The film Stars Mickey Rooney (Quicksand, The Strip, Drive a Crooked Road) as Lester M. 'Baby Face Nelson' Gillis, Carolyn Jones (The Big Heat, Shield For Murder) as Sue Nelson, Cedric Hardwicke (Rope, Bait) as Doc Saunders, Leo Gordon (Riot In Cell Block 11, The Steel Jungle) as John Dillinger. Anthony Caruso (Asphalt Jungle) as John Hamilton.
Jack Elam (Quicksand, Kiss Me Deadly, Kansas City Confidential, Once Upon A Time In The West) as Fatso Nagel, John Hoyt (Brute Force, The Glass Cage) as Samuel Parker, Ted de Corsia (The Naked City, Crime Wave) as Rocca, Elisha Cook, Jr. (Classic Noir Vet) as Homer Van Meter, Robert Osterloh as FBI Agent Johnson, Thayer David (Dark Shadows) as Connelly, Dabbs Greer as FBI Agent Charles Bonner, George E. Stone as Mr. Hall – Bank Manager, Lisa Davis as Ann Saper – the Lady in Red, Emile Meyer (Classic Noir Vet) as Mac – Detective, Dan Terranova as Miller, Murray Alper as Alex – Bank Guard, Harry Antrim as Pharmacist, Tom Fadden as Postman Harkins, Duke Mitchell as Solly – Pool Hall Attendant.
Some interesting factoids...
"The Production Code had recently repealed a ban on dramatizing the lives of real criminals. Producer Al Zimbalist formed ZS Productions with Irving Shulman to make a film based on the latter's unpublished novel about Baby Face Nelson. He originally announced he was seeking Montgomery Clift, Frank Sinatra or Tony Curtis for the lead.[Schallert, E. (May 12, 1955). "'Run for sun' heralded for Eva Marie Saint; Tim McCoy pursued". Los Angeles Times.]
Eventually they partnered with Mickey Rooney's Fryman Enterprises to make the movie.[6] Don Siegel was hired to direct.
Zimbalist wanted to borrow Edd Byrnes from Warner Bros to play John Dillinger, but the studio refused to release him. [Thomas M. Pryor (Jun 19, 1957). "MITCHUM TO MAKE THREE NEW FILMS". New York Times]
Filming started in October 1955. Zimbalist did some second unit filming in Chicago himself.[Schallert, E. (Sep 19, 1955). "Spiegel's 'end as man' to star Gazarra; Jack Palance subject named". Los Angeles Times.]
Shulman was later hired by Sam Katzman to do a script on Pretty Boy Floyd.["Shulman to do script on thug". Los Angeles Times. Jan 12, 1958]
Rooney says he was offered a million dollars to buy out his interest in the film but he refused, confident it would be a success."
From the official FBI Website:
"“Baby Face” Nelson was born Lester M. Gillis on December 6, 1908, in Chicago, Illinois. He roamed the Chicago streets with a gang of juvenile hoodlums during his early teens. By the age of 14, he was an accomplished car thief and had been dubbed “Baby Face” by members of his gang due to his juvenile appearance. Nelson’s early criminal career included stealing tires, running stills, bootlegging, and armed robbery.
In 1922, Nelson (14 yrs old) was convicted of auto theft and was committed to a boys’ home. Two years later, he was released on parole, but within five months he was returned on a similar charge.
In 1928, Nelson met a salesgirl, Helen Wawzynak, whom he married. His wife retained the name Helen Gillis throughout their marriage.
(discrepancy here Helen and Lester were married in 1924 when they were both 16)
Nelson was sentenced to a prison term of one year to life for his January, 1931, bank robbery in Chicago, Illinois. After a year’s confinement, Nelson was removed from the Illinois State Penitentiary, Joliet, Illinois, to stand trial on another bank robbery charge in Wheaton, Illinois. On February 17, 1932, Nelson escaped prison guards while being returned to Joliet.
So even though the Code lifted the ban on dramatizing the life of real criminals the film still jettisons Nelson's whole juvie criminal career, of stealing tires, stealing cars, moonshining, and etc. It combines his various stints in reform schools into his first stretch in Joliet.
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png) |
| Out of the slammer |
.png) |
| and into a Rolls |
.png)
Lester makes a little like he "learned his lesson." I guess Rocco maybe is supposed to represent the Chicago Mob in general.
The Rolls takes Lester to the warehouse complex called the Acme Salvage Company.
.png) |
| Where's the Coyote and Roadrunner? |
It's the cover for Rocco's illegal vending machine racket. They get out of the Rolls and they climb up a long fire escape stairway (at least 3 stories) to the roof of a warehouse. They walk along the roof clerestory and go in a sliding wood doorway then climb down two stories to a loft filled with pinball machines. They walk through that to Rocco's office.
.png)
.png)
.png)
At his first meeting with Rocco, Rocco calls him the shrimp, tells him it's he, Rocco, that got him released early from prison, and that he wants Lester to do a job for him.
