Bear? Bull? Rhino? Or was it a large Tomcat who’d seen one too many alleys?

As I watched the highly entertaining crime flick, The Mob (1951) on TCM last week, I kept trying to figure out the striking yet elusive resemblance of the star, Broderick Crawford, to some deceptively slow-moving yet potentially lethal creature.

I admit to a weakness for Crawford. It’s not simply because of the gruff authority he brought to barking the phrase “10-4″ into a car radio repeatedly in endless rotations of the syndicated Ziv production of Highway Patrol on the tube. Nor is it the relish he brought to his Oscar winning role in All The King’s Men (as Willie Stark, a politician novelist Robert Penn Warren had based on Huey Long), especially when he rose up in public to announce “I’ve been accused of stealing one million dollars. It’s a lie. I stole three million! But I stole it for you! To build your hospitals, your schools, your roads…” It probably started when I first saw Crawford’s jaded but sympathetic cop in Black Angel (1946), though Brod may have permanently wormed his way into my affections the night when, as a callow lass in 1977, I spied his boiled ham face as he loomed up on Saturday Night Live, delivering his grumpily terse monologue as host from a large easy chair, looking quite unready for prime time. Or, in more recently viewed cinematic memory, his
appearance on TCM in Night Unto Night (1947),
another forgotten film unearthed to reveal Crawford
playing a nice change of pace as a garrulous, philosophical, life-affirming artist (whose huge paintings look like something created by an American Diego Rivera crossed with Oskar Kokoschka). Btw, in this movie he’s trying to help straighten out the life of one Ronald Reagan, who’s asked to be the brooding lead of this occasionally intriguing early Don Siegel directorial effort.

To all of the myriad parts in movies and tv that he played, Crawford brought his heft, his air of “this is me, take it or leave it”, that gravelly voice, that battered face, three whole weeks at Harvard University, years knocking around as a stevedore, a seaman, combat experience in WWII, and a second tier character actor. Unexpectedly, at times, he also brought the ability to express a bear-like psychic pain and to put a comic spin on some unlikely dialogue. The comic touch may have come naturally, since his father,
vaudevillian Lester Crawford and his mother, the delightful comic actress Helen Broderick, (seen at
left) best remembered for her sterling support of Fred and Ginger in Top Hat (1935) and Swing Time (1936), were both stage and film veterans themselves.

Following his Oscar triumph, and casting by George Cukor in the comedy Born Yesterday (1950) as Judy Holliday’s besotted brute, (a role in which Crawford’s comic abilities do not shine, imho), the actor fell back into his B movie niche, though there would be exceptions. Few fans seem aware of it, but one of Crawford’s most touching roles came
in Frederico Fellini’s Il Bidone (1955), an artistic waystation for the great director between his much better known La Strada (1954) and Nights
of Cabiria (1957). As Augusto, a leader of a pack of grifters, (including I Vitteloni’s Franco Fabrizi & La Strada’s Richard Basehart), bilking poor people out of their savings in Italy, Crawford is a lost soul. A chance meeting with his angelic daughter, leads him to pursue one more big, and ultimately, fatal con. You can sense some of the elegiac flavor of this movie in this brief clip . According to one source, Broderick Crawford “came to Fellini’s attention when the latter saw his face on a poster for All the King’s Men (1949). As ever, it was the actor’s visage that won him the part. Faces, Fellini believed, were the human landscape of his pictures.” Crawford’s expressive, wistful performance as a lonely petty criminal, whether disguised as a monsignor gypping grieving relatives out of money for Masses for the Dead or selling fake antibiotics to another, or trying to reconnect with his nearly grown child, reveals his character as both a victim and an abuser. While most effective as a human portrait, Crawford and his minions
in Il Bidone, with their chronic pretensions
and disappointments seem, Fellini might have believed, an apt allegory for post-war Italy as the defeated country sought to
stumble forward from the degradation of fascism. For a man who might generously be described as an unlikely looking actor, artistic moments in Il Bidone were few during his half century
career. Dismissed by New York Times critic Bosley Crowther when it premiered stateside in 1964 as “sentimental” and “an obvious cheap-crime picture”, Il Bidone may have marked a pause in Fellini’s development as a legend, but, if you are alert to the pitiless, quietly exhausted self-knowledge exhibited by Broderick Crawford, it may move you too. Btw, Mr. Crowther had also ho-hummed Fritz Lang’s attempt to adapt Zola’s La Bête Humaine into Human Desire (1954) despite Crawford’s intense performance opposite femme fatale Gloria Grahame. It probably didn’t help that Jean Renoir had previously directed a masterful version of this tale of jealousy and lust in 1938 with Jean Gabin and Simone Simon. (Reviewing the ups and downs of an actor’s life make me think it’s no wonder that Crawford drank). Bread and butter pictures, or, more accurately, beer and a shot movies such as The Mob were part of a steadier diet for the actor. There were, periodically, also happy accidents along the way. One of them was the director of this movie, who was making his second film at the helm.

