Search - The Lawless Years: First Complete Season on DVD

A Realistic and Enjoyable Television Series

Borowy26 | Chicago | 04/29/2009

(4 out of 5 stars)

"As popular and enduring as the television staple "The Untouchables" was and is, it is interesting to note that it was not the first weekly program about the Prohibition Era to air on American network television. "The Lawless Years" (which ran on NBC from 1959 to 1961) managed to premiere shortly before Robert Stack made Eliot Ness a household name.

Desilu Productions obtained the rights to the wildly exaggerated biography of Ness (co-written with Oscar Fraley), while "The Lawless Years" relied upon the memoirs of a former police detective. James Gregory, a talented character actor, who had previously appeared opposite Rod Steiger and Fay Spain in the Allied Artists motion picture production of "Al Capone," portrayed Barney Ruditsky. Ruditsky was a veteran member of the New York Police Department's special gangster squad.

After retiring from the NYPD, Ruditsky left New York for California and operated a private detective agency and a Los Angeles area nightclub, where Mickey Cohen raised hell on one occasion. Ruditsky became something of a studio mascot in Hollywood, conducting investigations on stars and contract players alike. His most celebrated assignment found him keeping tabs on the unfaithful Marilyn Monroe for her jealous husband, "Jolting Joe" DiMaggio. Ruditsky even made bit role appearances in two movies as (what else?) a police officer. Unlike the actual Eliot Ness, who died before "The Untouchables" achieved success as a best selling book and a popular weekly television series, Ruditsky lived long enough to enjoy a measure of renewed recognition. He was employed as a technical advisor on "The Lawless Years." He died in 1962.

What differentiated "The Lawless Years" from "The Untouchables," in addition to its New York setting, as opposed to Chicago, was its half hour format. With less than thirty minutes per episode, if one subtracts commercial breaks, the scripts had to be tighter and the plotting more compact. Gregory usually opened the program with a slide projector and performed narrative duties to set up the weekly episode. Gregory's introductory and concluding law and order speeches were decidedly straight forward and much less hyperbolic than Walter Winchell's.

To a certain degree, there is a greater amount of realism in "The Lawless Years" than in "The Untouchables." Scripts on the Robert Stack series were sometimes approved and sometimes censored by J. Edgar Hoover. In contrast, on "The Lawless Years" series, the police did not always succeed in solving crimes. Cops are poorly paid and overworked. The police department lacked resources. Bad guys were not always apprehended and punished. Police interrogation techniques sometimes bordered upon official brutality (suggested at, but seldom shown on screen). Ruditsky personally threatens suspects and throws punches as often as he shoots. Venal politicians and fatuous departmental bureaucrats routinely interfere in police business. Real names are used for many New York gangsters and politicians.

Veteran Hollywood screenwriter Jo Eisinger, whose film credits included "Gilda" and "Night and the City," provided nine scripts for the program. Gregory's usual police partner on the series was Max Fields, played by Robert Karnes. Karnes had supporting roles in many film noir genre movies. Together Fields and Ruditsky played the "Mutt and Jeff," good cop, bad cop routine on many suspects.

The guest performers, include many familiar faces such as Ted De Corsia, Milton Frome, Martin Landau, Harry Dean Stanton, Jack Kruschen, Walter Sande, Barry Kelley and others. While the former RKO studio lot was utilized on "The Untouchables" series, "The Lawless Years" was filmed on the well maintained Metro Goldwyn Mayer back lot, which was certainly more than adequate.

Two interesting episodes stood out so much that I opted to briefly summarize both:

From season one, "The Morrison Story" develops an interesting scenario about the unsolved investigation concerning disappearance of a prominent state court judge (Philip Coolidge) that closely resembles the actual mystery of Judge Joseph F. Crater who simply vanished without a trace in 1930. The reform activities of the Seabury investigative commission figure in the proceedings as do the strenuous damage control efforts of fearful political bosses and stooges from Tammany Hall. The speculative explanation as to how the jurist passed from the mortal realm is well thought out.

The premiere episode from season two is "The Al Brown Story." The title refers to the alias of a thug who goes from shaking down and terrorizing tobacco vendors to working as a low level subordinate to Frankie Yale, the notorious Brooklyn crime boss. Ruditsky pursues the ambitious punk without success as "Brown" manages to avoid arrest by boarding a train bound for Illinois. Once in Chicago, the hoodlum becomes better known by his actual name, Al Capone.

Jackie Weston's portrayal is quite an interesting departure from the usual screen depictions of the Al Capone. Many other actors have emphasized Capone's volatile, hair trigger temper and his willingness to resort to violence, but Weston, who plays the gangster at a more youthful age, shows that he was capable of behaving like cowardly weasel and a lying sneak. Weston's Capone is a cunning rat who prefers to intimidate weaker and more vulnerable people (while vandalizing a tobacco store by destroying its cigar inventory with acid -- a typical racketeering ploy at one time -- Capone maliciously burns its blind proprietor with the vitriol). This is a truthful if forgotten and overlooked performance. Capone's biographers often omit to mention how often the devious "Big Fellow" went into hiding to avoid his rivals. It is no secret that he chose to strike down most of his opponents by employing various forms of subterfuge.

For a brief time, there were three programs set in the Twenties on network television: the success of "The Untouchables" inspired Desilu to create another series, "The Roaring Twenties," which was more of a comedic program which looked at the bootlegging period from the lighthearted perspective of flappers and newspaper men.

The first two seasons of "The Lawless Years" are available for purchase. The third and final year of the series has been discontinued by the manufacturer. One word for DVD collectors, the distributors of the series chose to tint the black and white episodes. The images will appear to be either green or sepia toned depending upon your television playback equipment. Each DVD contains one entire season's worth of episodes.
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