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Murder, Inc. (1960 film)
Encyclopedia
Murder, Inc. is a 1960 American gangster film starring Stuart Whitman
, May Britt
, Henry Morgan
, Peter Falk
, and Simon Oakland
. The Cinemascope
movie was directed by Burt Balaban and Stuart Rosenberg
. The screenplay was based on the true story of Murder Inc., a Brooklyn gang that operated in the 1930s.
Falk plays Abe Reles
, a vicious thug who led the Murder Inc. gang and was believed to have committed thirty murders, for which he was never prosecuted. The film was the first major feature role for Falk, who was nominated for a best supporting actor Academy Award for his performance. In his 2006 autobiography, Just One More Thing, Falk said that Murder Inc. launched his career.
The movie was the first film directed by Rosenberg, who later won acclaim for films that included Cool Hand Luke
(1967), and also launched Stuart Whitman's career as a leading man.
A more highly fictionalized film on the same basic events, The Enforcer
(1950), starring Humphrey Bogart
, was released in the United Kingdom
with the title Murder, Inc.
's Brownsville district, meet in the Garment District to meet with Louis "Lepke" Buchalter
, kingpin of an organized crime mob, who hires them as the syndicate's hit men.
Their first job is to kill Walter Sage, a Catskill resort owner who has been holding back slot machine profits from Lepke. To get close to Sage, Reles forces singer Joey Collins (Stuart Whitman
), an old crony of Sage who owes Reles money, to help him. Reles and his henchman kill Sage. Reles visits Joey and threatens to kill him and his dancer wife Eadie (May Britt
) if they tell anyone about the murder. Eadie throws Reles out. Reles later returns to the apartment when Joey is gone and brutally rapes her. Despite her urging Joey refuses to run away, and this causes him and Eadie to split up.
Reles continues to carry out assassinations at Lepke's direction. Reles reconciles with the couple by giving them a luxurious apartment filled with stolen goods. Under police pressure, Lepke hides out from the police at Joey and Eadie's new apartment. He treats Eadie like a maid.
District Attorney Burton Turkus (Henry Morgan
) takes over the law enforcement campaign against Murder, Inc., enlisting local Brownsville police detective Tobin (Simon Oakland
). Lepke orders the death of the entire Brownsville gang as well as Joey and Eadie. Eadie visits Turkus and becomes an informant, as does Joey. He then confronts Reles, who has been arrested, in his cell, and threatens to testify against him. In fear of that, Reles agrees to testify against Lepke in exchange for reduced charges. He provides a detailed account of the activities of Murder, Inc.
Turkus puts Joey and Reles in protective custody and hides them at the Half Moon Hotel in Coney Island
. Eadie comes to visit Joey and is murdered nearby. Later that night, Reles is thrown out the window by an assassin. Joey avenges his wife's death by testifying against Lepke, who is executed.
The film was the screen debut of Sylvia Miles
, Seymour Cassel
and Sarah Vaughan
. Vincent Gardenia
, who later became an acclaimed actor for his performance in Moonstruck
, plays a small role.
, which was published in 1951. It is similar in style to the popular TV series The Untouchables
, which may have inspired the studio to make the movie. Murder Inc. is more factual than The Enforcer, and uses real names.
The story of the Murder Inc. crime group was first told on the screen in the Warner Brothers film The Enforcer
, a semi-fictional film that was released as "Murder Inc." overseas. The film starred Humphrey Bogart
, in his last role for the studio, as a crusading district attorney in the mold of Turkus. A Lepke-type character was played by Everett Sloane
. Ted De Corsia
played a character loosely based on Reles. The films differ in that Murder, Inc.
is factual and dealt with a Mafia kingpin's establishment of a contract murder organization within that framework and The Enforcer is fictional and had a free-lance group willing to work for anyone, in or out of the mob. The 1951 film begins with De Corsia falling off a ledge, despite Bogart's attempt to save him, and includes gruesome scenes based on fact.
