Very well executed

Memorable, crazy movie

Brilliant and touching

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

Before Brian DePalma gave us his stylish telling of the tale Eliot Ness and his band of Treasury agents, the world was reintroduced to them via this television series from Desilu productions. Eliot Ness was portrayed in tight-lipped, square jawed fashion by Robert Stack and it became his career role.If Ness had only lived to see it. After his high point in leading that gang of Treasury agents in Chicago that raided illegal liquor establishments with flair, Ness went on to become Cleveland's Chief of Police and an unsuccessful candidate for mayor of that city. He drifted into obscurity after that.But shortly before that Ness who was in bad health and in a bad financial situation contacted author Oscar Fraley who helped him ghost write his memoirs of those days. Ness died right after that and the book was published after his demise. It was then snapped up by Desilu productions because Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz saw potential for a television series.The Untouchables had a good run for a few seasons. The period atmosphere was helped by the familiar voice of Walter Winchell who lived through that period and covered it. Winchell helped give the series a ring of authenticity it didn't deserve.After a while the Untouchables were in New York dealing with Lucky Luciano and those gang wars, dealing with the Purple gang of Detroit and others that had nothing to do with what they really did. They hit Al Capone and his competitor Bugs Moran in the pocketbook, but of course were not the ones who brought them down. We all know it was those busy accountants in the US Attorney's office in Chicago that did the job.The success of the series spun a brief spurt of nostalgia for that era in America both on the big and small screen. Neville Brand as Al Capone and Bruce Gordon as Frank Nitti were a perfect pair of scowling counterparts to the jut-jawed Robert Stack as Ness.Occasionally the series is still run on the nostalgia channels. It remains an interesting and glamorized look at a part of our past.

Outstanding weekly television series of the late 1950s and early 1960s. Who can ever forget that haunting theme music that was played at the beginning and end of each episode? The show was just terrific, even down to the superb narration of Walter Winchell.Having lost the Academy Award for his brilliant performance in "Written on the Wind," in 1956, Robert Stack turned his attention to this television series. He portrayed Eliot Ness, a crime buster of A-1 quality, who would bring down some of the biggest names in crime history.With a terrific supporting cast, each weekly episode was an absolute treasure to view. People such as Nehemiah Persoff and Virginia Vincent had standard stand-out roles.Yes, there was plenty of violence but Chicago of the 1930s was just that.

I have been a historian of 20th century American culture for more than 25 years, with a specialty in the 1920s-1940s, as well as a film historian and filmmaker. "The Untouchables" is just as accurate any other Hollywood dramatization of gangland lore. When you have to crank out an hour-long TV episode every week for several years, who can afford to do research 24 hours a day? This show was more or less as accurate as it possibly could be. It is the ONLY version of gangland culture I have seen that has included Dutch Schultz's unforgettable babble, "A boy has never wept, nor dashed a thousand Kim." Hell, that was enough for me. If you need my credentials, check out my newest book (my 15th), "Warners Wiseguys," a look at the classic Warner Bros. gangland world.

This show's concept was hastily developed to become a one-hour weekly dramatic series after the success of the beautifully produced made-for-television movie "The Scarface Mob". At first, the producers tried filming the capture of other important criminals using Eliot Ness, the TV-film's fictionalized real-life hero, as their central character. Then they designed a unit like the 1930s "Untouchables" squad depicted in the TV-movie, a federal group combating gang activity and other crimes in Chicago, one headed by Ness (Robert Stack) who worked out of an office in the city. He had six men, with Martin Flaherty (Jerry Paris), Jack Rossman, (Steve London), Enrico Rossi (Nicholas Georgiade), Lamarr Kane (Chuck Hicks) and William Youngfellow (Abel Fernandez) as its mainstays. In the second year, Paris left to be replaced by Lee Hobson (Paul Picerni) for the remainder of the series' run, and Cam Allison (Anthony George) was added for that year only. It was also decided that Frank Nitti (Bruce Gordon) and other mob bosses would be used as the main scheming villains without a regular "Al Capone" being portrayed. Nitti was killed off four times during the series, but Gordon was so popular with the show's watchers he was resurrected each time. A stable of regular police and ganglord types was also developed, played by Oscar Beregi, Joseph Ruskin, Frank Willcox, and Nehemiah Persoff with regular police and useful guest stars being hired a number of times. As Robert Stack had feared from the beginning, the show tended to marginalize the role of the ethical Ness in favor of unglamorously and dramatically portraying the activities of the victims, criminals, or crimelords of the week. The use of a narrator, radio commentator Walter Winchell, helped to keep the ethical view uppermost in observers' minds; and frequently, Ness and his squad were able to get across the desirability of cooperating with police, as this idea finally sank in. Outside agents played by John Gabriel, Jack Lord and others were sometimes used to improve a script. But from the first, the show's outstanding quality was the abilities of writers, directors and guest actors to produce powerful hour-long series. "The Petrone Story", "The Rusty Heller Story", "Cooker in the Sky", "Ginger Jake" and a hundred others may have occasionally overdone graphic detail and use of machine guns, but they were often brilliantly cinematic. The list of directors who toiled for the series included 29 first-raters including Ida Lupino, Tay Garnett, Vincent McEveety, Paul Wendkos, Richard Whorf, Walter Grauman and Bernard L. Kowalsi among others. The writers' list included 40 names, many illustrious, such as Robert C. Dennis, David P. Harmon, Ernest Kinoy, Harry Kronman, John Mantley, Gilbert Ralston, Sy Salkowutz, Alvin Sapinsley, George Slavin, William Templeton. Guest stars such as Patricia Neal, Elizabeth Montgomery, Lee Marvin, Arlene Martel, Will Kuluva, Dolores Dorn-Heft, Robert Middleton, Ruth Roman, Brian Keith, William Bendix, Barbara Stanwyck and Joe de Santis were always an extra cause to tune in to the latest adventure. In the last year, producer Quinn Martin bowed to pressure groups and tried to replace Italian surnamed villains with others; but the top-ranked series was canceled after 4 unforgettable years. To measure the quality of "The Untouchables" against most other series is impossible; its scenes have far more power than those of almost any other series; It was not always ethical fiction; but the series always had first-rate production qualities, acting, writing and directing. It holds a very high place in U.S. film history.