Film Review: The FBI Story (dir by Mervyn LeRoy)

Posted on May 1, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

In 1959’s The FBI Story, veteran FBI agent Chip Hardesty (James Stewart) delivers a lecture to a group of new FBI recruits. He tells them the story of both the FBI and his time as a member of the agency. Somewhat implausibly, it turns out that Chip was involved with nearly every major FBI operation, as we discover while watching this flashback-filled, episodic film.

Battling the Ku Klux Klan in the Deep South? Chip was there.

Investigating the Oklahoma Indian murders? Chip was not only there but he was also the one who solved them through handwriting analysis! (Decades later, the crimes and the investigation would serve as the basis of Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon.)

During the public enemy era, Chip was there. He was there when Baby Face Nelson killed several unarmed FBI agents, including Chip’s best friend (Murray Hamilton). He was there when John Dillinger was gunned down in Chicago. He was there when my distant ancestor “Pretty Boy” Floyd was killed in Ohio. He wasn’t there when J. Edgar Hoover personally arrested Alvin Karpis or when “Machine Gun” Kelly said, “Don’t shoot, G-Man!” but Chip still makes sure to tell the recruits about it. He also talks about the gunfight that killed Ma Barker, presented her as being a machine gun-toting madwoman.

Chip investigates subversives during World War II and helped to round up Americans of German and Japanese descent during the internment era. (Chip insists that they weren’t rounded up because of their ancestry but because the FBI had gotten reports that they might be disloyal.) When the war wraps up, Chip turns his attention to fighting the international communist conspiracy and good for him. (Communism sucks!)

Strangely enough, it appears that Chip also tells the recruits a good deal about his personal life because we certainly do see a lot of it. Chip marries a librarian named Lucy (Vera Miles), who struggles with the demands of being an FBI agent’s wife but who ultimately accepts that Chip has to do his duty. Sometimes, Lucy wants Chip to quit and sometimes, Chip is tempted to get out. But they always remember that Chip and the FBI have a job to do. They raise a family. They lose a son at Iwo Jima. Their faith in God and country remains undiminished.

The FBI Story was made with the full cooperation of the FBI, with J. Edgar Hoover personally approving the script and making suggestions. Hoover even appeared as himself in the film, accepting a report about an airplane bombing with a grim look on his face. At one point, Chip is prepared to quit the FBI until he hears a speech from Hoover and he’s so inspired that he keeps his resignation letter tucked away in his suit pocket. Since this film came out in 1959, there’s no details of the FBI tapping the phones of Martin Luther King or Hoover collecting dirt on his political opponents. Instead, The FBI Story is pure propaganda, your reminder that law enforcement never makes mistakes and civil liberties can be always be sacrificed for the greater good.

It’s simplistic propaganda and it’s overlong and it promotes a few falsehoods as facts. (Despite what the film says, Pretty Boy Floyd had nothing to do with the Kansas City Massacre and most historians agree that Ma Barker was not the criminal mastermind that Hoover made her out to be after she was caught in the crossfire between her sons and law enforcement.) The film rather casually dismisses the concern over the World War II internments of American citizens. To me, something like that is a big deal but the film insists to us that it was all blown out of proportion. That’s the one moment when not even the film itself seems to be totally sold on what it’s selling.

Fortunately, the film stars the ever-reliable James Stewart, who brings his natural mix of charm and gravity to the role of Chip Hardesty. Stewart was a bit too old to play Chip as a bumbling young man in the early part of the film but, as the character grows up, so does Stewart’s performance. The scene where he and Vera Miles learn that his son has been killed in combat feels like it’s from a different and far better movie. I guess my point here is that James Stewart was one of those actors who could make even questionable material watchable and that’s certainly what he does with The FBI Story. The FBI, at a time when Hoover was aging and the excesses of the McCarthy era had left many Americans uneasy about the government, decides to borrow James Stewart’s credibility to boost their own. You may not like the FBI but how can you not love Jimmy Stewart?

The FBI Story came out the same year as one of Stewart’s best films, Anatomy of a Murder, a film that was a complicated as The FBI Story was simplistic. Stewart gives one of his best performances in Anatomy of a Murder, playing the type of character that Chip Hardesty probably wouldn’t want to have much to do with. With these two films, Stewart showed us both sides of the American justice system, the men who are tasked with enforcing the law and, even more importantly, the men who are tasked with making sure that law was enforced fairly. Whichever side your on, you have to be happy to have Jimmy Stewart there.