.png)
Rocco takes Lester to a steelworks where a union is on strike outside the gate. The job is killing a union organizer.
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
Lester tells Rocco no. He's not killing anybody who is standing up to the cops. Ok says Rocco I'll find something else then. He drops Lester off at a good hotel. He says to Lester to tell them that Rocco sent him at the desk, he also gives Lester some dough and tells him he'll be in touch.
.png)
Lester takes a bath gets a new suit and runs into his old gal pal Sue.
In reality it's Helen Wawzyniak his wife. Why change it?, probably because the real Helen Wawzyniak Gillis was still alive (she died in 1987 BTW outliving Carolyn Jones by 4 years). They also had two kids a boy in 1929 a girl in 1931.
So we get no mention of the kids either.
Sue is working as a cashier at a pool hall / amusement arcade.
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
It's "lets get it on at first sight." Sue tells a floor man to watch the till for a bit while She brings Lester to a back room rendezvous standing up by the light of a bare lightbulb, against a stack of wooden beer crates how noir of them? Lester at least reaches up and screws it off.
.png)
.png) |
| In reality Lester and Helen were getting it on since they were both 16, lol |
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
It never goes anywhere (hey it's 1957). They get interrupted, Sue has to go back to the till. There at the till Lester sees a newspaper headline about the murder of the union organizer, Rocco got somebody else to do it.
.png)
.png)
.png) |
| A rendezvoused later? |
Hollywood left it ambiguous enough that depending on where your mind is at you can take it that, that was it, or you assume Sue and Lester got together (gotta love the code) but we cut to later that night. Lester is back at the hotel, if Sue was there she's not there now.
.png) |
| Ace blinks through the window |
There's a knock on the door and Lester gets rousted by the cops. They start tossing the place. It's a frame. They find a gun tapped to the lid of the toilet tank that, Lester knows, is the gun that killed the union guy. Rocco found something else for Lester to do, and that is be a patsy. He goes to trial and during visiting hours he is allowed Sue and Lester plan an escape.
So Lester and a single big detective or whoever would be handling a prisoner transfer, gets off the train at Joliet, are walking to the stairs at the end of the platform passing by the entrance to the Waiting Room where Sue steps out and falls in front of the detective.
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
The big goof falls for this "lady in distress act" and bends down to help her up. Lester uses his cuffs to crack him over the neck. They drag and push him into Sue's 4D 1931 Ford Model A and split. Lester gets the cuff keys the gun and going around a curve pushes the detective out the door.
(The real story is that Helen planted a gun in the train car's washroom, Lester recovered it and when the train was late getting to the station the car sent to meet them left and the agent transporting Lester decided to take a cab. When they get in the cab Lester pulls the gun and drives away.)
Lester's first piece of business is Rocco. We get probably the most memorable Visual sequence of the film when Lester retraces the route up the outside of Acme Salvage Company and ambushes Rocco and his boys in a gun fight while they are climbing the interior stairway.
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
Lester gets wounded, but he's ecstatic. He got his revenge. Sue brings him to a sanitarium where she personally (too personally) knows the doc. That whole sidebar is pretty sketchy. Doc Sanders while treating Lester likes to put his hands on Sue, who doesn't seem to mind, at all. This builds every time Sue and the doc are together. Lester heals.
.png) |
| Lester heads to Reno which looks more like this scene above in the film. |
So, Lester in the real story heads to Reno Nevada and then Sausalito, California. In Reno Lester meets John Paul Chase (who is never mentioned in the film). The story goes that Chase was the wheelman on a contract hit by Lester on a Reno business man.
So the pair worked as underworld hoods i.e., as guards trucks transporting liquor and illegal or stolen merchandise. They also pulled a bunch of hijackings and stickups. Lester settles in California and sends for Helen.
The film streamlines all of this and has Lester and his gang teaming up with John Dillinger. In the film they have Dillinger give Lester the name "Baby Face."
This one's been going Noirsville from the get go.
Noirsville
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
The film is entertaining. Rooney and Jones are good and it's fun to see other Noir stalwarts in the cast. Ted de Corsia is doing an authentic sounding Italian accent in this. Cedric Hardwicke is a believable sleaze ball doctor. Also there's a lot of subtextual hints along with those out in the open suggesting that what sent Lester off in the first place was his small stature, and him probably getting pushed around by "big" people, until he wasn't going to take it anymore.
There's a couple of anachronisms a 1939 Desoto, and a couple of 1941 trucks show up 5-7 years earlier than they should. I wondered why they are still driving model "A" s, lol, if there were obviously more modern iron out there until I checked on the actual years the tale was set in. But up to the Little Bohemia shootout, its all fiction anyway, and afterward it's not much better.
Watch for the ambush of Rocco. It looks great even in a crappy transfer. Needs a restoration or an upgrade. Worth a look. 6.5 and possibly 7/10 with a better print transfer.
 |
| Lester "Baby Face Nelson" Gillis D.O.A.(the stash helps) |
No comments:
Post a Comment