Portrait of a Mobster (1961)

User Rating:

6.9/10   

Director:

Joseph Pevney

Writers:

Howard Browne (writer)
Harry Grey (book)

Release Date:

5 January 1962 (West Germany)

Genre:

Biography | Crime | Drama

Tagline:

The screen puts on brass knuckles and a bulletproof vest to tell the Dutch Schultz story all the way!

Plot:

This movie portrays the rise and fall of 1920s gangster Dutch Schultz. While building his own mob ring...

Plot Keywords:

Gangster | 1920s | Prohibition | Mobster | Corruption

Cast

Vic Morrow	...	Dutch Schultz
Leslie Parrish	...	Iris Murphy
Peter Breck	...	Frank Brennan
Norman Alden	...	Bo Wetzel
Robert McQueeney	...	Michael Ferris
Ken Lynch	...	Lieutenant D. Corbin
Frank DeKova	...	Anthony Parazzo
Stephen Roberts	...	Guthrie
Joseph Gallison	...	Vincent Coll
Ray Danton	...	'Legs' Diamond
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Larry J. Blake	...	John Murphy
Anthony Eisley	...	Legal Advisor
Eddie Hanley	...	Matty Krause
Harry Holcombe	...	Capt. Bayridge
John Kowal	...	Lou Rhodes
Frances Morris	...	Louise Murphy
Gil Perkins	...	Joe Murdoch
Poncie Ponce	...	Master of Ceremonies
Robert Shield
Arthur Tenen	...	Steve Matryck
Joe Turkel	...	Joe Noe
George Werler	...	Thompson

Runtime:

USA:108 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (RCA Sound Recording)

Certification:

Norway:16 | West Germany:18 (nf)

Company:

Warner Bros. Pictures

Movie Connections:

Referenced in The Projectionist (1971)

Good Little Movie, But Morrow Deserved Better

Portrait Of a Mobster is a good little movie about the rise and fall of gangster Dutch Schultz, and is a fairly typical example of the nostalgic gangster films of the late fifties and early sixties, many of them biographies of famous criminals (Al Capone, Legs Diamond, Arnold Rothstein). What distinguishes this film is that its lead actor, Vic Morrow, was more talented than most, and deserved a better picture. The production values of the movie are decent but hardly spectacular, and are roughly on par with the TV shows its studio, Warner Brothers, was producing at around the same time, especially The Roaring Twenties, which this movie could almost be an offshoot of. Many studio contractees have key supporting parts in the film. But it's Morrow's complex and serious performance that holds the movie together and gives it a touch of class. Morrow was in some ways like Jeff Bridges in being a deadly seriously dramatic actor who seldom, if ever, relied on charm. Like so many gifted actors he went the television route and a year after this film was cast as one of the leads in the popular Combat! series, which ran for several seasons and made Morrow somewhat of a star. He continued to work regularly thereafter, always doing first rate, sometimes exceptional work (check out his chilling performance in The Glass House). But Morrow never really had much of a movie career after his small screen success, becoming a reliable actor on mostly made-for-TV movies. He died fairly young in a freak accident involving a helicopter while working on a movie. One wonders what might have happened to Morrow had he stuck to making films, staking his claim as a serious actor on stage and screen. We'll never know, but his work in Portrait Of a Mobster offers a tantalizing glimpse of the star Morrow might have been.