Word: gangsters
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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White Heat. James Cagney returns to crime in a violent gangster melodrama with psychiatric trimmings (TIME, Sept...
...scriptwriting catches so much of the vitality and fire of rabble-rousing politics, it is a pity that it also uses some too-familiar materials. When a henchman gets out of line, Stark's actions recall a dozen gangster movies: backed by a tiny, shifty-faced gunman, he props his feet on the table, snarls from the side of his mouth and turns his victim into quaking jelly; filled with lead from an assassin's revolver, Stark babbles improbable curtain lines that too carefully-dear up any audience doubt as to his power-mad aims...
Scripter-Director-Producer Robert Rossen's efforts to keep Stark from being a facsimile of the late Huey Long often turn the character into a colorless man who lacks the political charm of a people's favorite and looks like a cross between a schoolteacher and a gangster. But when Actor Crawford is allowed to swing around in the role, he has some fine scenes-notably, the seedy politico resting off a nightlong drunk in a playground swing, gesturing the children to go off and leave him alone...
Meanwhile, TIME correspondents in Chicago, Los Angeles, Hot Springs, Ark., San Francisco, New Orleans and Naples (Gangster Lucky Luciano's current retreat), and Researcher Anne Lopatin were doing their own digging into the Costello past and present. Much of it was the business of tracking down rumors which often proved to be untrue, and triple-checking the facts. In the midst of his New Orleans investigation Correspondent Ed Ogle answered his telephone and the following conversation took place...
Once in a while, the old Faulkner power comes through in a blaze of language, an original phrase (a gangster has "a face like a shaved wax doll"), or an insight into rural character. But except for Tomorrow, an effective account of how the family loyalties of a poor-white clan can tangle the job of justice, the stories fall between two stools: they are neither ingenious enough to be good detective yarns nor deep and free enough to be good Faulkner Detective-story fans will be horrified to find crucial clues spelled out in italics; Faulkner fans will find...