The Unhired Assassin: Part 1

Aired about three years before JFK's assassination, this one is rather eery now.

It's a tale of two killers seeking two victims that wind up in the same place at the same time, neither knowing about the other. The hired assassin is very nondescript and does not even have a parking ticket on his record. And you would expect a hired assassin to be those things. Somebody with a record a mile long who is flamboyant and walks around in loud suits is going to get noticed. He is hired by Frank Nitti to kill Chicago mayor Anton Cervak after Cervak rebuffs Nitti's attempts to get him to ease up on his crackdown on mob activity.

The unhired assassin is a bricklayer turned derelict from bad stomach pain that from the narration is psychosomatic. He is bitter towards all leadership business and political, but the election of Roosevelt has him weirdly turn his hatred towards him. He decides to start a movement that will kill all "bosses", and intends to start with the president elect. He feels it is destiny when Roosevelt is planning to speak where he is living in Florida so that he won't have to take a trip to kill him. He buys a revolver for eight bucks out of the last 43 bucks he has in the world and waits. What's odd is that this derelict looks a lot like Lee Harvey Oswald.

In the meantime, Ness and the Untouchables have been guarding the mayor. As a result, Ness gets to know Cervak and a genuine friendship grows between them. Robert Middleton is a character actor with whom I was not familiar until I began to binge on Untouchable episodes, and I am quite impressed. Here, as Cervak, he plays a generally cuddly admirable guy in the tradition of Edward Arnold, where in another episode he plays a cutthroat gangster also quite believably.

There is lots of irony in this two parter as well as good acting and a great script. I'd recommend it.

This is the first of a two part Untouchables story where Robert Stack and his picked crew of incorruptible federal agents get involved in protecting the Mayor of Chicago one Anton J. Cermak elected in 1931 against the Capone mob's friend in City Hall William H. Thompson. That was a seminal election in Chicago's history, Democrat Cermak defeating Thompson, no Republican has won since.

Organized crime had a friend in Thompson, not that Cermak was anything like a boy scout, but Thompson was once chosen as the worst big city mayor by a poll of urban historians. Hard to argue with that. And the mob missed the friendly back door to Chicago's City Hall they once had.

It's another one of those historical legends that the real intended target in Miami was Cermak instead of President-elect Roosevelt. This episode takes no position on that, this is just The Untouchables on another case.

Robert Middleton fits my conception of Cermak from all I've read about him. On a parallel track in the plot we see Giuseppe Zangara, Italian immigrant and anarchist, an angry man with stomach problems and Joe Mantell fits what I've read of Zangara. It was true he had originally planned to kill Herbert Hoover, but as a passerby told him on Election Day Night, the Democrats did it for him. After that he sets his deranged sights on FDR.

The two parts were later released as a film for the big screen entitled Gun Of Zangara.

The events in parts one and two of "The Unhired Assassin" are based on real facts...to a point. In other words, much of what you see in the show did actually occur BUT much of it also is conjecture and fabrication in order to entertain. So, do NOT take this as a history lesson.

Here are the true facts. A crazy guy named Joe Zangara (Joe Mantell) did try to kill President Roosevelt in Miami....or at least folks think his intended victim was the newly elected president. Instead, Mayor Anton Cermak (Robert Middleton) and several others got shot as they stood near the president. Two (including Cermak) died. However, the rest of the episode is complete conjecture as they seem to say in "The Untouchables" that Cermak was the intended victim--an enemy of Frank Nitti and organized crime. Who came up with this unsupported theory? The show's narrator, Walter Winchell...and her in the program they are repeating Winchell's theory decades later. Oh, and throughout the show the mobsters keep referring to Cermak as a Bulgarian...though he was from an area now that is part of the Czech Republic (about 700-800 miles apart).

Despite the many historical inaccuracies, this is a very exciting two-parter. The scene where Akins' character arranges to blow up a man is pretty amazing as is the first attempt on Cermak's life...complete with dying man firing a machine gun as he spins to his death! Additionally, the cast of thugs is impressive. Aside from Bruce Gordon as Nitti, you've also got Claude Akins as a particularly nasty and stupid gunman, Lee Van Cleef, Richard Deacon (yes, 'Mel Cooley' is a gangster!) and Frank DeKova. Middleton's rendition of Cermak was a bit sappy and difficult to believe at times.

Watching 6 hours of this classic series every Sunday on handi tv and they bypassed this 2 parter. Apparently the fact that there have been assassinations in our nation's history doesn't seem relevant with the honchos at handi tv. What's next banning the Manchurian Candidate from viewership?