As I am writing this, it's star, Mr. Ernest Borgnine, has just received a lifetime achievement award from the Screen Actors Guild, and is still an active performer in his mid-nineties. With his Oscar for MARTY, and his performances in films like FROM HERE TO ETERNITY, THE CATERED AFFAIR, THE DIRTY DOZEN, THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE, THE WILD BUNCH, EMPEROR OF THE NORTH POLE, and numerous other titles (and a stint as Lt. Quinton McHale on television) it has been a long and varied and distinguished career - far worthier than the shocked dismissal he received when he got that Oscar. Congratulations Mr. Borgnine.
Definitely one of his high points was this 1960 crime film/biography on the career of the detective on the New York Police force, Lt. Joseph Petrosino. Joe Petrosino is the perfect answer to bigots who only see Italian Americans as linked to crime by being criminals. In fact he was determined to eradicate those very criminals who were preying on the hard working Italian Americans in the United States. And he came damn close to doing so Petrosino made the Black Hand a personal study to the point that he was THE expert on it. He kept up pressure on the mob and undid much of their damage on the Italian-American community. But not all of it - it was too well organized for only this one man to fight. In 1909 he had a bright idea of traveling to Sicily and tracing the leadership of the mob to it's root. Brilliant in concept it was fool-hearty in actual practice. Petrosino was shot to death in Palermo.
The killer was never tried and convicted, and it looks like Petrosino (in following his information) may have been set up.
This version with Mr. Borgnine is pretty close to the actual story of the extortion/murder gang of the BLACK HAND and the Lieutenant's fight against them. And it does go to the tragic conclusion...which is handled so well that repeated watchings make one feel that maybe this time Borgnine will escape. Of course it does not (and sadly could not) happen.
He is recalled for his bravery and struggle and his murder by New York's finest and the people he tried to protect. As for the mob boss in Sicily - he did not quite escape his deserved fate. A more evil man, Mussolini, did not like the mob because they were setting up a rival power group to his. The mob boss was arrested in the late 1920s and found guilty of some criminal charges requiring imprisonment. He was put into a dungeon like prison on an island near the mainland. During World War II Il Duce ordered the prison be abandoned and it's staff and prisoners taken to mainland prisons...except this boss. He was left abandoned and locked up, and either was killed in some Allied bombing or starved to death.
Definitely one of his high points was this 1960 crime film/biography on the career of the detective on the New York Police force, Lt. Joseph Petrosino. Joe Petrosino is the perfect answer to bigots who only see Italian Americans as linked to crime by being criminals. In fact he was determined to eradicate those very criminals who were preying on the hard working Italian Americans in the United States. And he came damn close to doing so Petrosino made the Black Hand a personal study to the point that he was THE expert on it. He kept up pressure on the mob and undid much of their damage on the Italian-American community. But not all of it - it was too well organized for only this one man to fight. In 1909 he had a bright idea of traveling to Sicily and tracing the leadership of the mob to it's root. Brilliant in concept it was fool-hearty in actual practice. Petrosino was shot to death in Palermo.
The killer was never tried and convicted, and it looks like Petrosino (in following his information) may have been set up.
This version with Mr. Borgnine is pretty close to the actual story of the extortion/murder gang of the BLACK HAND and the Lieutenant's fight against them. And it does go to the tragic conclusion...which is handled so well that repeated watchings make one feel that maybe this time Borgnine will escape. Of course it does not (and sadly could not) happen.
He is recalled for his bravery and struggle and his murder by New York's finest and the people he tried to protect. As for the mob boss in Sicily - he did not quite escape his deserved fate. A more evil man, Mussolini, did not like the mob because they were setting up a rival power group to his. The mob boss was arrested in the late 1920s and found guilty of some criminal charges requiring imprisonment. He was put into a dungeon like prison on an island near the mainland. During World War II Il Duce ordered the prison be abandoned and it's staff and prisoners taken to mainland prisons...except this boss. He was left abandoned and locked up, and either was killed in some Allied bombing or starved to death.