Semiquincentennial Movie Project #21: The Untouchables

 

 

 

The Semiquincentennial  Movie Project is an ongoing celebration of the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States. During the course of this project your humble blogger is choosing a movie a week to represent each of the 50 states in the Union, as well as a movie scheduled for 4th of July weekend that will represent the nation's capitol, Washington D.C. The order of the weekly entries will coincide with the order of each state's entry into the fold (although, not necessarily coinciding with the date of their entry into said fold).

 

Week #21: Illinois-

 

 

 

The state of Illinois was established on December 3, 1818

Details about Illinois:

State bird: cardinal

State flower: violet

State tree: wild oak

Additional historical trivia:

You might THINK it was in New York, but officially the first building that could be classified as a "skyscraper" was built in Chicago. 

Twinkies were invented in Schiller Park.

The first Dairy Queen opened for business in Illinois. 

Ray Kroc opened the first McDonald's outside of California in Des Plaines. Kroc was from Illinois. (Now, I'm hungry...)

The famous Route 66 has it's starting point in Chicago. Or ending point if you are starting in California...

 Illinois was the first state to ratify the 13th Amendment which outlawed slavery.

The world's largest public library is in Chicago. 

Famous people born in Illinois" U.S. President Ronald Reagan, Ray Kroc,  Harrison Ford, Hugh Hefner, Walt Disney, Pope Leo XIV, Jimmy Connors and John Belushi.

 

 

The Untouchables (1987): 

The most famous gangster in the history of the United States would almost surely be Al Capone. While the history behind the efforts of the Federal government to put an end to Al Capone's reign as the crime boss of Chicago may be known to most people, it is a sure bet that only the most knowledgeable students have more than a passing acquaintance with the details. Most people probably only know the story from either the TV series with Robert Stack, or from this film.

 

The fact is that both are entirely reliant on dramatic license to tell a story and are filled with stuff that was rearranged or even invented out of whole cloth. One thing in particular that stands out in the film is that Eliot Ness and Al Capone had virtually no face to face interaction during the era. One site I read claims that Ness was only interacting with Capone when he served as one of the escorts that took Capone to prison after his trial.

That does not mean that Brian De Palma's film should be avoided completely, however, unless you are one of those people who demand strict historical accuracy in your films that deal with history. Instead, you could just look on this film as a well crafted fictional story and come away from it with a feeling of satisfaction.

As I have noted elsewhere, I am not a big fan of Kevin Costner. In fact, if it wasn't for the presence of Robert De Niro and Sean Connery in this film, I doubt if I would have as much appreciation for it, at least from an acting viewpoint. 

 

There is not much of Costner's portrayal that really connects with me. Roger Ebert in his review sums it up for me that he doesn't provide "any of the little twists and turns of character that might have made Ness into an individual", although he puts the blame more on David Mamet's script rather than on the actor himself.

Connery won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for his work, but De Niro was virtually ignored. I thought that De Niro was equally worthy of at least a nomination, even though some reviews claimed he was basically just going through the motions. 

The film opens with a scene that somehow just doesn't ring true, at least for me. Capone (Robert DeNiro) is getting a shave while interviewers are asking him questions about his status as a figure in town of note. Somehow I just can't see Capone openly admitting to being involved in bootlegging to the press. Maybe the real Al Capone actually was forthright in his activities in real life: it's not as if no one even knew he existed at that point in time. But it just feels odd.

 

Eliot Ness (Kevin Costner) makes his appearance at the police headquarters and establishes his "goody two-shoes" persona when he makes it known that he is there to enforce Prohibition and take down those who would flaunt the law, including establishing that from that point forward, if the officers in his force had previously ignored the law before, there were expected to be paragons of virtue henceforth. Historically speaking, however, it was NOT against the law to drink during Prohibition, it was only against the law to make, transport or sell the stuff. Many people hoarded previously legal stashes that they got before Prohibition went into effect. 

Ness first finds out what he is up against when he makes a raid on a place that supposedly has a shipment of the illegal contraband, but instead of finding liquor he finds... umbrellas. It becomes apparent that there was a betrayal of his raid plans from within the force. As Malone (Sean Connery) tells Ness later in the movie, the town of Chicago "stinks like a whorehouse at low tide."

