The Untouchables (TV Series) Jack 'Legs' Diamond (1960) User Reviews

Steven Hill is completely over the top in this one.

[planktonrules · 8/10 · 29 January 2016]

If you want subtle, this episode of "The Untouchables" sure ain't it! After all, Steven Hill plays the infamous Legs Diamond with an insanely over the top performance that is very enjoyable to watch. However, like so many of these episodes, the actual life of the hood portrayed in this one isn't exactly what you see!

Legs is apparently a guy who has trouble making friends. Various mobsters would love to see him pushing up daisies and he's lucky they only gave him a warning...take a vacation or take a PERMANENT vacation! Despite his supposing to hang low, Legs is a crazy, flamboyant sort and spends much of his time getting in trouble and beating the snot out of his wife. In fact, several times they show him brutalizing her and this sort of show was why critics HATED the show! Still, Hill's performance is mesmerizing...fun to watch and a sure guilty pleasure. Just don't think that Diamond's death was much like you see in the show...it wasn't. And, if you do watch it, get a load of the wonderful narration at the end...it's pretty amazing!

Don't blink or you'll miss him

[bornagain710-331-212635 · 8/10 · 22 October 2020]

Bellhop comes to Legs Diamonds room. Look close. It's a very young Ryan O'Neal.

You'll hardly recognize Steven Hill OR Legs Diamond's story...

[AlsExGal · 8/10 · 27 February 2022]

... because like so many episodes of The Untouchables, Diamond's story has been very much enhanced to where Diamond himself would likely not recognize his own life story.

Steven Hill, D. A. Adam Schiff of Law and Order fame, appears as the famed dancer turned gangster. Here, Diamond is almost shot down as he exits a club with his singer girlfriend. He figures his mob partners were behind it, and they admit they were. They say his flamboyant lifestyle is getting in the newspapers too much and could draw attention to their plan to start smuggling drugs into the country. If Diamond will go to his country home and let the headlines cool, they'll consider everything OK. Diamond goes, but he misses the city lights and his girlfriend, and most of all he really hates being stuck in the same house as his estranged alcoholic wife Alice. Meanwhile Eliot Ness and his agents are aware of the plan to smuggle drugs, but they want to catch the kingpins with it so as to cut things off at the source. Ness sees the rift in Diamond's relationship with the mob and the rift between Diamond and his wife as possible ways to find the drugs.

Steven Hill didn't have many major roles in film or TV, especially when he was a younger man. So this episode of The Untouchables is a chance to see him in a completely different kind of role if you only know him from Law and Order.

Excellent Show With Surprise Uncredited Cameo At End

[ccthemovieman-1 · 10/10 · 15 February 2011]

This was a great episode highlighting several famous gangsters with the lead going to Steven as Jack "Legs" Diamond.

We witness the problems "Legs" had not just with the law but with his fellow crooks. It seems the latter aren't too happy with Diamond because he's a publicity hound and he's drawing too much attention to all of them. That could screw up the latest "project," a five-million-dollar drug smuggling caper from Greece. $5 million was an incredible amount back in 1931. Thus, they order him out of New York City and up to the Catskills to cool his heels.

Legs gets antsy, especially with his cute mistress still back in New York, and trying to put up with his alcoholic wife, who he can't stand.

All of these people wind up doing him in, and it's really interesting to see.

Note: Right near the end of the story, a young bellhop comes up to Diamond's room to deliver a message....and it's actor Ryan O'Neal. I recognized him immediately....and he was only 19 in his second small role on screen Now he's a 70-year-old and a famous actor.

Modern Twist

[bkoganbing · 4/10 · 9 October 2013]

This episode of The Untouchables brings Robert Stack and his squad into New York with yet another gangster they had absolutely nothing to do with. Steven Hill famous as straight arrow District Attorney Adam Schiff on Law And Order goes on the other side of the law to play Jack 'Legs' Diamond.

A curiously modern twist to this story where gangster Joey Gallo and Joe Columbo both got eliminated by people in the rackets who thought they were bringing too much attention to the business has Diamond being aced out of a big narcotics deal that he set up for Lucky Luciano, Dutch Schultz and others. They try and miss and then they offer him a buy out.

Kind of silly when you think about it. I couldn't quite fathom Luciano and Schultz who hated each other first ordering a hit and then acquiescing to giving Diamond a piece of the action if he goes quietly away. Of course he doesn't and therein lies the story.

Not one of the better Untouchable episodes.