sense of a felon who is hopelessly cracked and corrupt." [7]

More recent reviewers have generally praised Falk's performance, but have not lavished much praise on the movie itself, with commentators divided on the film's semidocumentary style. A 1986 study of films as art praised the film's "journalistic thoroughness" and "teledramatic immediacy." Falk's performance, it said, "is one of the grittiest portrayals of the primitivism of an underworld henchman on film; the supporting relationships of Whitman's cowardly, acquiescent innocent and May Britt's beleaguered wife perversely juxtaposed to the unusual pathos generated by the crime boss and his aide delineate the glumness of the crime world with few concessions to moral righteousness."[8]

In their 1997 book Crime Movies, film historian Carlos Clarens compared Murder Inc. unfavorably to Samuel Fuller's Underworld USA (1961), which was released at about the same time, on the grounds that it stuck too closely to the facts. Falk, he said, delivered a "miscalculated comic performance" as Reles, and "the power and resonance of The Enforcer was missing, chiefly because the facts tyrannized the weak screenplay." In contrast, they said, Underworld USA was a "free and colorful fiction" that "packed the visual and dramatic wallop of an atrocity photo in the National Enquirer."[9]

After release of the movie on DVD, DVD Review called Murder Inc. "an entertaining, if somewhat trifling, piece of violent fluff." It said "Peter Falk walks away with the movie anyway. Falk was nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Academy Award for this film, and it is easy to see why. He imbues his role with the sleazy charisma and rugged charm that would later become his trademark on the long-running 'Columbo.'"[10] Another reviewer said in 2001 that "the best thing about the film was Falk's tough-guy performance. Otherwise, everything was routine."[11]

In 2005, film scholar John McCarty praised Falk's performance and David J. Stewart's "reptilian" Lepke, and says "the film belongs to Stewart and Falk; as with Daniel Day-Lewis in Gangs of New York, it is mostly when they are on the screen that this minor but engaging docudrama about the mob's ugly but profitable murder-for-hire business really cooks."[5]

The stylistic score by Frank De Vol was well received.

Awards and nominations

Falk was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance as Reles. It was the movie's only Academy Award nomination. The winner was Peter Ustinov for his portrayal of a slave merchant in the Stanley Kubrick film Spartacus.[12]

Falk unsuccessfully campaigned for the award. In a 1997 interview with writer Arthur Marx, Falk said that the idea of campaigning for the award was suggested by Sal Mineo, but that he didn't take the idea seriously until it was suggested by Abe Lastfogel, head of the William Morris Agency. He hired a press agent "and what do you know – I got nominated." [13] Falk described what happened at the award ceremonies as follows:

"Now we're in our seats; the press agent, Judd Bernard, is seated on my right. It's my category and I heard a voice say, 'And the winner is Peter...' I'm rising out of my seat. '...Ustinov.' I'm heading back down. When I hit the seat, I turn to the press agent: 'You're fired.' I didn't want him charging me for another day."[13]

See also

References

  1. 1 2 "Murder Inc. (1960)". Internet Movie Database. Retrieved 2009-01-31.
  2. ↑ Murders In The United States: Crimes, Killers And Victims Of The Twentieth Century. McFarland & Company. ISBN 0-7864-2075-8.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Falk, Peter (2006). Just One More Thing. Carroll & Graf Publishers. p. 76.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 "Murder Inc. (1960 ) Overview". TCM.com. Turner Classic Movies. Retrieved 2009-01-31.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 McCarty, John (2005). Bullets Over Hollywood: The American Gangster Picture from the Silents to "The Sopranos". Da Capo Press. pp. 212–213. ISBN 978-0-306-81429-7.
  6. ↑ Benedict, David (2002-11-16). "Guardian/NFT Interview: Robert Evans". The Guardian. Retrieved 2009-02-01.
  7. 1 2 Crowther, Bosley (1960-06-29). "Screen: 'Murder, Inc.':Story of Brooklyn Mob Retold at the Victoria". The New York Times. Retrieved 2009-01-31.
  8. ↑ Sultanik, Aaron (1986). Film: A Modern Art. Associated University Presses. pp. 210–211. ISBN 978-0-8453-4752-2.
  9. ↑ Clarens, Carlos; Foster Hirsch (1997). Crime Movies. Da Capo Press. pp. 255–256. ISBN 978-0-306-80768-8.
  10. ↑ Gonzalez, Felix. "Murder Inc.". DVD Review. Retrieved 2009-02-01.
  11. ↑ Schwartz, Dennis. "Murder Inc.". Ozus' World Movie Reviews. Retrieved 2009-02-01.
  12. ↑ "1960 Academy Award Winners". Filmsite.org. Retrieved 2009-02-02.
  13. 1 2 Marx, Arthur (November–December 1997). "Talk with Falk". Cigar Aficionado. Retrieved 2009-02-02.

External links

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