Kelly Izaj The above title describes THE UNTOUCHABLES in a nutshell.When Desilu Productions decided to adapt Eliot Ness and Oscar Frawley's 1957 memoir THE UNTOUCHABLES as a two part episode of the DESILU PLAYHOUSE anthology series in 1958, they didn't know that they were about to give birth to a classic TV crime series. So a year after the two part DESILU PLAYHOUSE episode aired, THE UNTOUCHABLES debuted on ABC in the Fall of 1959 and came on like gangbusters.Here's the series in a nutshell, at the end of the original pilot, Treasury Department agent Eliot Ness (Robert Stack) and his hand-picked group of agents known as "The Untouchables" continued their war on what was left of the Capone Organization led by Frank Nitti (Bruce Gordon). And also found time to go after such notable underworld figures as Dutch Shultz, Charles "Lucky" Lucianno, Jack "Legs" Diamond, the Genna Brothers, and Ma Barker among others who the real Eliot Ness never encountered. Not to mention a variety of would-be underworld kingpins, vice lords, and drug traffickers, many which often end trying to go for "gangster martyrdom" (dying with guns blazing during battle with the Untouchables)not before committing more than a few acts of violence before Ness and company catch up to them. All in 118 1 hour episodes that mixed the machine gun paced style of the 1930's gangster movies with the gritty edge of 1940's & 1950's film noir and pushed along by the staccato narration of Walter Winchell.For the record, Eliot Ness - real life - disbanded the Untouchables after Al Capone was put away, but that didn't stop Hollywood from doing this show and creating the situations. And remember, Hollywood has a bad habit of playing fast and loose with history. But that doesn't keep this from being an enjoyable show.For the record, Ness' agents were Jack Rossman (Steve London), Enrico "Rico" Rossi (Nicholas Georgiade), William Youngfellow (Abel Fernandez) for all four seasons with agents Cam Allison (Anthony George) and Martin Flaherty (Jerry Paris) both replaced by Lee Hobson (Paul Picerni) in the second season. A group of incorruptible agents in a time when cops and politicians "on the take" were the rule rather than the exception to the rule (this was the era of Prohibition). Considering the times (the late 1920's and early 1930's), Chicago and the rest of America needed a tough group of law-enforcers for such a tough age.In the hands of such writers as Leonard Kantor, Harry Kronman, and John Mantley among many others and directors such as Walter Grauman, Tay Garnett, Ida Lupino, and Paul Wendkos among others; THE UNTOUCHABLES became one of the true classics of the crime television genre. Not to mention at time one of the most violent series ever. But quite a few time during the run of the series, they showed that violence made more of an impact when the gory details weren't shown on screen. Examples of this include "The White Slavers" when a massacre of prostitutes were shown from the reaction of a character shielding his eyes and also in 'The Lily Dallas Story" when the title character machine guns a fence to death by showing a close-up of the tommy-gun being fired followed by a reaction shot of the title character. I could name a lot more incidents, but it would take a lot more space.During its four year run (1959-1963), THE UNTOUCHABLES ended up becoming one of the most memorable TV series ever to come out of any era. And its healthy afterlife in syndication (currently appears on ME-TV) and all four seasons being released on DVD (by CBS Video) ensured THE UNTOUCHABLES position as one of television's most unforgettable series.

drystyx The romanticized version of the Untouchables and the Capone mob has become larger than life. It reminds us of the famous line in THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALENCE of "print the legend".More than that, this series is iconic. It had a style, and it had so much violence and action, one wonders how it could have been produced so well and so quickly. Sets and props, including old cars, were repeatedly destroyed, although no doubt some were the same props destroyed once, shot from different angles.The violence and bloodshed would rival the gore movies of today. In fact, the villains were very much like the ones the spoiled rich kids of today like so well, just plain evil guys who perform evil for the sake of evil. Truly, their motivations for murder are very lame, but then these were goons, and goons don't need motivation.The stories were romanticized, fictional in the sense that the OK Corral movies are fictional. The "time" element is disregarded.What makes the show are the good guys. The bad guys are dull, but then true mobsters are dull and unimaginative. One thing the series did correctly was show how dull and unimaginative goons actually boast about how incredibly strategic they are, even though they do nothing but abuse power. This is relative even today. And it no doubt hits most power players of today below the belt.The Untouchables are the interesting characters. Stack gives us a Ness who is a bit more macho and likable than the true glory hound Ness, and I don't mean to disparage the real life Ness. He did well, and was a decent guy certainly in comparison to the mobsters, but he was a lot more political than the hero here.There are worse men to idolize, so I'm okay with that. In this series, Ness is tough and honest, and the real Ness was pretty honest.The Untouchables are the most interesting ones. Like most high school kids of the seventies, I would sneak up past bed time, to watch Johnny Carson just to get to the Untouchable reruns. I could hardly separate the two shows, and Johnny Carson's crew became a mainstay in my life as well.I would do impressions of Rico Rossi, and only the guys would know who I was doing. This was a "guy" show.It was Rossi, Allison, and the other Untouchables who made this great. They were the colorful characters, the most three dimensional. Rossi began as a barber who joined after surviving a gang land machine gunning of a barber shop, and represented the layman hero, the Everyman. Allison was the "darkest before the Dawn" hero who was leading player material. In one series, he goes undercover against the man who killed his lawman father.The stories were fascinating. While the mobsters were dull and predictable, the other characters were a mixed bag of people who tried to deal with them. Many made the mistake of trying to go along with them. That was another thing that Desi Arnaz (who gave us the series) got right. He had seen enough of the hood to know that playing ball with goons is the surest way to an early grave. Believe it or not, actually standing up to them is a better way to survive.

johner23 Hello.I wanna trying to discover the name of one episode about these series.The episode itself was on a school of killers trained to perform services that require training and skill.Had a "teacher" trained to teach the art of killing, involving martial arts and other techniques of the type.I do not remember the name of the title.I could find all the episodes, but I'm confuse to focus the right one.---> http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0052522/episodes ---> http://epguides.com/Untouchables/ If you can help with this name, I would be grateful.Thanks.

snollen63 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.