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Author Archives: Lisa Marie Bowman
An Offer You Can’t Refuse #6: King of the Roaring 20s: The Story of Arnold Rothstein (dir by Joseph M. Newman)
The 1961 gangster biopic, King of the Roaring ’20s: The Story of Arnold Rothstein, tells the story of two men.
David Janssen is Arnold Rothstein, the gambler-turned-millionaire crime lord who, in the early years of the 20th Century, was one of the dominant figures in American organized crime. Though he may be best-remembered for his alleged role in fixing the 1918 World Series, Rothstein also served as a mentor to men like Lucky Luciano, Meyer Lansky, and Bugsy Siegel. Rothstein was perhaps the first gangster to to treat crime like a business.
Mickey Rooney is Johnny Burke, Arnold’s best friend from childhood who grows up to be a low-level hood and notoriously unsuccessful gambler. Whereas Arnold is intelligent, cunning, and always calm, Johnny always seems to be a desperate. Whereas Arnold’s success is due to his ability to keep a secret, Johnny simply can’t stop talking.
Together …. THEY SOLVE CRIMES!
No, actually, they don’t. They both commit crimes, sometimes together and sometimes apart. Perhaps not surprisingly, Arnold turns out to be a better criminal than Johnny. In fact, Johnny is always in over his head. He often has to go to his friend Arnold and beg him for his help. Johnny does this even though Arnold continually tells him, “I only care about myself and money.”
The friendship between Arnold and Johnny is at the heart of King of the Roaring 20s, though it’s not much of a heart since every conversation they have begins with Johnny begging Arnold for help and ends with Arnold declaring that he only cares about money. At a certain point, it’s hard not to feel that Johnny is bringing a lot of this trouble on himself by consistently seeking help from someone who brags about not helping anyone. From the minute that the film begins, Arnold Rothstein’s mantra is that he only cares about money, gambling, and winning a poker game with a royal flush. Everything else — from his friendship to Johnny to his marriage to former showgirl Carolyn Green (Dianne Foster) to even his violent rivalry with crooked cop Phil Butler (Dan O’Herlihy) — comes second to his own greed. The film’s portrayal of Rothstein as being a single-minded and heartless sociopath may be a convincing portrait of the type of mindset necessary to be a successful crime lord but it hardly makes for a compelling protagonist.
Oddly enough, the film leaves out a lot of the things that the real-life Arnold Rothstein was best known for. There’s no real mention of Rothstein fixing the World Series. His mentorship to Luciano, Lansky, and Seigel is not depicted. The fact that Rothstein was reportedly the first gangster to realize how much money could be made off of bootlegging goes unacknowledged. By most reports, Arnold Rothstein was a flamboyant figure. (Meyer Wolfsheim, the uncouth gangster from The Great Gatsby, was reportedly based on him.) There’s nothing flamboyant about David Janssen’s performance in this film. He plays Rothstein as being a tightly-wound and rather unemotional businessman. It’s not a bad performance as much as it just doesn’t feel right for a character who, according to the film’s title, was the King of the Roaring 20s.
That said, there are still enough pleasures to be found in this film to make it worth watching. As if to make up for Janssen’s subdued performance, everyone else in the cast attacks the scenery with gusto. Mickey Rooney does a good job acting desperate and Dan O’Herlihy is effectively villainous as the crooked cop. Jack Carson has a few good scenes as a corrupt political fixer and Dianne Foster does the best that she can with the somewhat thankless role of Rothstein’s wife. The film moves quickly and, even if it’s not as violent as the typical gangster film, it does make a relevant point about how organized crime became a big business.
It’s not a great gangster film by any stretch of the imagination and the lead role is miscast but there’s still enough about this film that works to make it worth a watch for gangster movie fans.
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Music Video of the Day: Escape From New York by John Carpenter (2016, dir by John Carpenter)
Just to make clear, the video is from 2016. The song, of course, is from John Carpenter’s 1981 film, Escape From New York.
Enjoy!
An Offer You Can Refuse #5: The Happening (dir by Elliot Silverstein)
The 1967 film, The Happening, opens with two “young” people — Sureshot (Michael Parks) and Sandy (Faye Dunaway) — waking up on a Florida beach. The previous night, they attended a party so wild that the beach is full of passed out people, one of whom apparently fell asleep while standing on his head. (It’s a happening!) From the dialogue, we discover that, despite their impeccably clean-cut appearances, both Sureshot and Sandy are meant to be hippies.
After trying to remember whether or not they “made love” the previous night (wow, how edgy!), Sandy and Sureshot attempt to find their way off of the beach. As they walk along, they’re joined by two other partygoers. Taurus is played by George Maharis, who was 38 when this film was shot and looked about ten years older. Taurus is a tough guy who carries a gun and dreams of being a revolutionary and who says stuff like, “Bam! Et cetera!” Herbie is eccentric, thin, and neurotic and, presumably because Roddy McDowall wanted too much money, he’s played by Robert Walker, Jr.
Anyway, the four of them end up stealing a boat and talking about how life is a drag, man. Eventually, they end up breaking into a mansion and threatening the owner and his wife. Since this movie was made before the Manson murders, this is all played for laughs. The owner of the mansion is Roc Delmonico (Anthony Quinn). Roc used to be a gangster but now he’s a legitimate businessman. The “hippies” decide to kidnap Roc because they assume they’ll be able to get a lot of money for him.
The only problem is that no one is willing to pay the ransom!
Not Roc’s wife (Martha Hyer)!
Not Roc’s best friend (Milton Berle), who happens to be sleeping with Roc’s wife!
Not Roc’s former mob boss (Oscar Homolka)!
Roc gets so angry when he find out that no one wants to pay that he decides to take control of the kidnapping, He announces that he knows secrets about everyone who refused to pay any money for him and unless they do pay the ransom, he’s going to reveal them. We’ve gone from kidnapping to blackmail.
Along the way, Roc bonds with his kidnappers. He teaches them how to commit crimes and they teach him how to be anti-establishment or something. Actually, I’m not sure what they were supposed to have taught him. The Happening is a comedy that I guess was trying to say something about the divide between the young and the middle-aged but it doesn’t really have much of a message beyond that the middle-aged could stand to laugh a little more and that the young are just silly and kind of useless. Of course, the whole young/old divide would probably work better if all of the young hippies weren’t played by actors who were all either in their 30 or close enough to 30 to make their dorm room angst seem a bit silly.
It’s an odd film. The tone is all over the place and everyone seems to be acting in a different movie. Anthony Quinn actually gives a pretty good dramatic performance but his good performance only serves to highlight how miscast almost everyone else in the film is. Michael Parks comes across like he would rather be beating up hippies than hanging out with them while Faye Dunaway seems to be bored with the entire film. George Maharis, meanwhile, goes overboard on the Brando impersonation while Robert Walker, Jr. seems like he just needs someone to tell him to calm down.
But even beyond the weird mix of acting style, the film’s message is a mess. On the one hand, the “hippies” are presented as being right about the establishment being full of hypocritical phonies. On the other hand, the establishment is proven to be correct about the “hippies” being a bunch of easily distracted idiots. This is one of those films that wants to have it both ways, kind of like an old episode of Saved By The Bell where Mr. Belding learns to loosen up while Zack learns to respect authority. This is an offer that you can refuse.
And that’s what’s happening!
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Music Video of the Day: Cool by Gwen Stefani (2005, dir. by Sophie Muller)
I ain’t no hollaback girl …. I ain’t no hollaback girl ….
Oh wait, wrong Gwen Stafani song. This one’s Cool too, though. In fact, that’s the name of the song! It’s all about how Gwen used to date this guy but they broke up but they’re still cool, as in they’re still friends. In this video, Gwen proves just how cool she is by inviting her ex and his now lover to her Italian villa.
This video was filmed at Lake Como, Italy and the main reason I like it is because I like Italy and watching a video like this reminds me of how much I want to go back and visit Italy. That was kind of the plan for the second half of this year but then the COVID-19 panic hit and upended everything.
By the way, are we still doing the quarantine thing? It’s hard to keep track. I know that two weeks ago, people were threatening to throw me up against the wall for wanting to go outside. Now, they want to do the same thing because I don’t want to go out. Personally, I just want to know that I can safely travel to Italy.