 

 Which is why, after convincing Malone to join his team, Malone says that they need to pull in some help from the newbies to the force. "If you're afraid of getting a bad apple, don't go to the barrel. Get it off the tree." So Malone and Ness go to the training section of the academy, looking for a man who is a good shot and honest (as in not corrupted by the graft that is rampant on the force).

 

The scene where they recruit George Stone (Andy Garcia) is one of my favorite scenes as far as dialogue. Malone and Stone have a tête-à-tête in which Malone queries Stone about his heritage: 

Malone: Stone? George Stone? What's you real name?

Stone: That is my real name.

Malone: Nah. What was it before you changed it?

Stone: Giuseppe Petri.

Malone: Ah! I knew it. That's all you need is one thieving wop on the team.

Stone: It's much better than you, you stinking Irish pig. (Both pull weapons).

Malone: Oh, I like him....

 

Also to come on board is a rather milquetoast addition, Oscar Wallace (Charles Martin Smith) who is an accountant in his real life. He is not initially what you would expect for a gun-toting gung ho federal agent, although he does develop over the course of his activities. Wallace thinks the best way, however, to take down Capone is to find information that would help to prosecute Capone for tax evasion.

 

Ness: Try a murderer for tax evasion?

Wallace: Well, it's better than nothing...

 

There are some great scenes in the second half of the film. Ness and his cohorts look to try to stop a shipment of contraband coming across the border from Canada. At one point one of the bootleggers is killed while trying to shoot it out with Ness. A short time later, while Malone is struggling to get another captive to open up about his connections he uses the corpse as an unorthodox incentive to get the prisoner to confess. I won't go into detail here, but it really is one of the scenes that probably swayed the Oscar voting to give Connery the statuette,

 

One of the other scenes that really stands out is a shootout at the train station. In an homage to a scene from Sergei Eisenstein's classic silent era film Battleship Potemkin,  the scene is staged on a series of steps in the train station. It is ten minutes of very intense action, and plays out with several parallels to the Russian classic.

 

There is one scene that happens late in the movie that is entirely fictional, and one of the few scenes that irks me due to it's unbelievable situation. Ness has an encounter with Frank Nitti (Billy Drago) on top of the courthouse. The ending, although it somehow fits in the context of the way that the story has been played out in this fictional account, does not seem to ring true with the character of Ness as he has been played out up to this point. Once again, I am going to leave it to the audience to watch the film and judge for themselves.

 

Ultimately, of course, and it's not a spoiler since this part is historical, Capone ends up being convicted of tax evasion. Historically speaking, that may have been the only way it was going to play out, since the Capone organization was powerful enough to keep the crime boss out of jail for his more overt illegal activities.

While The Untouchables  has it's issues with it's historical accuracy, the film is a stand out for the efforts that the director and the majority of the actors bring to the screen. Even some of the minor characters are memorable. I particularly liked Police Chief Mike Dorsett's (Richard Bradford) brief scenes when he interacted with Connery in the back alley fight. Dorsett is not as bad as it would all seem. I think he genuinely cares about Malone, even if Malone is opposed to the status quo (i.e. the bribery and corruption) in which Dorsett is involved.

This film ranks fairly high in lists of great gangster movies. One book I have in my collection, The Ultimate Book of Great Gangster Movies by  George Anastasia and Glen Macnow puts it at #28, while the Ranker website puts it in at # 11. (It should come as no surprise that both of those put the first two The Godfather films as #1 and #2). My personal list would probably have it at #5, behind those first two The Godfather films, followed closely by Goodfellas and Little Caesar. (Sorry Pulp Fiction fans...)

Well, that wraps up this week's entry. Drive safely, folks.

Quiggy

  

 

 

 

  

Semiquincentennial Movie Project #20: Mississippi Burning

 

The Semiquincentennial  Movie Project is an ongoing celebration of the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States. During the course of this project your humble blogger is choosing a movie a week to represent each of the 50 states in the Union, as well as a movie scheduled for 4th of July weekend that will represent the nation's capitol, Washington D.C. The order of the weekly entries will coincide with the order of each state's entry into the fold (although, not necessarily coinciding with the date of their entry into said fold).

