Portrait of a Mobster

Portrait Of a Mobster is a good little movie about the rise and fall of gangster Dutch Schultz, and is a fairly typical example of the nostalgic gangster films of the late fifties and early sixties, many of them biographies of famous criminals (Al Capone, Legs Diamond, Arnold Rothstein). What distinguishes this film is that its lead actor, Vic Morrow, was more talented than most, and deserved a better picture. The production values of the movie are decent but hardly spectacular, and are roughly on par with the TV shows its studio, Warner Brothers, was producing at around the same time, especially The Roaring Twenties, which this movie could almost be an offshoot of. Many studio contractees have key supporting parts in the film. But it's Morrow's complex and serious performance that holds the movie together and gives it a touch of class. Morrow was in some ways like Jeff Bridges in being a deadly seriously dramatic actor who seldom, if ever, relied on charm. Like so many gifted actors he went the television route and a year after this film was cast as one of the leads in the popular Combat! series, which ran for several seasons and made Morrow somewhat of a star. He continued to work regularly thereafter, always doing first rate, sometimes exceptional work (check out his chilling performance in The Glass House). But Morrow never really had much of a movie career after his small screen success, becoming a reliable actor on mostly made-for-TV movies. He died fairly young in a freak accident involving a helicopter while working on a movie. One wonders what might have happened to Morrow had he stuck to making films, staking his claim as a serious actor on stage and screen. We'll never know, but his work in Portrait Of a Mobster offers a tantalizing glimpse of the star Morrow might have been.