Anyway, enjoy this video and hopefully, we’ll all get to travel again at some point in the near future!
An Offer You Can Refuse #4: The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight (dir by James Goldstone)
“Oh, fuck you.”
That was my reaction, last night, as I watched the 1971 film, The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight. I was talking to my DVR and yes, I was cursing quite a bit. You know that a film has to be bad when it actually drives me to start cursing at an inanimate object. The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight was so bad that I actually got pissed off at my DVR for recording it. It’s true that I am the one who scheduled the recording but still …. my DVR should have known better than to listen to me!
What is The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight about? I have no idea. I watched the damn movie and I have no idea what the point of it was. The film stars Jerry Orbach as a low-level gangster named Kid Sally. Kid Sally’s crew — the Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight — is made up of a collection of malcontents, morons, and other stereotypes. One member of the crew is a little person. That’s the joke. He’s a tough gangster who is wiling to put a bullet between your legs but that’s just because he’s crotch-height. Ha ha.
Anyway, the big boss is a guy named Baccala (Lionel Stander). Every morning, Baccala’s wife starts the car to check for bombs. Whenever she goes outside, Baccala crawls underneath the kitchen table and waits. Like a lot of the stuff in this movie, that’s one of those things that would be funny if it hadn’t been taken too such a cartoonish extreme. Anyway, Baccala has zero respect for Kid Sally and Kid Sally wants to take over Baccala’s rackets. Is it time for a mob war!?
Maybe. A lot of people die in various “amusing” ways over the course of the film but I was never quite sure whether or not the killings were part of a mob war or if they were just the type of random mishaps that occur when a bunch of dumbasses get their hands on a cache of weapons. Trying to follow the plot of The Gang Who Couldn’t Shoot Straight is next to impossible. The editing of the film is so ragged that you’re rarely aware of how one scene relates to another. If The Godfather showed how a gangster story could be a historical epic and if Goodfellas showed how an editor could recreate the kinetic experience of being a gangster, The Gang Who Couldn’t Shoot Straight shows how a mafia movie can just be a collection of random vignettes that may or may not be connected. It’s impossible to care about the potential war between Kid Sally and Baccala because neither Kid Sally nor Baccala exist as characters beyond their silly names.
A young Robert De Niro is in this film. He plays Mario, an Italian thief who comes to New York for a bicycle race and joins Kid Sally’s crew. Or at least, I think he joins the crew. It’s hard to tell. Mario often dresses like a priest, for some reason. He’s also fallen in love with Angela (Leigh Taylor-Young), who is Kid Sally’s sister though she could just as easily be his cousin or maybe his daughter-in-law from Tuscon. I wouldn’t necessarily say that De Niro gives a good performance here as much as it’s just impossible not to pay attention to him because he’s a young Robert De Niro. He and Leigh Taylor-Young do have a very sincere and touching chemistry but it’s out-of-place in a film that’s dominated by slapstick and scenes of Kid Sally using a lion to intimidate shop owners. (Yes, that happens.) De Niro certainly seems to be trying hard to give a good performance but he’s not a natural comedian. Of course, you don’t need me to tell you that. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, WE’VE ALL SEEN DIRTY GRANDPA!
Anyway, the main problem with this film is that it’s a comedy that was apparently put together by people who think that comedy involves a lot of screaming and silly music. I’ve actually seen a handful of other films that were directed by James Goldstone — Brother John, Rollercoaster, When Time Ran Out. Significantly, none of those other films were comedies and there’s nothing about any of Goldstone’s other films that suggest that he was anything more than a director-for-hire. The film itself was written by Waldo Salt, who also worked on the scripts for Midnight Cowboy, Coming Home, and Serpico. Again, none of those films are particularly funny. 70s era Mel Brooks probably could have made this into a funny film but James Goldstone and Waldo Salt could not.
As bad as The Gang Who Couldn’t Shoot Straight is, it is also the answer to a very interesting trivia question. This is the film that Al Pacino dropped out of when he was cast as Michael Corleone in The Godfather. The actor who replaced Pacino was Robert De Niro.
