The Untouchables (TV Series) The Frank Nitti Story (1960) User Reviews

The Last Show of the Season and They Killed Off Frank Nitti! What's a Crime Fan To Do?

[redryan64 · 7/10 · 18 July 2007]

As a one week's segment of this series, THE UNTOUCHABLES this episode, "The Frank Nitti Story" surely was a dream of a teleplay for the viewer and for the working thespians out there in Hollywood. It is fast paced, action-packed and literate. It has the distinction of having quite a bit of outdoor filmed scenes, at both day and night.

We have the pleasure of seeing a lot more of the evil man himself, "The Enforcer" Frank Nitti. Yeah, Frank (Bruce Gordon) and his silent partner in crime, Louie Campagna (Frank DeKova) are very much in evidence all through the story. Frank does most of the hitting and extortion work himself.

We had the pleasure of meeting Bruce Gordon as well as Untouchables Paul Picerni, Abel Fernandez and Nick Georgiade at a Bud Courts' Hollywood Collectibles Show, right here in Chicgo several years ago.In the course of discussion, the subject of their having Nitti killed in the Subway-before we had a Subway in Chicago came up.* He also got to the point of his objecting to being killed off and hence out of work, as Nitti anyway. He said that they said not to worry as the series was episodic, but not a continuity as some others were. The Producers assured him that he would be back. He was for a whole buncha shows too! One really likable point of this episode is the great use of a great number of screen veterans. Dick Foran plays a local executive of a nation-wide chain of Movie Houses. Frankie Albertson is a reporter for Variety, no less. Harry Harvey has the part of a Theatre chain owner.Myron McCormick (perhaps best known as Sgt. King Nemesis to Andy Griffith's Will Stockdale in NO TIME FOR SERGEANTS 1957.) plays a crooked underworld attorney. And lastly, lovely Starlet, Phyllis Coates, TV's 1st Lois Lane and (woo,woo,woo,woo!) a real 'Hot' Lady is a 'girlfriend' to a sort of Gangster Wannabee.

Just one more point, if you please. This show has one of the Untouchables Team getting killed. Agent Cameron Allison (Anthony George)gets killed by machine gun fire as he jumps in the way of the flying lead. But, no mind, Mr. George went on to co-star in detective series, CHECKMATE. He was replaced with our friend, Paul Picerni as Agent Lee Hobson.

* In reality, Frank Nitti died at his own hand in 1943, about a full decade or so after the time line in the story. He killed himself with a pistol, in the Chicago Suburb of Summit, Illinois. It was in the train yards there, about 3/4 of a mile from where this is being written, namely my house.

** The series had a real succession of people in the role of "Second Banana." Starting with the character of former Boston Policeman, Agent Martin Flaherty. It was Bill Williams in the role on the Desilu Playhouse Untouchbles 2 Parter. Bill was succeeded by Jerry Paris who took the part for THE UNTOUCHABLES Series.

It was Anthony George as Agent Cameron Allison who took the 1st Deputy Assistant to Elliot. The final 'straight man' for Ness was our old friend, was Paul Picerni as Agent Lee Hobson, who came 'on board' in the 2nd Season and remaining as an active Untouchable. Oddly enough Paul Picerni's role was as a hood in the Desilu Playhouse Untouchables 2 Parter.

Bruce Gordon, the best of the gangsters

[voacor · 8/10 · 8 September 2007]

I watched these shows as a kid and I always loved it when Bruce Gordon was on playing Frank Nitti in his dark pinstriped suit. His voice, his sneer, his general bearing all told you this guy was the real boss.

He was in the first show, "The Empty Chair," and had a great scene firing a Tommy gun into a couple of associates in a barber shop. But most of the time he was the big man chomping a cigar in his office and ordering someone else to "knock him off." I later saw photos of the real Frank Nitti, who, of course, looked nothing like Bruce Gordon. The whole series was a fantasy approach to the Prohibition era, bearing no more resemblance to Chicago in the 1930's than most westerns do to the area west of the Mississippi in the later part of the 19th century. Accepting it as such, "The Untouchables" was a great series and a lot of fun to watch.

The Untouchables just acted like this episode never happened...

[AlsExGal · 8/10 · 27 February 2022]

... as Bruce Gordon returned in the recurring role of Frank Nitti for the duration of the series.

Frank Nitti is looking for other sources of income with Prohibition ending, so he decides to start shaking down movie theaters for protection. But he gets heavy handed. He blinds one uncooperative movie theater owner with acid and kills the general manager of a chain of movie theaters with a car bomb. Then he beats up the editor of a newspaper who is giving Nitti all kinds of unfavorable publicity. This just doubles the editor's resolve. When one of Nitti's assassins stabs a woman who is really no material threat to the mob at all other than being the girlfriend of an associate who they do want to knock off, the mob calls Nitti on the carpet and sentences him to death for his incompetence. He can either kill himself or the mob will do it for him. But in the end, Nitti is chased into the Chicago subway by Eliot Ness and company, where he loses his balance and falls into the path of an oncoming train.