, and the cast consisted largely of actors from the off-Broadway
theater. Peter Falk recalled in his autobiography Just One More Thing that the film was "no big deal for Twentieth Century Fox. They hired second-tier stars, nobody had ever heard of them. The cast of off-Broadway stage actors, including me, came cheap. A few dollars a week and a bag of peanuts."
Robert Evans, who later became head of production at Paramount Pictures Corporation but at the time was a young actor, was offered the part of Reles and turned it down. In an interview with The Guardian
in 2002, Evans said:
Falk said that "for me, Murder Inc. was more than a big deal – it was a miracle. Like being touched from above. Of all the thousands of obscure actors, they picked me." Were it not for being cast in the film, he said, he would not have been cast in his subsequent films A Pocketful of Miracles (1961) and Robin and the Seven Hoods (1964). He said Murder Inc. "made my career." Had he not been selected to portray Reles, he said, he would still be in the off-Broadway theater.
Falk chose his wardrobe for the film from second-hand clothing stores, going from store to store until he got the right coat and hat, to give him the "East Coast 'wise guy' look." He patterned his performance as Reles on would-be gangsters whom he knew in his youth at a pool hall called McGuire's. "I had a real feel for these guys - the way they talked - the gestures - the whole package." Falk said that he rewrote the part, and that Rosenberg let him gave him the latitude to depart from the script.
According to Falk, production of the movie was accelerated because of an impending actor's strike. Rosenberg was fired and replaced by Balaban, who had no experience as a director. Falk said that Balaban "stayed out of the way" while the crew and cast did their jobs. In a 2005 study of gangster movies, Bullets Over Hollywood, film scholar John McCarty said that the "presence of two helmsmen may explain the uneven qualities of the film," in which scenes of powerful impact are "offset by long expanses of unexciting celluloid."
Production of the movie took place up to the very last moments before commencement of the actor's strike. The last scene to be shot was the murder of Walter Sage, portrayed by Morey Amsterdam
. Because of the shortage of time, the scene, which was set in the Catskill Mountains
, was shot right outside the studio on 126th Street in Harlem
. The Sage execution was filmed just minutes before the start of the strike at midnight.
dismissed the movie as a "new screen telling of an old story." Crowther singled out Falk's "amusingly vicious performance," and that when he appears "there is a certain dark frightfulness and terror" in the film." But "otherwise the traffic is that of an average gangster film that slacks off too much for proper tension and runs a great deal too long." Crowther praised the other leading performances but said that Morgan, a radio and TV personality known mainly for his sharp wit, "does better when he is telling jokes."
Describing Falk's performance, Crowther wrote:
More recent reviewers have generally praised Falk's performance, but have not lavished much praise on the movie itself, with commentators divided on the film's semidocumentary style. A 1986 study of films as art praised the film's "journalistic thoroughness" and "teledramatic immediacy." Falk's performance, it said, "is one of the grittiest portrayals of the primitivism of an underworld henchman on film; the supporting relationships of Whitman's cowardly, acquiescent innocent and May Britt's beleaguered wife perversely juxtaposed to the unusual pathos generated by the crime boss and his aide delineate the glumness of the crime world with few concessions to moral righteousness."
In their 1997 book Crime Movies, film historian Carlos Clarens compared Murder Inc. unfavorably to Samuel Fuller
's Underworld USA (1961), which was released at about the same time, on the grounds that it stuck too closely to the facts. Falk, he said, delivered a "miscalculated comic performance" as Reles, and "the power and resonance of The Enforcer
was missing, chiefly because the facts tyrannized the weak screenplay." In contrast, they said, Underworld USA was a "free and colorful fiction" that "packed the visual and dramatic wallop of an atrocity photo in the National Enquirer."