Anyway, The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight is an offer you can refuse.
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Music Video of the Day: Shut Up! by Simple Plan (2005, dir by Eric White)
We should get so lucky.
Enjoy!
An Offer You Can’t Refuse #3: The Purple Gang (dir by Frank McDonald)
The 1960 gangster film, The Purple Gang, really took me by surprise.
The film opens with U.S. Rep. James Roosevelt standing in front of his desk. James Roosevelt was the son of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. He was a notoriously shady businessman who, before entering politics, dabbled a bit in Hollywood. That probably explains how he eventually came to be standing in his congressional office, filming the introduction for a low-budget B-movie about Detroit gangsters. Roosevelt tells us that he’s already watched the movie that we’re about to see and that he can assure us that it is an accurate portrayal of not just the history of The Purple Gang but also of how 1920s bootlegging led to a host of other crimes. Roosevelt goes on to compare bootleggers to modern day drug pushers. The most interesting thing about the speech is that it almost sounds like a defense of prohibition, the law that FDR famously opposed.
To use a term from the film’s era, it’s kind of a square opening. James Roosevelt comes across as being so vacuously earnest that it’s almost as if Beto O’Rourke got his hands on a time machine and went back to 1960. At the same time, there’s something oddly charming about how awkward it is. One can only imagine how audiences would react if a film today opened with a speech from a congressperson. I guess some parts of the country would love it. Down here in Texas, the theater would probably get set on fire.
Now, based on that less than edgy opening, you might be justified in expecting that The Purple Gang will just be your standard 1960s crime thriller but it most definitely is not. The Purple Gang is a tough and violet movie, one that is full of shadowy and sometimes disturbing imagery. A very young Robert Blake plays Honeyboy Willard, a teenage hoodlum who, through pure sociopathic ruthlessness, takes over the rackets in Detroit. Barry Sullivan is Lt. Harley, the police detective whose quest to bring down the Purple Gang leads to him losing almost everything that was important to him.
Our first impression of Lt. Harley comes when he skeptically listens to a liberal social worker, Joan McNamara (Jody Lawrance), explain that criminals are not born but are instead made by their circumstances. Harley obviously doesn’t agree. Later, while Joan is walking around Detroit at night, she is attacked, rape,d and then murdered by the same criminals that she was earlier defending. With the city outraged over Joan’s murder, Lt. Harley steps up his efforts to bring down the gang so Honeyboy murders Harley’s pregnant wife.
While Harley seeks revenge, Honeyboy is busy making deals with Canadian liquor distributors and building the Purple Gang into the biggest criminal enterprise in the northern midwest. When a group of distraught businessmen, upset at being extorted by the Purple Gang, turns to the Mafia for help, Honeyboy declares war….
Of course, despite James Roosevelt’s assurance at the start of the film and the semi-documentary approach that director Frank McDonald takes to the material, the truth is far different from the movie. In real life, The Purple Gang was predominantly made up of the children of recent immigrants from Russia and Poland. It was run not by Honeyboy Willard but by the four Bernstein brothers. The Purple Gang did not go to war with the Mafia but instead, they were allied with Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky in their attempts to create a national crime syndicate. They were also closely allied with Al Capone, to the extent that it’s been suggested that Capone used Purple Gang gunmen to carry out the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. The Purple Gang eventually fell apart due to infighting and the end of prohibition, with the majority of the members who weren’t in jail simply joining other gangs.
So, no, The Purple Gang is not historically accurate but it’s still an effective and surprisingly brutal gangster film. The noirish photography makes certain scenes seem almost as if they’ve been lifted straight out of a nightmare and, historically accurate or not, the film does do a good job of showing how organized crime came to exist in the United States. It’s a quick-paced and energetic film and it features a great performance from Robert Blake as the chillingly sociopathic Honeyboy. The Purple Gang is a low-budget B-movie that packs a punch.
Plus, James Roosevelt did ask you to watch. Are you going to say no to James Roosevelt?
