The Untouchables was on television
from 1959 to 1964 with Robert Stack as Eliot Ness. The critics didn’t like it. The public couldn’t get enough of it. Here are two reviews of the CD collections as
included on Amazon.com:
By Karen P. Rhodes on June 1, 2012
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5 Stars
Classic G-Men vs. Mobsters Saga, July 5, 2007
By Terence Allen
Retro television shows have never
done particularly well unless they were set in the Old West. Shows set in the
20's, 30's, 40's, etc, any era outside of the one in which they aired have
never lasted long except in three major exceptions - Happy Days, Laverne &
Shirley, and The Untouchables.
The Untouchables succeeded for a number of reasons. First, the veil that had been on the Mafia for a number of years was slowly but surely being peeled off due to gangland killings and the fame of gangsters such as Al Capone, Bugsy Siegel, Dutch Schultz, Lucky Luciano, and others. Even before the Godfather and its outstanding first sequel, the public had a fascination and curiosity with the mob. So take some true events, true characters, heavily fictionalize them withHollywood gloss and pathos, and you get a
very successful show that made a star out of Robert Stack and brought new fame
to a Treasury agent named Eliot Ness.
The Untouchables' First Season collection should not have been split up into multiple sections. That's greed, pure and simple. But the lure of this show - its great characters, performances, grit and intelligence will draw buyers even though they know they're being ripped off. Stack'sNess
is one of the best all-time detectives - fearless, relentless, and absolutely
ruthless with the bad guys. The supporting casts were always excellent, and
Bruce Gordon brought the right amount of humor and menace to Frank Nitti,
Capone's chief lieutenant.
The Untouchables - Season One, Volume 2 is not untouchable, but it is irresistible.
The Untouchables succeeded for a number of reasons. First, the veil that had been on the Mafia for a number of years was slowly but surely being peeled off due to gangland killings and the fame of gangsters such as Al Capone, Bugsy Siegel, Dutch Schultz, Lucky Luciano, and others. Even before the Godfather and its outstanding first sequel, the public had a fascination and curiosity with the mob. So take some true events, true characters, heavily fictionalize them with
The Untouchables' First Season collection should not have been split up into multiple sections. That's greed, pure and simple. But the lure of this show - its great characters, performances, grit and intelligence will draw buyers even though they know they're being ripped off. Stack's
The Untouchables - Season One, Volume 2 is not untouchable, but it is irresistible.
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By Karen P. Rhodes on June 1, 2012
I
have been buying the series. At first, only the first three seasons had been
released, and we fans were extremely disappointed. However, the fourth season
was finally released and will come out on 24 July. This series is worth it. By
today's standards it may seem quaint, and like any other television series it
has its flaws. Television is entertainment designed by a committee. If you view
it as 30s noir, however, it is great. It's raw, it's gritty, and it got away
with some things that just were not done on television in the day (1959-1963).
I cannot say enough about Robert Stack's portrayal of Eliot Ness. He set the
mold in which such characters as Steve McGarrett (Jack Lord's portrayal in the
original "Hawaii Ness
as cold, unsmiling, unemotional. Critics never see an entire series, so they
miss a lot. In the episodes, we see Ness
smiling as he greets an old friend, sharing a joke with Nick Georgiade's Rico
Rossi at the expense of a smug (and crooked) banker, weeping openly at the
death of one of his team, and in red-hot anger. It's a wonderful portrayal.
Robert Stack was not one of those emotive actors; he was much more subtle and
conveyed a lot with looks, gestures, and mannerisms (which one fan says Mrs.
Eliot Ness said were so like her husband's). The supporting cast is fine, as
well, and my particular favorites were and are Nick Georgiade as Rico Rossi and
Paul Picerni as Lee Hobson. If you pay attention watching the episodes, you
will quickly see that there was a repertory-theatre atmosphere about the
series, as some of the finest television and film actors of the day, as well as
many well-known character actors, appeared multiple times. There were a number
of repeat characters, most notably Neville Brand as Al Capone and Bruce Gordon
as his "enforcer," Frank Nitti. Some have complained about the price,
but buyers must consider that when "The Untouchables" was filmed,
television series episodes were several minutes longer than they are today, and
there were more of them in a season. This series is worth the price.
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Note from the Blog Author
The Untouchables burst onto network television in October of
1959, during the “golden age” of television.
Critics didn’t like it. It was
too violent. Robert Stack was called
“the great stone face” for his lack of reaction to the criminals he was dealing
with. Further, and centrally, during
those days there were televised dramas that were adaptations of stage
productions. Live televised theater. Rogers and Hammerstein even put together a
live television musical, “Cinderella,” starting Julie Andrews.
Into this challenging environment came The Untouchables, a
filmed fictional drama based on the 1957 best-selling book of the same
name. Desi Arnaz, son of a Cuban mayor,
knew what he was doing. He emphasized
action and violence. He encouraged the
use of film and its special effects and ability to use multiple-takes, leaving the
rest on the cutting room floor. He hired
a genuinely great pop music composer and orchestrator, Nelson Riddle, to write
the theme music (Here are the closing credits):
The sharp, clever, in-focus photography may have been influenced
by a special assistant to the executive producer named Arthur Fellows, himself
an assistant director of Gone with the Win.
Fellows was working with Quinn Martin, who would form his own production
organization after finishing the fourth and last season of The Untouchables.
Not only did Martin hire Nelson Riddle, he also had both an
announcer (who spoke the names of the stars and guest stars) but a narrator as
well, an actual 1930s Chicago
The combination of the sharp photography, expressionless
lead actor, special effects, and mob violence created a hypnotic show that was
impossible to stop watching. But the
critics hated it because it was filmed and apparently not any kind of high art.
My own family was among the last to get a television in America
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