 

 

 

Week #20: Mississippi -

The state of Mississippi was established on December 10, 1817 (which, by the way, is the day before your humble blogger's birthday, although not the same year, obviously...)  

Details about Mississippi:

State bird: Northern mockingbird

State flower: Magnolia

State tree: Southern Magnolia 

Mississippi is the first state to allow conjugal visits for long term prisoners.

Since we will be celebrating it next week, Mississippi lays claim to being the site of the first Memorial Day. (There are disputes on this, BTW...)

The first female to be hired as a mail carrier came from Mississippi.

Coca Cola was invented in Atlanta, but the first bottling plant for the drink was in Vicksburg.

The University of Mississippi is home to the oldest book in the U.S. 

And Mississippi is the only state (so far) to have an official state toy (must've a slow day in Congress that day...). It's the teddy bear. 

Famous people born in Mississippi: Elvis Presley, B. B. King, James Earl Jones, Morgan Freeman, Brett Favre, Walter Payton, Jefferson Davis, Jerry Clower, William Faulkner and Tennessee Williams (believe it or not!)

One quick note: The above flag was adopted in 2021 due to pressure from the "politically correct" crowd. For much of it's existence (after the Civil War) the state flag was different.

 

Mississippi obviously held on to it's southern heritage and past for as long as it could, which becomes relevant when discussing today's entry in the Project. It was the last state in the Union to remove any trace of the Confederate flag from it's official state flag.

 

 

 

Mississippi Burning (1988): 

One of the saddest events to happen in Mississippi's history was the death of three civil rights activists in 1964. The Ku Klux Klan murdered James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwermer for the "crime" of trying to register black citizens to vote. Rather than go into intricate detail, you can check out this link to get details of the actual event.

The film is a highly fictionalized account of the event and the investigation by the FBI into what happened. There are a number of discrepancies in the film, although most of them irrelevant to the overall storyas presented in the film.  Of course, this is a film, and not a true-to-life documentary, so unless you are a stickler for absolute accuracy, the film version of the basic background events has the effect that it was meant to convey; the fact that the racism prevalent in pre-civil rights South was irrational and entirely motivated by an irrational and unfounded hatred of a people just because of the color of their skin. But to note, as Robert Brent Toplin says in his book History by Hollywood, the film "features far too many fictional situations to escape objections from the champions of authenticity". I have no desire to make this review a critical study of fact vs. fiction, however. For further study I suggest the chapter to devoted to the film in the above noted reference.

The primary focus of the film involves FBI agents who have been sent to a small town in Mississippi to investigate the disappearance of two civil rights activists who were sent to help register the black citizenry to be able to vote, a right that said citizenry already had, but was blocked by the predominantly white and racist population, including those who were in the position of supposedly seeing that that right was not infringed. Of course, since many of those in positions of the government were also members of the racist organization known as the Ku Klux Klan, they were not inclined to extend those rights to the disenfranchised minority.

Agent Alan Ward (Willem Dafoe) is the man in charge of the FBI contingent and he is constantly at odds with the older and more world wise, southernly speaking, Agent Rupert Anderson (Gene Hackman). Ward is a "by the book" official, who insists that everything has to be done the way the FBI has established operations be done. Anderson, on the other hand, who had been raised in the south and had even spent some time in the law enforcement community of said South, is adamant that the "bureau procedure" is not going to be as effective in this situation, since he knows from experience how people in the South think.

 

The pair arrive in the county seat of Jessup County, Mississippi, and begin their investigation. They run into problems at the very beginning, when they run headlong into what is going to be the brick wall of the investigation.

 

One of the best scenes featuring Hackman's Anderson in a one-on-one encounter with the good old boys in a private bar is indicative of why I think Hackman was deserving of his nomination, if not of actually winning, the Oscar. (And note: If you are prudish about language, you might want to skip this scene. Fair warning.)