After release of the movie on DVD
, DVD Review called Murder Inc. "an entertaining, if somewhat trifling, piece of violent fluff." It said "Peter Falk walks away with the movie anyway. Falk was nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Academy Award for this film, and it is easy to see why. He imbues his role with the sleazy charisma and rugged charm that would later become his trademark on the long-running 'Columbo.'" Another reviewer said in 2001 that "the best thing about the film was Falk's tough-guy performance. Otherwise, everything was routine."
In 2005, film scholar John McCarty praised Falk's performance and David J. Stewart
's "reptilian" Lepke, and says "the film belongs to Stewart and Falk; as with Daniel Day-Lewis
in Gangs of New York
, it is mostly when they are on the screen that this minor but engaging docudrama about the mob's ugly but profitable murder-for-hire business really cooks.".
for his performance as Reles. It was the movie's only Academy Award nomination. The winner was Peter Ustinov
for his portrayal of a slave merchant in the Stanley Kubrick
film Spartacus.
Falk unsuccessfully campaigned for the award. In a 1997 interview with writer Arthur Marx
, Falk said that the idea of campaigning for the award was suggested by Sal Mineo
, but that he didn't take the idea seriously until it was suggested by Abe Lastfogel
, head of the William Morris Agency
. He hired a press agent "and what do you know – I got nominated." Falk described what happened at the award ceremonies as follows:
Stuart Whitman
Stuart Maxwell Whitman is an American actor.Stuart Whitman is arguably best-known for playing Marshal Jim Crown in the western television series Cimarron Strip in 1967...
, May Britt
May Britt
May Britt is a Swedish actress who had a brief career in the 1950s in Italy and later in the United States. She retired from the screen after she married Sammy Davis, Jr. in 1960.-Career:...
, Henry Morgan
Henry Morgan (comedian)
Henry Morgan was an American humorist. He is remembered best in two modern media: radio, on which he first became familiar as a barbed but often self-deprecating satirist, and on television, where he was a regular and cantankerous panelist for the game show I've Got a Secret...
, Peter Falk
Peter Falk
Peter Michael Falk was an American actor, best known for his role as Lieutenant Columbo in the television series Columbo...
, and Simon Oakland
Simon Oakland
Simon Oakland was an American actor of stage, screen, and television.-Early life and career:Oakland was born in Brooklyn, New York City. He began his performing arts career as a musician . He began his acting career in the late 1940s...
. The Cinemascope
CinemaScope
CinemaScope was an anamorphic lens series used for shooting wide screen movies from 1953 to 1967. Its creation in 1953, by the president of 20th Century-Fox, marked the beginning of the modern anamorphic format in both principal photography and movie projection.The anamorphic lenses theoretically...
movie was directed by Burt Balaban and Stuart Rosenberg
Stuart Rosenberg
Stuart Rosenberg was an American film and television director whose notable works included the movies Cool Hand Luke , Voyage of the Damned , The Amityville Horror , and The Pope of Greenwich Village .-Early life and career:Born in Brooklyn, New York City, New York, Rosenberg studied Irish...
. The screenplay was based on the true story of Murder Inc., a Brooklyn gang that operated in the 1930s.
Falk plays Abe Reles
Abe Reles
Abe "Kid Twist" Reles was a New York mobster who was widely considered the most feared hit man for Murder, Inc., the enforcement contractor for the National Crime Syndicate. Reles later turned government witness and sent several members of Murder, Inc...
, a vicious thug who led the Murder Inc. gang and was believed to have committed thirty murders, for which he was never prosecuted. The film was the first major feature role for Falk, who was nominated for a best supporting actor Academy Award for his performance. In his 2006 autobiography, Just One More Thing, Falk said that Murder Inc. launched his career.
The movie was the first film directed by Rosenberg, who later won acclaim for films that included Cool Hand Luke
Cool Hand Luke
Cool Hand Luke is a 1967 American prison drama film directed by Stuart Rosenberg and starring Paul Newman. The screenplay was adapted by Donn Pearce and Frank Pierson from Pearce's 1965 novel of the same name. The film features George Kennedy, Strother Martin, J.D...