Robert Parrish was a former child actor who’d appeared in movies from the ’20s onward, in particular those of John Ford, including Four Sons (1928), The Informer (1935), had become Ford’s editor in the late ’30s and worked with him in the war, contributing to The Battle of Midway and December 7th and eventually working as an assistant director.

Parrish’s directorial debut was the nimble Cry Danger (1951), made at the behest of star (and creative mover and shaker) Dick Powell just before tackling The Mob later in the same year. On that film, Parrish also worked with one of the best rewrite men in the business, Bill Bowers. Describing Bowers as “bright, realistic, and talented”,
Parrish, (seen at left with Rita Hayworth), said that “[Bowers] knew enough not to try to make a silk purse out of a mediocre script. We all settled for a sow’s ear with Bowers’s sharp dialogue. ” Bowers, a former reporter, who had written the excellent story for The Gunfighter (1950), went on to write many wonderful scripts, among them Split Second (1953), Five Against the House (1955), (on TCM on Aug. 12, at 9:45PM), Tight Spot (1955), (on TCM on July 16 at 10:00AM). One of his most fondly remembered scripts became the lively comedy, Support Your Local Sheriff (1971), (on TCM on Aug. 8, at 8:00PM). To read more about the Oscar nominated writer, please visit Alan K. Rode’s blog on Mr. Bowers at One Way Street, found here .

Not surprisingly, the dialogue in The Mob is also spiced by Bill Bowers‘ sure wit. Produced in a bouncy if low-budget style at Columbia, The Mob
reflected much of then contemporary history, described beautifully by my
fellow Morlock Richard Harland Smith here. It begins, interestingly, with Johnny Damico, a tough savvy cop played by Crawford committing a stupendous blunder after he inadvertently allows a killer to go free.

The fluid opening sequence of The Mob is a small tour de force, introducing us to a grouchy Brod as Johnny Damico, who’s bargaining with a pawnbroker for a bauble for his sometime fiancée (Betty Buehler). This scene is shot through the shop window with the camera moving in and out of the interior during a beautifully photographed rainstorm shot by cinematographer Joseph Walker, (and reminiscent in its
striking look and feel of the opening scene of the masterful Joseph
Lewis’ Gun Crazy). After a killing in the rain soaked street, Crawford tries to stop the man standing over the body, but lets him go after he flashes a badge.

Apparently, at least in this dark city, there’s little or no Internal Affairs investigation after it’s confirmed that–you guessed it–our boy Brod has let a killer walk. Damico (Crawford) then proceeds to con his boss into allowing him to find out where the “stink is coming from in this town”
by disappearing into the shadowy world of the waterfront docks. Before
you can say On the Waterfront, and, frankly, in an entertaining, rather less self-congratulatory fashion than the much better known film, in its own plebeian way, The Mob tries to show the nefarious atmosphere that permeated the lives of longshoremen and the men who manipulated them.

We are soon witness to middle-aged Brod giving his longtime gal pal,
nurse Mary (Betty Buehler) a large diamond–which he
claims he spent $650 on, (though we know he got it for only $300 from a
pawnbroker). To top this off, Mary is told by her honey that she won’t be hearing from him for some time since, according to Crawford, “It’s time for me to go undercover, like a gopher, a communist or sumpin’ like that.”