 

 

It's not easy to like Willem Dafoe's character, even if his moral compass is pointed in the right direction, but there is one scene, a confrontation between Ward and Anderson that really stands out. (and again,be aware of the language factor...)

 

The hostility that the racist native population exposes to the interlopers is mainly centered on the main combatants in the conflict. The most hostile, in my opinion, is Frank Bailey (Michael Rooker). The above scene in the private bar with Hackman is indicative of the outright resistance and hatred that the character has, not only for the local black populace, but for these interloping federal agents come to stir up trouble. 

 

Much of the citizenry only watches the invasion of the feds with a bit of curiosity, not really hostile to the investigation, per se. But Deputy Clinton Pell's (Brad Dourif) wife, Mrs. Pell (Frances McDormand) has her moral compass pointed in the right direction. She forms a friendship with Agent Anderson, and basically informs him that the she knows those three civil rights workers were killed, and that she is pretty sure she knows who all was involved, including her husband.

 

The investigation often stalls, not only because those involved in the murder are also the ones to whom the agents are dependent to supply help, but also because the local black population is reluctant to give assistance out of fear of reprisals by the Klan. And the Klan indeed puts their hard influence into the fray, even fire bombing some houses and churches of locals they suspect of helping (whether the locals actually DID help the agents or not).

 

Eventually Agent Ward concedes that his by the book approach is going nowhere and allows Agent Anderson to execute some "less than legal" tactics to get the results they need.  They eventually find the bodies of the missing civil rights workers, but it takes a bit more tactics to pin the blame on the guilty parties. One of my favorite scenes is when the Mayor (R. Lee Ermey) is kidnapped and taken to a shack by a big bulky black Federal Agent who uses some scare tactics on him to get him to admit to being peripherally involved. This in itself could not be used in an actual court trial since it was information acquired through coercion, but it does help the ultimate goal of getting some of the others to admit to involvement.

 

The film was nominated for several Academy Awards, but unfortunately had the bad luck to be pitted against Rain Man in many of them. As good as Rain Man was, my personal opinion is that Mississippi Burning got robbed in a couple of categories. Overall I think Mississippi Burning was far better than Rain Man in the category for best director. I concede the Best Actor to Dustin Hoffman, mostly because of the work he did in conveying the eccentricities of the character he played, although I am pretty sure that Hackman came in second in the voting. But I also would have given the Best Supporting Actress award to Frances McDormand.  I will admit that the one Oscar that the movie did win, that for Best Cinematography, seems more like a concession than an actual win... Who Framed Roger Rabbit? probably should have won that one.

Despite the measure of criticism the film garnered as a result of it's heavy reliance on fictional portrayals as opposed to fact, it was generally well-received by the critics at large. Rotten Tomatoes gives it a fairly good 79% Fresh rating. The dynamic duo of critics, Siskel and Ebert, gave it a two thumbs up on their TV show, Siskel & Ebert & The Movies. The movie made a modest showing at the box office, doubling it's initial budget. 

As a historian, I can empathize with some of the critics who object to historical discrepancies in this film, but  as a general film lover, I can also appreciate how the movie pans out in terms of it's story.  As long as you go into it expecting a story and not necessarily a documentary, the acting of the primary actors portraying their individual characters can be taken in stride. If the point is to instill a dislike for the proponents of segregation and racist attitudes is the point, then both Brad Dourif and Michael Rooker stand out, even if they do come across, at times, as cardboard caricatures one might typically expect from Hollywood. Given that, I would recommend this movie, at least to those of you old enough to understand the implications presented.  

Until next week, drive safely.   

Quiggy 

 

Semiquincentennial Movie Project #19: Breaking Away

 

 

 

The Semiquincentennial  Movie Project is an ongoing celebration of the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States. During the course of this project your humble blogger is choosing a movie a week to represent each of the 50 states in the Union, as well as a movie scheduled for 4th of July weekend that will represent the nation's capitol, Washington D.C. The order of the weekly entries will coincide with the order of each state's entry into the fold (although, not necessarily coinciding with the date of their entry into said fold).

