The Big Operator

Modestly budgeted but surprisingly entertaining crime drama, with Mickey Rooney as a Jimmy Hoffa-style union boss ready to resort to gangland methods when a couple of honest union men see him in the company of a known gangster the night that a witness against Rooney in an upcoming crime investigation goes missing.

This film has a nice jazzy musical score, and some unexpected casting. Rooney is effective with an in-your-face performance as the ruthless union president. But equally effective, and a nice change of pace casting for him, too, is Steve Cochran, normally a screen tough guy, here playing a soft spoken decent family man who crosses paths with Rooney. Ray Danton is a cold blooded hood working for the union boss who not only throws someone into a cement mixer but sets another person on fire after dumping him out of a car.

Vampira, pretty much unrecognizable without her Vampira makeup, is a woman running a beatnik club, Mel Torme plays Cochran's fiery natured friend (Mel's not bad), and, the most unusual casting of all is, ready for this, Mamie Van Doren in a subdued performance as Cochran's homemaker wife. She still looks like bleached blonde Mamie, of course, but she's not half bad. Mamie as Donna Reed? See it to believe it.

The film has a protracted sequence is which Cochran, who is ready to give testimony against Rooney, is kidnapped and Rooney has goons working him over (Leo Gordon being one of them, yikes!) to try to get him to change his testimony. When Cochran refuses to cooperate, Rooney then resorts to nastier means to get his way.