Strangely, the loyal gal seems pretty amenable and/or resigned to being given the brush-off. Apparently, ol’ Mary hasn’t heard the tick-tock-tick of her biological clock lately, she
really gets a kick out of being at the hospital 24/7, or she just loves the big lug as is. In any case, this is one of the few scenes with a little dose of femininity, kids–except for a tawdry scene with a couple of scheming babes on a blind date. Even they evoke some snappy patter between Clancy (Richard Kiley) and Damico (Crawford), who become suspiciously friendly as they work side by side as longshoremen. Damico, ever cautious undercover, asks belligerently “Who are the girls?” Peeved that just about everything ruffles this bird’s feathers, Kiley as Tom Clancy barks back, “Would you know any more if I gave you the names? They’re women.”

The rest of this slalom ride of a movie is lined with amusing amounts of testosterone and booze. As a matter of fact, this movie spends more time in bars than a rep from the Alcohol Control Board doing spot checks on joints serving juveniles. In at least half the scenes we’re hunting down clues with Brod in crummy neon lit dives with names like “The Royal Bar”, (only “royal” in the sense that Crown Royal might be served in dirty
shot glasses there), “The Black Kitten”, where noir’s favorite sadist, Neville Brand gets his attitude adjusted regularly, and whenever Crawford’s alone in any room he can be pretty much counted on to zero in on any handy bottles of Scotch left defenseless by their owners. Guess it’s all the pressure that undercover boy feels working his way into the mob that controls the longshoreman’s union, which, at one point is described as making life on the docks as “tight as a two bit collar.”
When asked why in the world anyone would want to work as hard as a
stevedore, our lad Brod sarcastically replies “I’m a socialite who’d like to try my hand at hard work.” After being set up nicely by Ernie Borgnine
and Neville Brand for a murder, Crawford eventually gets sprung. When asked by his workmate who the heck would bail a sorry louse like him out of the pokey, Brod says, with just the right twist of tart toughness, “My mudder.” It doesn’t read nearly as well as it plays when given the skilled emphasis that Crawford is capable of in this film.

The excellent, then largely unknown cast of supporting players is led by later recognizable talent such as Richard Kiley, Neville Brand, Ernest Borgnine,
John Marley and even Charles Bronson
(then known as Charles Buchinsky). Two standouts among this batch of effective actors are two of the least known actors in the cast; the forgotten bland menace of Matt Crowley as Blackie Clegg, a barkeep who bears watching, as well as a wisecracking hotel clerk, played by an uncredited Jay Adler, (who happens to have come by his acting chops naturally, being the brother of
Luther and Stella Adler).

In a nod to the then novel “scientific” techniques of crimestopping
in vogue in movies, we are also treated to a car being tailed using dripping luminous paint as a trace. As Hansel and Gretel might have pointed out to the cops, such methods have their limits, though this setback allows the viewer to briefly feel superior to the hapless, rather unimaginative arms of the law and builds some suspense about the denouement of this entertainment.

In my enthusiastic enjoyment of this movie, I may have overstated its modest appeal, but, if, like me, you enjoy being surprised by expert playing in what might have been a pedestrian story, I hope that you’ll catch this little known film next time it is broadcast. Besides, if you should miss it, maybe Crawford will show up in your crib when you least expect it, lapping up your best single malt and hopefully, making with the witticisms. If you check out this list of good quotes from Brod, some of which he came up with on his own; a visit from the shade of the veteran actor might be well worth your time.

Sources:
Parrish, Robert,
Growing Up in Hollywood, Little, Brown & Company, 1976.
Parrish, Robert, Hollywood Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, Little, Brown & Company, 1988.
Rode, Alan K., Bill Bowers, One Way Street Blog ,Saturday, April 28, 2007.
Thomson, David, The New Biographical Dictionary of Film, Alfred A. Knopf, 2002.
Wiegand, Chris, Federico Fellini: Ringmaster of Dreams, 1920-1993,
Taschen, 2003.