Cheap The Untouchables - Season One, Vol. 1 (DVD) (Robert Gist, Alex March, Stuart Rosenberg, Abner Biberman, Joe Parker, Andrew McCullough (II)) Price

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Customer Reviews of The Untouchables - Season One, Vol. 1

To Paramount again!
A fantastic series,NO doubt! The people at Parmount however have either trouble reading or just plainly ignore the wishes of their (former?) customers! Again Paramount, read my lipps, whole seasons or no seasons!

THE UNTOUCHABLES -Where the Wild West meets the Mid-West!
At a time when westerns dominated American television (48 during the 1958/59 season), along comes a new show that takes on another kind of American mythology- the gangsters of the 1930's. Now I say mythology, because thats exactly how "The Untouchables" show was written and produced. You might well say it was the "49th" TV western on the air at the time. The saga of Federal agent Elliot Ness and his elite team of crime fighters, was given the same "dramatic license" in television as it was in the book the show was based on. Ness never lived to see his life become a legend on TV, he died a few years earlier after the book he co-wrote came out. His real life and real career had not unfortunately measured up to the hype that the show's narrator Walter Winchell would rattle off each week. In real life, Ness and his men did raid a lot of Al Capone's breweries and hit him hard in the pocket book, but they didn't put him in jail -that glory went to the tax accountants of the US Treasury Department. In fact Ness never met Capone. And after prohibition the Untouchables was disbanded. Ness went on to Cleveland to become a public health official, only now he was fighting the spread of veneral disease and not organized crime. Still that didn't stop Hollywood from having him take on Ma Barker, Dutch Schultz, "Bugs" Moran and every other hoodlum and public enemy of the 1930's. <
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>Now lawman Wyatt Earp could get away with such tall tales, because in his day most events were mis-reported in the press and really hyped up for the dime novels. But even a great self promoter like Wyatt Earp would be proud to see the tradition for truth, justice and the American way continue. With all that in mind, only then can you really sit back and enjoy the show! Just like in the TV oater's, you have to have a wooden lead, in this case it was perfect for Robert Stack as Ness. That's after both Van Johnson and Van Heflin turned down the part first. Unfortunate for them, because they would have become millionaires. But Stack does the role justice and really earns his huge salary. Anyway, as with most shows, the villains have all the fun or at the very least -the best lines. Legendary casting director Lynn Stalmaster, rounded-up the very best talent of the day, from Neville Brand as Capone to Lloyd Nolan as "Bugs" Moran to even a young Robert Redford playing a wanna-be ganster. It was the era of the great Hollywood character actors, the un-heralded veterans that made many a TV show let alone motion picture stand out. Add to this the great music themes of Nelson Riddle and the rat-a-tat-tat narration from the legendary NY columnist Walter Winchell and you have all the ingredients that made "The Untouchables" a legandary HIT! An iconic hit that would live on through countless years of syndication, vhs tape volumes and now to dvd. <
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>There are a number of strange ironies in "The Untouchables" - Elliot Ness the crusading prohibition agent, ended up with an alcohol problem of his own. After Al Capone is taken care of, his enforcer Frank Nitti and the old Capone mob go HOLLYWOOD! Through labor racketeering and studio blackmail, they extort even greater profits than they ever did from booze, broads and gambling. A studio contract player who goes on to become the Queen and co-founder of TV situation comedy called Lucille Ball, is branded a "communist" by the same Walter Winchell that she and her husband Desi Arnaz will later hire. Winchell's own acid-typed newspaper and radio career, had been exposed somewhat in fictional form for the movie "The Sweet Smell Of Success" again ironically, at the same time as "The Untouchables" book came out. And the very studio where Lucy started out -RKO, will end up being the facility for reproducing the setting of Chicago, on the same sets that David O' Selznick built for "Gone With The Wind". Those same bullet ridden streets will later go on to become the tranquil setting for Mayberry on the "Andy Griffith Show". Desilu Productions was the TV powerhouse that made "The Untouchables". After her divorce from Desi, Lucy will sell out to Paramount and they inturn through their parent company Viacom, will buy out the very CBS network that made Desilu Productions possible in the first place. And now as CBS-Paramount, the dvd is finally released, however in exspensive volume form. A crime in itself, an injustice that is certainly worthy of THE UNTOUCHABLES immediate attention! <
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