The Untouchables (TV Series) Star Witness (1960) User Reviews

A little man...who has a real way with numbers.

[planktonrules · 8/10 · 9 March 2016]

The thug of the week is Luigi Rendaldo (Marc Lawrence). Naturally Ness wants to jail the guy but Renaldo is a smart crook and getting a conviction isn't possible unless he gets a break. This break comes in the form of William Norbert (Jim Backus). Norbert was an accountant with Renaldo but left because he wanted out of organized crime. Oddly, Renaldo has no intention of stopping him or killing him...yet. But when a few of Renaldo's underlings take it upon themselves to beat up Norbert to 'teach him a lesson', Ness visits Norbert in the hospital. Still Norbert has no intention of talking...but when Renaldo finds out about the Ness visit he decides that Norbert must die...and this pushes Norbert to finally agree to testify. But this also means that Ness and his men must protect Norbert until the trial...and Renaldo and his thugs are determined to kill him.

This is a good episode of "The Untouchables" with a nice plot and plenty of excitement. Backus was also very good playing an ordinary sort of guy...and this one is well worth seeing.

This episode seemed a cut above the rest

[AlsExGal · 9/10 · 5 March 2022]

Bookkeeper William Norbert (Jim Backus) is a mild mannered man who has told his boss, mobster Luigi Renaldo (Marc Lawrence) that he wants to quit the mob and leave, and Rinaldo has oddly said OK to that. But then Rinaldo leaves town on business and puts his enforcer in charge of matters. The enforcer makes the mistake of making an executive decision and beats Norbert so badly for leaving the mob that he is hospitalized. When Rinaldo returns he slaps around his enforcer for half an hour and decides he can now take no chances with Norbert and orders a hit on him that is unsuccessful. As a result Norbert agrees to turn state's evidence against his old boss as a matter of survival. Norbert's secret weapon is that he has a photographic memory for figures and the business history of his old boss, which shows him to be guilty of income tax evasion. That's probably why Rinaldo was going to let him leave the mob in the first place with no repercussions.

Now you'd probably think you know where this is going, but you'd be wrong. It takes all kinds of interesting twists and turns, and fleshes out the role of Norbert as a guy who says clearly he is not a fighter, he is being pushed into that role, and waiting for the trial to begin he is a bundle of nerves as both his mental and physical health take a beating.

Besides the interesting and rather unexpected plot, this Untouchables episode does something that most of the others don't - it has Eliot Ness actually arresting some suspects at the end rather than just the routine big gunfight where the bad guys usually all perish in a hail of bullets. Curious, I looked up the director for this episode and it was Tay Garnett, who was a pretty good director of Hollywood films during the 30s and 40s, so that at least partially explains the up tick in quality.