30 Days of Noir #7: The Sniper (dir by Edward Dmytryk)

Posted on November 7, 2018 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Halfway through the chilling 1952 film, The Sniper, there’s a scene in which a woman is seen standing on the rooftop of a San Francisco apartment building. She’s nonchalantly hanging laundry. When she steps to the side, we suddenly see that there’s a man standing on the next rooftop over. And he’s holding a rifle.

Fortunately, in this case, the man is a policeman. He’s one of several cops who have been ordered to stand on rooftops with their weapons drawn and to keep an eye on the city below. There’s a killer on the loose and the city is demanding that the police capture him. And yet, even with a city that’s caught in the grip of fear and even with heavily armed men watching everything going on in the streets, life goes on. People go to bars. People go to work. Couples stroll in the park. And one woman hangs her laundry to dry on the rooftop of an apartment building.

Suddenly, the policeman spots someone on another rooftop, a man who isn’t supposed to be there. He’s a young guy, carrying what looks like a rifle. The police quickly rush to the rooftop where they arrest the young man. Have they caught the sniper who has been terrorizing San Francisco?

The police think that they have their man but we know that they don’t. We know that the sniper is a guy named Eddie Miller (Arthur Franz). Eddie is a delivery man. He’s handsome but, from the minute we first see him, we can tell that there’s something off about him. He stumbles through life, keeping his head down and rarely speaking to anyone. The few times he does attempt to smile, it’s painfully awkward. He’s someone who is struggling to convince the people of San Francisco that he’s one of them but the more he tries, the more of an outsider he seems to be. In fact, the only time that we see Eddie truly happy is when he goes to a carnival and comes across a dunk tank. Over and over again, he throws a baseball and cause the woman inside to be submerged in cold water.

At first, Eddie tries to deal with his bad thoughts by deliberately burning his hand on an electric stove. When he goes to the emergency room, he asks the attending doctor why he would do something like that but the doctor is soon distracted by another patient. With his hand bandaged, Eddie goes on a shooting spree, targeting brunette women.

This dark film is fairly evenly divided, between Eddie, the cops that are trying to catch him, and the psychiatrist who tries to explain him. Not surprisingly, the cops, led by the appropriately named Lt. Kafka (Adolphe Menjou), aren’t particularly interested in what makes the sniper tick. They just want to get him off the street. However, Dr. James Kent (Richard Kiley) is convinced that the only way to stop not only this killer but others is to understand what’s going on inside of his mind. The differences between Kafka and Kent’s approaches are most obvious in a scene in which every registered sex offender in San Francisco is paraded into a squad room full of jeering cops. While the detectives taunt the offenders that they know, the offender that they don’t know prepares to kill yet again.

The Sniper was directed by Edward Dmytryk, who previously directed the Oscar-nominated (and superficially similar) Crossfire. This was Dmytryk’s first film after his career was temporarily derailed by his refusal to testify before the House Unamerican Activities Committee. (He later changed his mind and named names while testifying about his time as a member of the Community Party.) Interestingly enough, top-billed Adolphe Menjou was one of the leaders of the anti-communist Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals, a prominent supporter of the blacklist that Dmytryk had narrowly escaped.

Filmed in a black-and-white, documentary style, The Sniper is a chilling and disturbing film. When Eddie stalks through the city at night, the dark shadows that he casts against the walls of empty alleyways and closed storefronts serve to remind us that men like Eddie could be lurking anywhere, unseen and unknown. During the day scenes, the harshly bright lighting reminds us of just how vulnerable we are. If the night provides too many places to hide, the day provides too few. Arthur Franz gives a disturbingly credible performance as Eddie. While he plays Eddie as being obviously troubled, he also suggests how someone like Eddie has managed to survive without getting exposed. Menjou is properly cynical as the world weary Kafka while Richard Kiley brings some needed passion and anger to the film’s most talky scenes. The film ends on a note of melancholy ambiguity, leaving it to us to make up our own mind about how to deal with the Eddie Millers of the world.

Horror on TV: Twilight Zone 2.28 “Will The Real Martin Please Stand Up?”

Posted on October 10, 2014 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Tonight’s episode of The Twilight Zone examines what happens when a freak snow storm breaks out, a bus makes a stop at a late night diner, and reports come in of a UFO landing somewhere in the area. The fun starts once the bus driver realizes that he has an extra passenger. Who is the alien? Or, any other words: Will the real Martian please stand up? This episode is a classic example of how a group of strangers trapped in one location can be used to generate a lot of suspense. It has a great ending as well!

This episode was originally broadcast on May 26th, 1961. It was written by Rod Serling and directed by Montgomery Pittman.