 

 

Week #19: Indiana -

 

 

 

The state of Indiana was established on December 11, 1816. 

Details about Indiana:

State bird: cardinal

State flower: peony

State tree: tulip tree 

Additional historical trivia:

There is a good chance that the popcorn you are eating came from Indiana. Indiana (and Nebraska) are the producers of most of the world's popcorn supply.

Did you ever get a letter from Santa? It probably actually came from the post office in Santa Claus, IN...

Elvis Presley performed his last live concert in Indianapolis 3 months before his death.

October 6, 1866 was the date of the very first train robbery, in Indiana.

You older girls will remember Raggedy Ann. The doll was created by an Indiana woman. 

Speaking of females, Indiana is home of the first "women only" prison. 

The tiny school of Milan won the state basketball championship in 1954, and was the inspiration for the film Hoosiers.

Famous people born in Indiana: Orville Redenbacher (see the first trivia bit above), Jim Davis (creator of the Garfield comic strip), Michael Jackson (as well as the rest of the Jackson 5), Kurt Vonnegut, David Letterman, James Dean, Larry Bird, U.S. President Benjamin Harrison, U.S. Vice President Mike Pence and, believe it or not, Kentucky Fried Chicken founder Colonel Sanders (who wasn't a real colonel in the Army, by the way..) 

 

Breaking Away (1979): 

Remember those heady days of the late 70's and early 80's? When life was idyllic because you didn't have to be worried about being drafted, and especially when, even if you did sign up for military service, you were assured of not having to serve in an unpopular war? When, after graduation from high school, the biggest decisions a boy would have to make was whether to go to college or join the work force? When Dennis Quaid was, arguably, one of the sexiest new actors on the screen (and I can say that, firmly entrenched in my own heterosexuality. A young Dennis Quaid was pretty hot at 25...) When a little low budget film like Breaking Away could surprise the critics and the public alike?

At a budget of only $2 million the film crept into being one of the top films of 1979. Roger Ebert, in his review, praised it, saying that "[i]n a summer of big-budget movies that are insults to the intelligence" here was a movie that was "a wonderfully sunny, funny, goofy, intelligent movie that makes you feel about as good as any movie in a long time. It is, in fact, a treasure..." (BTW, I looked up to see what "big budget movies" that Ebert might be referring to as "insults to the intelligence" and came away with these: He considered The Hurricane to be the worst movie of the year, this despite the fact that he stayed for the entire movie, but walked out on Caligula. He also did not like The Amityville Horror and Beyond the Poseidon Adventure.)

Breaking Away, on the other hand, consistently cracks the top 20 sports movies of all time (a 2003 Sports Illustrated article ranked it # 8), and even gets fairly good rankings on movie lists that cover the entire gamut of movie genres. It's also # 8 on AFI's list of the "100 Most Inspiring Movies list.. With a cast of virtually unknowns (this was only the 7th movie for Jackie Earle Haley, the veteran of the main cast, the 5th movie for Quaid as well as the 5th for Dennis Christopher, and the first for Daniel Stern. To be the main focus of the cast with a bunch of "nobodies", the movie did fairly well, I would say.

The film was not without merits in more ways than one. It garnered five Academy Award nominations, and even managed to win one of them, Best Writing for Original Screenplay. It had the unfortunate situation of going head-to-head against the top movie of the year, Kramer vs. Kramer, and thus lost for Best Picture, Best Director (Peter Yates lost to Robert Benton) and Best Supporting Actress (Barbara Barrie lost to Meryl Streep). It also lost the Best Music award to All That Jazz (and deservedly so, in my opinion on that one).

Essentially it's a coming of age movie more than a sports movie. After all, even though the focus is on the sport of cycling, how many people would actually be interested enough to go see it just for the cycling? Certainly not if you wanted action. A football movie or a hockey movie or even a basketball movie would be much more likely to draw in the sports nut. On the other hand, a movie that centered on the conflict of teenagers trying to fit in to whatever society expected of them, while still retaining their exuberant youthful personality, is a much more likely draw.