(1967), and also launched Stuart Whitman's career as a leading man.
A more highly fictionalized film on the same basic events, The Enforcer
The Enforcer (1951 film)
The Enforcer is a black-and-white 1951 film noir starring Humphrey Bogart. Based on the Murder, Inc. trials, the film is largely a police procedural directed by Bretaigne Windust with uncredited help from Raoul Walsh, who shot most of the film's suspenseful moments, including the ending...
(1950), starring Humphrey Bogart
Humphrey Bogart
Humphrey DeForest Bogart was an American actor. He is widely regarded as a cultural icon.The American Film Institute ranked Bogart as the greatest male star in the history of American cinema....
, was released in the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
with the title Murder, Inc.
Plot summary
Abe Reles (Falk) and Bug Workman (Warren Finnerty), two killers from BrooklynBrooklyn
Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with nearly 2.6 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated...
's Brownsville district, meet in the Garment District to meet with Louis "Lepke" Buchalter
Louis Buchalter
Louis "Lepke" Buchalter was a Jewish American mobster and head of the Mafia hit squad Murder, Inc. during the 1930s. After Dutch Schultz' request of the Mafia Commission for permission to kill his enemy, U.S. Attorney Thomas Dewey, the Commission decided to kill Schultz in order to prevent the hit...
, kingpin of an organized crime mob, who hires them as the syndicate's hit men.
Their first job is to kill Walter Sage, a Catskill resort owner who has been holding back slot machine profits from Lepke. To get close to Sage, Reles forces singer Joey Collins (Stuart Whitman
Stuart Whitman
Stuart Maxwell Whitman is an American actor.Stuart Whitman is arguably best-known for playing Marshal Jim Crown in the western television series Cimarron Strip in 1967...
), an old crony of Sage who owes Reles money, to help him. Reles and his henchman kill Sage. Reles visits Joey and threatens to kill him and his dancer wife Eadie (May Britt
May Britt
May Britt is a Swedish actress who had a brief career in the 1950s in Italy and later in the United States. She retired from the screen after she married Sammy Davis, Jr. in 1960.-Career:...
) if they tell anyone about the murder. Eadie throws Reles out. Reles later returns to the apartment when Joey is gone and brutally rapes her. Despite her urging Joey refuses to run away, and this causes him and Eadie to split up.
Reles continues to carry out assassinations at Lepke's direction. Reles reconciles with the couple by giving them a luxurious apartment filled with stolen goods. Under police pressure, Lepke hides out from the police at Joey and Eadie's new apartment. He treats Eadie like a maid.
District Attorney Burton Turkus (Henry Morgan
Henry Morgan (comedian)
Henry Morgan was an American humorist. He is remembered best in two modern media: radio, on which he first became familiar as a barbed but often self-deprecating satirist, and on television, where he was a regular and cantankerous panelist for the game show I've Got a Secret...
) takes over the law enforcement campaign against Murder, Inc., enlisting local Brownsville police detective Tobin (Simon Oakland
Simon Oakland
Simon Oakland was an American actor of stage, screen, and television.-Early life and career:Oakland was born in Brooklyn, New York City. He began his performing arts career as a musician . He began his acting career in the late 1940s...
). Lepke orders the death of the entire Brownsville gang as well as Joey and Eadie. Eadie visits Turkus and becomes an informant, as does Joey. He then confronts Reles, who has been arrested, in his cell, and threatens to testify against him. In fear of that, Reles agrees to testify against Lepke in exchange for reduced charges. He provides a detailed account of the activities of Murder, Inc.
Turkus puts Joey and Reles in protective custody and hides them at the Half Moon Hotel in Coney Island
Coney Island
Coney Island is a peninsula and beach on the Atlantic Ocean in southern Brooklyn, New York, United States. The site was formerly an outer barrier island, but became partially connected to the mainland by landfill....