James Roosevelt, film critic
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Music Video of the Day: REALiTi by Grimes (2015, dir by Grimes)
It occurred to me that I have yet to congratulate Elon Musk and Grimes on the birth of little X Æ A-Xii. It’s interesting to note that Elon and Grimes first discovered each other on twitter, where they independently came up with the same pun. Personally, my favorite pun has always been, “If it’s not baroque, don’t fix it.”
Enjoy!
An Offer You Can’t Refuse #2: Scarface (dir by Howard Hawks)
Before there was Tony Montana …. there was Tony Camonte!
And, of course, before there was Tony Camonte, there was Al Capone. The 1932 film Scarface was one of the many gangster movies to be based on the life of Al Capone. Capone and Tony Camonte even share the same nickname, though — unlike Camonte — Capone hated being called Scarface. On the other hand, as played by the charismatic and cocky Paul Muni, Tony Camonte wears his scar like a badge of honor. He says that he got his scar serving in the war. His best friend, Guino (George Raft, a real-life gangster associate who became a star as a result of his performance in this film), says that the scar is the result of a bar fight.
In many ways, that scar tells you almost everything you need to know about Tony Camonte. If you can look away from the scar, he’s a handsome and charismatic figure. But when you see the scar, you’re reminded that his life is about violence. Everything that Tony has is due to his violent nature and it’s somewhat inevitable that his end will also be due to that violence, not to mention his obsession with his sister, Cesca (Ann Dvorak). It’s not just Tony’s face that’s scarred. It’s his soul as well.
The film follows Tony, from his early days of working as a gunman for Johnny Lovo (Osgood Perkins) to his eventual usurpation of Lovo’s place as the king of the underworld. Tony not only takes over Lovo’s rackets but he also goes after Lovo’s girlfriend, the glamorous Poppy (Karen Morley). The well-bred Poppy may be dismissive of Tony’s ambitions but, as Tony shows her, he lives in the glow of a neon sign that announces, “The World Is Yours.” That’s something that Tony truly believes and, for a while, the world is his. He’s done with a gun what other do with lawyer and a clever accountant. He’s achieved the American dream and he has the money and the beautiful lover to prove it. Only for a while, though. You reap what you sow.
The film recreates many scenes from Al Capone’s life. One of Tony’s rivals is gunned down in a flower shop, much as happened to Dean O’Bannion when he challenged Capone’s power. At another point, two of Tony’s men dress up like policemen and gun down rival gangsters, just as happened during the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. The script was written by Ben Hecht, a Chicago native who had actually met Capone. When Capone heard that Hecht was writing a film called Scarface, he sent two men to find out what the film was about. Hecht assured them that the film was not about Capone but was instead a parody of the gangster genre. Hecht was left alone but the fact that Capone was worried about his public image is quite a contrast to more recent stories about made men studying The Godfather, Goodfellas, and The Sopranos for tips on how to go about their business. Of course, the film was made before Capone’s anticlimatic downfall so it’s not a combination of tax evasion and syphilis that ends Tony Camonte’s reign of terror. Camonte goes out in a much more dramatically satisfying manner.
It’s a violent film. It was a violent film for 1932 and, in some scenes, it’s a violent film for even today. I’ve read that director Howard Hawks used live ammunition in the scenes that featured guns being fired. In many of the scenes in which someone is portrayed as running for their lives, the actors in question were literally running and ducking for their lives. Luckily, the cast survived making the film, though it’s been said that one crew member lost an eye. Paul Muni went on to have a very distinguished film career, one that inspired future acting greats like John Garfield, Montgomery Clift, and Marlon Brando. Despite his star-making turn as Muni’s best friend, George Raft’s career was not quite as distinguished, as he ended up turning down a chance to star in Casablanca. Osgood Perkins’s son, Tony, would become a horror icon when he played Norman Bates. And Boris Karloff went from portraying a bowling gangster in this film to playing the Monster in Frankenstein.
And, of course, the legacy of Scarface lives on, thanks to the 1983 remake starring Al Pacino. There’s a third remake on the way, reportedly from Luca Guadagnino, who I guess decided that since he got away with tarnishing the legacy of Suspiria, he might as well go after another classic cult film. Both versions of Scarface are rightly known as being classics of the gangster genre. The 1983 version is great but so is the original.
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