The star of the movie is Dave Stoller (Dennis Christopher), a kid who is absolutely enamored with the Italian bicycling team, and even by the Italian culture itself. To the annoyance of his father, he affects an Italian accent and cranks out Italian opera on his stereo. He has a big desire to compete against the Italians in a bicycle race, holding them in high regard as basically the "best of the best".

 

Along with high school buddies Mike (Dennis Quaid), Cyril (Daniel Stern) and Moocher (Jackie Earle Haley), Dave spends most of his time discussing what the four are going to do now that they have graduated high school. It appears that the only real future they have is getting into the job market, since college is basically a pipe dream. The university students call them "cutters", a disparaging term for the townspeople, many of whom work in the local rock quarry. (Note: The actual term that the real university used was "stoners", but the production team opted to change it for the film, for obvious reasons...)

 

The rivalry between the two factions becomes intense when some of the students from the university invade the boys' favorite swimming hole.

 

Mike in particular has some animosity for the university interlopers because, as a former football star in high school he resents the fact that some out-of-towners are garnering the accolades in the realm of football while he is only able to live on his past glories at school. 

 

Mike: "You know what really gets me though? I mean, here I am, I gotta live in this stinking town and I gotta read in the newspapers about some hot shot kid - new star of the college team. Every year its gonna be a new one. And every year its never gonna be me. I'm just gonna be Mike. Twenty year old Mike. Thirty year old Mike. Old mean old man Mike. " 

Mike, Cyril and Moocher all have dreams, but dreams that are beyond what they think are realistically possible. Dave, on the other hand, is the essence of optimism. He knows, I mean really knows, that given the opportunity he could be a star cyclist. So when the Italian team comes to town for an exhibition race, he plans to be in the race to compete against his heroes. But his "heroes" turn out to be a bit less than altruistic. They use some very unorthodox tactics to get Dave to wreck his bike during the race.

 

This has the effect of making Dave apathetic about his dreams. Even though his friends want him to compete in the local race, mainly because if he wins it would take those uppity university students they hate down a peg or two, Dave is not very gung-ho about the idea. Inspiration comes from an unlikely source. Dave's father tells his son about how, as a younger man, and one of the quarry workers, he helped cut the stones that helped build the university, even though he never felt welcome on the campus.

 

Ultimately Dave and his friends join the race, with the team name being "Cutters" (thus snubbing their noses at the disparaging term the university students use against them). Dave is, of course, the driving force for the team, since none of his friends are as avid about his chosen interest in cycling. But the entry in the race requires that a team be comprised of four, not just one. The race is kind of like a relay. One biker rides until he feels a need to rest and another takes over. 

 

Dave, of course,  takes the lead, but ends up getting injured amd has to let his friends take over. But the lead he garnered dwindles as the friends are not nearly as adept at this cycling thing as Dave. As usual in these kinds of movies, the last laps of the race make it necessary that Dave takes back his position as the rider. And it's pretty much a foregone conclusion what is going to happen at the final lap, I think.

In the middle of all this action Dave starts a relationship with one of the university girls, Katherine (Robyn Douglass in her first movie role). But Dave gets off on the wrong foot by pretending to be a university student, and not just that, but also being an Italian. You know that's bound to come back at some point and smack him in the butt. 

 

Did you know that this movie inspired a very brief TV series? In 1980 ABC tried to introduce a series, also called Breaking Away, with Shaun Cassidy in the lead role as Dave. It only aired 7 episodes before it was cancelled, however. I don't have any idea how it would have panned out in the long run, but the initial show was in essence a prequel to the film. The events were supposedly occurring the year prior to the events in the film.

 

Not to dismiss Barbara Barrie's Academy Award nomination, I think the standout performance of the film is Paul Dooley as Dave's father. He is hilarious in all his scenes, but early on in the film is one that stands out. Dad follows Dave upstairs when he comes home and comes back downstairs with a shocked look on his face. And you just know what his line is going to be before he even days it:

 

"He's shaving... he's shaving his legs..."

