Murder, Inc. (1960 film)
Murder, Inc. is a 1960 American gangster film starring Stuart Whitman, May Britt, Henry Morgan and Peter Falk. Filmed in Cinemascope and directed by Burt Balaban and Stuart Rosenberg, the film was based on the true story of Murder, Inc., a Brooklyn gang that operated in the 1930s.[2]
Murder, Inc.
Irve Tunick and Mel Barr
the book "Murder, Inc."
by Burton Turkus
and Sid Feder
- June 28, 1960
103 minutes
United States
English
$750,000[1]
Falk was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his first major feature role as Abe Reles, a vicious thug who led the Murder, Inc. gang and was believed to have committed 30 murders, for which he was never prosecuted.[3] In his 2006 autobiography Just One More Thing, Falk said that Murder, Inc. launched his career.[4]
This was the first film directed by Rosenberg, who later won acclaim for Cool Hand Luke (1967), and it launched Stuart Whitman's career as a leading man.
A highly fictionalized film on the same basic events titled The Enforcer (1951), starring Humphrey Bogart, was released in the United Kingdom with the title Murder, Inc.
Prologue[edit]
"This happened in Brooklyn, The city of churches. The time was the mid – thirties"
"The story is factual. The people are real."
Plot summary[edit]
Abe Reles and his accomplice Bug Workman, two cold-blooded killers from Brooklyn's Brownsville district, go to the Garment District to meet with Louis "Lepke" Buchalter, leader of the organized crime mob Murder, Inc., who offers them jobs as hit men. After hiring them to kill Catskills resort owner Walter Sage for withholding slot machine profits from the syndicate, Lepke designates Emanuel "Mendy" Weiss, his assistant, as Reles' contact. Reles coerces struggling singer Joey Collins, an old friend of Sage indebted to Reles, with veiled threats, and Joey agrees to accompany him to the Catskills, where he draws an unsuspecting Sage out into the street and into Reles' murderous hands.
Upon their return to the city, Reles visits Joey at the apartment he shares with his dancer wife Eadie and coldly announces that he will kill them if they tell anyone about what happened. Aghast, she denounces him and throws him out. Later, at a soda shop, Lieutenant William Flaherty Tobin, a local police detective determined to end the syndicate's reign of terror, arrests him and takes him to the station house for questioning. When they arrive, however, Lepke's attorney Lazlo orders for Reles' release. Resentful towards Eadie, Reles returns while Joey is away and brutally rapes her. When Joey returns, the beaten and disheveled Eadie begs him to escape with her, but he declines out of fear, and she hysterically insists that he leave.
Under Lepke's direction, Reles continues his murderous campaign. One day, at the nightclub in which Eadie performs, he asks her to reconcile with Joey, before taking her to a luxurious apartment filled with stolen goods and offering it to the couple for free. A grand jury impaneled by special prosecutor Thomas E. Dewey soon convenes, forcing Lepke to hide at the couple's dwelling; he soon takes control, mistreating and constantly berating Eadie. He instructs Mendy to personally kill Joe Rosen, a shop owner he had beaten for failing to pay extortion money, to prevent him from testifying. As the NYPD scours the city for Lepke, crime lord Albert Anastasia informs him that per the syndicate's orders, he must turn himself in on a reduced charge of interstate commerce crime. Lepke reluctantly consents, but rather than the two-year prison term promised by Albert, is sentenced to thirty years in Leavenworth.
District Attorney Burton Turkus takes over the crusade, enlisting Tobin's help in identifying the players. Initially cynical about his ability to withstand political pressure, Tobin eventually agrees. Lepke, concerned about being linked to Rosen's death, orders Mendy to kill the entire Brownsville gang along with Joey and Eadie. Shell-shocked from being dominated by him, she describes living with the killers to Turkus, identifying Mendy as Lepke's right-hand man and the Brownsville gang as his personal squad, and revealing that Reles will arrive that afternoon on the Baltimore train; he puts her in protective custody and goes to the train station to arrest Reles. Later, as Mendy waits menacingly outside the soda shop to kill Joey, Turkus arrives and hauls Joey into the police station, shows him photographs of Bug's murder and warns that he will be next. Upon learning of Reles' arrest, Joey visits him in jail, notifies him of Bug's death and then threatens to testify against him. Fearing incrimination by Joey, Reles relents and, over the next six days, vividly details the organization's activities, including the fact that Joey overheard Lepke order Rosen's murder.
Realizing that Joey's testimony could bring Lepke down, Turkus places Joey and Reles in protective custody at the Half Moon Hotel in Coney Island. Eadie comes there to beg Joey to cooperate, but he reluctantly declines, fearing the mob's retaliation. She tearfully slips out of the hotel, leaving her escort behind, to stroll along a darkened pier, unaware that she is being followed. Suddenly, a man springs from the shadows and strangles her to death. Later that night, an assassin infiltrates a sleeping Reles' room and tosses him out the window, then drapes a sheet from the window to make it look like he died while attempting escape. Just as Turkus' crusade seems lost, Joey avenges his wife's death by testifying against Lepke, who is then executed in the electric chair.
Closing narration[edit]
Voice of Henry Morgan (speaking as Burton Turkus): "Lepke was the first of the ganglords to pay up in full in the electric chair. The first and, to date, the one and only. But his execution proves that it can be done, that the kingpins and their rackets can be brought to justice. It can be done. It must be done. Again and again and again."
Songs[edit]
"The Awakening"
"Hey! Mister"
"Fan My Brow"
Music & Lyrics by George Weiss
Original book[edit]
Twentieth Century-Fox based Murder, Inc. on a 1951 book of the same title by Burton Turkus, former district attorney of New York, and Sid Feder.[5]
It is similar in style to the popular TV series The Untouchables, which may have inspired the studio to make the movie.[6]
The story of the Murder, Inc. crime group was first told on the screen in the Warner Brothers film The Enforcer, a semi-fictional film that was released as Murder, Inc. overseas. The film starred Humphrey Bogart, in his last role for the studio, as a crusading district attorney molded after Turkus. A Lepke-type character was played by Everett Sloane. Ted De Corsia played a character loosely based on Reles.
Unlike the factual Murder, Inc., which dealt with a Mafia kingpin's establishment of a contract murder organization within that framework, The Enforcer is fictional and had a freelance group willing to work for anyone in or out of the mob. The 1951 film begins with De Corsia's falling off a ledge despite Bogart's attempt to save him, and includes gruesome scenes based on fact.[6]
Reception[edit]
Critical response[edit]
New York Times film critic Bosley Crowther dismissed the film as a "new screen telling of an old story". Crowther singled out Falk's "amusingly vicious performance", and that when he appears "there is a certain dark frightfulness and terror" in the film. But "otherwise the traffic is that of an average gangster film that slacks off too much for proper tension and runs a great deal too long." Crowther praised the other leading performances but said that Morgan, a radio and TV personality known mainly for his sharp wit, "does better when he is telling jokes".[13]
Describing Falk's performance, Crowther wrote: