Elaine Edwards | Through the Shattered Lens

Guns, Girls, and Gangsters! The title of this 1958 film pretty much sums it all up.

Now, technically, I guess you could debate whether or not the criminals in this film really qualify as gangsters. When I hear the term “gangster,” I tend to think of the big Mafia chieftains, like Al Capone and the Kennedys. Maybe it’s because I’ve seen The Godfather too many times but I always associate gangsters with wealth, big mansions, elaborate weddings, and aging crooners who need someone to chop off a horse’s head in order to get a role in From Here To Eternity. However, the gangsters in this film are all basically small-time criminals. One of them does own a nightclub but it’s not a very impressive nightclub. If anything, they’re wannabe gangsters. However, Guns, Girls, and Wannabes just doesn’t have the same ring to it.

Chuck Wheeler (Gerald Mohr) has a plan. He wants to rob an armored car. It’s a Vegas armored car, so of course it’s going to be full of money and since Michael Corleone killed Moe Greene three years before, there shouldn’t be too many repercussions from hijacking it. (Sorry, I’m still thinking about The Godfather.) To enlist the aid of a nightclub owner, he enlists the aid of a singer named Vi (Mamie Van Doren). Vi just happens to be the wife of Chuck’s former prison cellmate, Mike (Lee Van Cleef). Vi has been demanding a divorce for a while but Mike won’t grant it because he’s insanely jealous. He probably wouldn’t be happy to find out that Chuck and Vi are now a couple but, fortunately, he’s locked up.

Except, of course, Mike escapes from prison around the same time that Chuck and the gang manage to hijack that armored car. As you can guess, this leads to mayhem and havoc. That’s where the guns of the title come into play….

Guns, Girls, and Gangsters is an entertaining little B-noir. It’s only 70 minutes long so the film doesn’t waste any time getting to the action. (There’s also a narrator who serves to fill in any plot holes and to keep the audience entertained with his rather self-important delivery.) Gerald Mohr is a bit on the dull side as Chuck but you better believe that Lee Van Cleef is 100% menacing and oddly charismatic as the as the always angry Mike. Van Cleef brings a charge of very real danger to the film. (Perhaps he’s the gangster that the title was referring to, though I would still think of him as being more of an outlaw than a gangster.) And, of course, you’ve got Mamie Van Doren, playing yet another tough dame in dangerous circumstances. Van Doren gets to perform two musical numbers in Guns, Girls, and Gangsters and they both have a low-rent Vegas charm to them. Watching this film, it occurred to me that Van Doren may not have been a great actress but she had the perfect attitude for films like this. She played characters who did what they had to to do survive and who made no apologies for it and it’s impossible not to be on her side when she’s having to deal with creeps like Chuck or sociopaths like Mike.

Guns, Girls, and Gangsters is an entertaining B-noir. There’s enough tough talk, cynical scheming, and deadly double crosses to keep noir fans happy.

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?