 Breaking Away is a film that will stick with you for its inspirational message. If you watch enough of these kinds of movies the ending may be telegraphed before  the movie ever gets underway, but like several movies I have reviewed over the years, it has enough of it's own charm that the "I've seen this all before" aspect of it gets overwhelmed by the way the actors play out their parts. I highly recommend if you've never seen it to give it a go, and if you have seen it, give it another viewing,

That's it for this week. Drive safely, folks.

Quiggy

 

 

 

Semiquincentennial Movie Project #15: The Moonshine War

  

 

The Semiquincentennial  Movie Project is an ongoing celebration of the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States. During the course of this project your humble blogger is choosing a movie a week to represent each of the 50 states in the Union, as well as a movie scheduled for 4th of July weekend that will represent the nation's capitol, Washington D.C. The order of the weekly entries will coincide with the order of each state's entry into the fold (although, not necessarily coinciding with the date of their entry into said fold).

 

Week #15: Kentucky 

 

The state of Kentucky was established on June 1, 1792

Details about Kentucky:

State bird: Kentucky cardinal

State flower: goldenrod

State tree: tulip poplar

Additional historical trivia:

The state is the only one south of Ohio to have erected a memorial to Union soldiers. It is in the city of Vanceburg.

The city of Richmond, KY was considered as a place to establish the country's capitol, but lost out to the eventual winner, Washington, D.C.

(This one hurts...) The first oilwell in the country was not dug in Texas. It was dug in McCreary County.

"Happy birthday to you!" The familiar song was written by Kentucky natives.

Mother's Day originated through the efforts of a Kentuckian.

Of course you know that most of the country's gold reserve is in Fort Knox. 

Famous people born in Kentucky: Johnny Depp, George Clooney, Billy Ray Cyrus, Muhammed Ali, Edgar Cayce and Civil War presidents Jefferson Davis (Confederacy) and Abraham Lincoln (Union).

 

 

The Moonshine War (1970): 

Memory is such a transient and fleeting thing. When I was a young boy of about 15 I remember catching this movie on TV. In those days, before cable, we only had the three major networks, CBS, ABC and NBC, plus, if the weather was right, one or two independent UHF stations. The UHF stations would play syndicated reruns of older shows and most nights would run an older movie. So, about 1976, the local UHF station played The Moonshine War. As usual my tastes ran counter to whatever the rest of the family wanted to watch. (I may be wrong, but it was probably my sister's turn to pick the shows we had on the family room TV. They probably were watching The Waltons or Little House on the Prairie, neither of which I ever wanted to watch.)

So I migrated to the black and white Tv we kept in another room. And I remember watching this movie. I didn't remember a heck of a lot about it until I watched it again this week. Of course, I remember Alan Alda as a country bumpkin moonshiner butting heads with a corrupt Federal Agent played by Patrick McGoohan and his cohort, a less than reputable dentist turned gangster, played by Richard Widmark. Really, I could only recall the ending clearly (and I won't give it away here, but it was an unexpected and extremely satisfying ending).

The fleeting memory that I had, and remember I was very young at the time, was that it was a pretty decent movie.  The thing is, that was almost 50 years ago. And, truth be told, it didn't take a whole lot to impress me. But with 50 years under my belt, and the experience of having watched quite a number of movies since then, I can't say that the whole second experience with the film was all that satisfying.

For one thing, Alda was just getting started in his film career. This was only his third or fourth starring role, and he was still a couple of years away from his iconic role in the TV series, M*A*S*H*.  I have to say that I was not all that impressed with his performance. Some reviewers echo the same sentiments that I had, that he was entirely miscast. I never really could believe that he was some backwoods hillbilly.

In the supporting cast, too, there was some issue. Patrick McGoohan has been much better, especially in one of my favorite roles of his, as The Prisoner. Only Richard Widmark, as the evil dentist, really shines, for me. (And some of the reviews I read even took issue with his performance...) 

Will Geer is essentially Grandpa Walton here, as the local sheriff, but he is a welcome addition to the otherwise lacking cast. There are a couple of interesting cameos here, including Teri Garr in a brief role as part of a husband/wife team who are robbed of their clothes by Widmark's character's second hand man.