The problem is, Bruce Gordon was very good at playing Nitti, or at least The Untouchables' theatrical version of Nitti. He had already played him several times and I have to wonder what were they thinking! At any rate, Gordon returns the next season as Nitti like nothing ever happened. Like Bobby Ewing's death in Dallas, maybe the whole episode was just a bad dream.

The actual Nitti was not going with assassins when they did their dirty work. Of course he ordered lots of the violence and knew it was going on, but his claim to fame was his skill at organization. Frank Nitti killed himself in a trainyard in the 1940s when he felt his conviction on extortion and imprisonment for that crime were inevitable, long after Eliot Ness had moved on. The actual Nitti was more like the smooth talking calm Sidney Rogers character in this episode.

Out of control

[bkoganbing · 6/10 · 29 June 2012]

As 95% of The Untouchables episodes were pure fiction one normally did not have to worry about continuity. The episodes were never chronological, this episode is fixed by narrator Walter Winchell with happening in 1934.

Bruce Gordon as Frank Nitti is now working a new racket. Simple extortion of theater owners with smooth talking Richard Anderson fronting the operation along with alcoholic shyster attorney Myron McCormick and the muscle being Gordon and Frank DeKova.

Harry Harvey, Sr. is blinded and another theater owner Dick Foran is killed with a car bomb. Even an Untouchable, Anthony George is killed as well as Gordon who has really gone out of control puts a hit on Robert Stack and his men. As you gather this was one of the bloodiest of Untouchable episodes. And there's more than that.

Bruce Gordon was always a treat with that perpetual sneer and rasp in his voice, he really played Nitti to the hilt. As he always did he adds something to this episode even if the facts just ain't there.

Sadly not accurate, however has some traces of veracity!!

[elo-equipamentos · 7/10 · 13 December 2020]

It would be a good episode if was accurate about Frank Nitti, it usually happens on the show, for dramatic purposes of course, they should be more carefully on those blatant changes imposed by writers, this time after the abrogation of dry law Al Capone demands a new way to raise money, the answer was the high profitable smallest movie theaters and hereupon the large corporation of the movie theaters cross country, Frank Nitti (Bruce Gordon) had all control thru a front company leads by Sidney Rogers (Richard Anderson) and the drinkard Ramsey Lennox (Myron McCormick) that offers security for the business, Eliot Ness already predicting such move, volunteer his department to care about this new racket to J.N. Miller (Alex Gerry) the general manager of a huge company, whereas his Chicago's manager Jerry Dockstone (Dick Foran) was killed for did not accepted such deal, the cunning Eliot Ness has many cards on their sleeves in order to offer up if pushed in conciliation, however the death of Frank Nitti unfortunately wasn't that way, actually he committed suicide at train station at Illinois, whatever the racket of movie industry really happened but directly to the majors studios only!!

Thanks for reading.

Resume:

First watch: 2020 / How many: 1 / Source: DVD / Rating: 7.5

A real mess of a show...

[planktonrules · 2/10 · 15 March 2016]

This episode of "The Untouchables" is set just after Prohibition was repealed. Because of this, the mob needs to find new sources of revenue...and Nitti and his 'friends' have decided to start extorting money out of movie theaters. In a scene that makes zero sense whatsoever, Frank Nitti himself drives one of his thugs to meet an uncooperative theater owner...and they chuck acid in his face. I think this made no sense because it's hard to imagine that the leader of a powerful branch of the mob, Capone's successor, would bother to get involved in such goings on. Wouldn't he just have one of his many flunkies do this? And, why would he risk prison himself?! Regardless, Ness takes it upon himself to investigate Nitti and the theaters...even though he was in real life a Treasury agent whose job it was to enforce laws concerning alcohol. Hmmm....now that I think about it, there are quite a few things about this one that don't exactly make sense. Another character in the story, one of the higher ups in Nitti's mob, Sidney Rogers (Richard Anderson), is arrested and he then threatens that Nitti should spring him ASAP...or else!! Does it make sense to threaten the head of the mob? Do you think Rogers will live more than a few minutes after saying what he said? This is a rather terrible cliché..and one that just doesn't make much sense. Finally, the ending is NOT exactly how Frank Nitti died...plus, if he DID die here, how come he showed up in dozens of episodes after this?!?! To me, this might just rank as the worst written of the episodes...at least the worst that I have yet seen.