The premise is fairly straightforward, although some of the actual motivations of the main characters take a little while to come out. Initially it appears that Frank Long (Patrick McGoohan) is a straight arrow Federal agent seeking a stash of bootleg moonshine held by local moonshiner Son Martin (Alan Alda).  There is some motivation, however, behind his quest.  You see, it's a foregone conclusion that a) Franklin Delano Roosevelt is going to win the upcoming election (which he did), and that b) he is going to repeal Prohibition (which he also did). 

That stash of moonshine that Son has hidden becomes the MacGuffin of the story. It turns out that Long's motivations are not entirely above board. He is not seeking the moonshine to destroy it, he is looking to make a huge bundle of money off of it because it will represent a head start over the upcoming legal distributors that will come to the fore after the repeal. Added to this intrigue is that Son and Frank were fellow soldiers in World War I.  It doesn't appear at the outset that they were compadres during that conflict, however. Either that or their friendship deteriorated after Frank became an enemy due to his now being a Federal agent.

When his tactics don't seem to be making any progress Long calls in a former "associate", a dentist turned gangster, Emmett Taulbee (Richard Widmark).  Taulbee brings with him his right hand man, Dual Metters (Lee Hazlewood).  

Dual shows his stripes early on when he tries to buy a suit that strikes his fancy from a fellow diner at a restaurant. When the diner is not forthcoming with selling the suit Dual forces him and his girl (Claude Johnson and Teri Garr) to strip naked under threat of a gun.

When Son turns down Frank and Emmett's pittance offer to buy his stash (only $1 a gallon, when the fair market price would seem to be $5 a gallon), Emmett calls in some reinforcements. And there is going to be Hell to pay. These hillbillies are not about to go gentle into that good night, but they underestimate the ruthlessness that the other side is willing to go to to achieve their goal.  What happens is that Martin ends up facing off the gangsters alone because Emmett and company raid Son's neighbors and bust up their stills. (Is everyone in town running an illegal moonshine operation? It would seem that might flood the market a bit, but maybe I don't know how much effort the public was willing to go to get the contraband alcohol...) 

Emmett, when his efforts to turn the neighbors against Son don't get Son to cough up his stash, resorts to some of the same tactics that a fellow bootlegger in Chicago became famous for, that of eliminating anyone who might have some influence on Son's reluctance. Emmett's ruthlessness eventually leads to Frank starting to have second thoughts about the whole operation.

As I said earlier, the denouement of the film is one of the better parts. Son has alienated most of his neighbors by this time, since he steadfastly refuses to give up his stash, despite the unorthodox tactics that Emmett and Frank have been using against said neighbors. So, instead of helping defend Son from the authorities, they instead watch the last action play out from the surrounding hills as it seems that Emmett will finally achieve his objective.

Rotten Tomatoes rates this movie only at 36%. I'm not sure how well it did at the box office, but IMDb only has it standing at just slightly under a 6.0 rating, which means it probably didn't get well received by the public. Wikipedia only notes that the film went over budget on production, but doesn't give me any financial stats other than that.

As I said earlier, it is not entirely all that well acted, although there are several faces that will trigger recognition. Harry Carey, Jr., Bo Hopkins, Tom Skerritt and John Schuck are familiar, and if you like my series of "Hey! I Know That Guy!", you will be interested to know that I had another one of those memories crop up. One of the neighbors of Son is Bill Durham (also sometimes credited by his real name, Charles Tyner). Durham had a significant role in The Outlaw Josey Wales as the trading post operator where Josey acquired the young Indian girl, and as Gus the hotelier in Planes Trains and Automobiles.

So the verdict on this movie; is it worth watching? Well, I'd say it's interesting enough for one time, but as far as that factor of "re-watch-ability", I'd have to give it a "no".  Widmark is the only actor who really makes the movie watchable, but even he is not on his best mark. Given a chance to recast the film I would definitely find someone a bit more believable as a hillbilly than Alda. It had Bo Hopkins in it, and he could have probably essayed the role a bit better. And McGoohan is McGoohan. When he is playing British guys he is pretty much a good actor, but as an American he leaves something to be desired. 

Well, folks, until next time... drive safely.

Quiggy