. Eadie comes to visit Joey and is murdered nearby. Later that night, Reles is thrown out the window by an assassin. Joey avenges his wife's death by testifying against Lepke, who is executed.
Cast
- Stuart WhitmanStuart WhitmanStuart Maxwell Whitman is an American actor.Stuart Whitman is arguably best-known for playing Marshal Jim Crown in the western television series Cimarron Strip in 1967...
- Joey Collins - May BrittMay BrittMay Britt is a Swedish actress who had a brief career in the 1950s in Italy and later in the United States. She retired from the screen after she married Sammy Davis, Jr. in 1960.-Career:...
- Eadie Collins - Henry MorganHenry Morgan (comedian)Henry Morgan was an American humorist. He is remembered best in two modern media: radio, on which he first became familiar as a barbed but often self-deprecating satirist, and on television, where he was a regular and cantankerous panelist for the game show I've Got a Secret...
- Burton TurkusBurton TurkusBurton B. Turkus was an attorney and author, best known for prosecuting members of the Brooklyn gang known as "Murder, Inc.".... - Peter FalkPeter FalkPeter Michael Falk was an American actor, best known for his role as Lieutenant Columbo in the television series Columbo...
- Abe 'Kid Twist' RelesAbe RelesAbe "Kid Twist" Reles was a New York mobster who was widely considered the most feared hit man for Murder, Inc., the enforcement contractor for the National Crime Syndicate. Reles later turned government witness and sent several members of Murder, Inc... - David J. StewartDavid J. StewartDavid J. Stewart was an American Broadway, film, and television actor.Born Abe J. Siegel in Omaha, Nebraska, Stewart was known primarily as a New York stage actor...
- Lepke - Simon OaklandSimon OaklandSimon Oakland was an American actor of stage, screen, and television.-Early life and career:Oakland was born in Brooklyn, New York City. He began his performing arts career as a musician . He began his acting career in the late 1940s...
- Lt. Detective William Flaherty Tobin - Sarah VaughanSarah VaughanSarah Lois Vaughan was an American jazz singer, described by Scott Yanow as having "one of the most wondrous voices of the 20th century."...
- Nightclub Singer - Morey AmsterdamMorey AmsterdamMorey Amsterdam was an American television actor and comedian, best known for the role of Buddy Sorrell on The Dick Van Dyke Show in the early 1960s.-Early life:...
- Walter Sage - Eli MintzEli Mintz-Biography:Born as Edward Satz in Lwów, Poland , the son of a tailor, he began acting professionally as a child in the theatre, with his first performance being in a production of The Dybbuk. He immigrated to the United States in 1927 with the intent of pursuing a career as an actor...
- Joe Rosen - Joseph Bernard (actor)Joseph Bernard (actor)Joseph Bernard was an American actor and acting teacher who appeared in 25 Broadway plays and several movies and TV appearances in the 1950s through 1970s....
- Mendy WeissEmanuel WeissEmanuel "Mendy" Weiss was a New York organized crime figure who was involved in drug trafficking and worked for the criminal organization known as Murder, Inc. during the 1930s and up to the time of his arrest in 1941... - Warren FinnertyWarren FinnertyWarren Finnerty was an American actor best known for his Obie award-winning performance in The Connection . After making his film debut in Murder, Inc. , he made a few television appearances before starring in the film adaption of The Connection , reprising his role from the stage production...
- Bug Workman - Vincent GardeniaVincent GardeniaVincent Gardenia was an Italian American stage, film, and television actor.-Early life:...
- Lazlo - Helen Waters - Mrs. Rose Corsi
- Leon B. Stevens - Loughran
- Howard SmithHoward SmithHoward Smith may refer to:*Howard Smith , U.S. film director, journalist, broadcaster; Academy Award winner for feature-length documentary, 1972*Howard Smith , British ambassador and Director General of MI5, 1979–1981...
- Albert Anastasia (as Howard I. Smith)
The film was the screen debut of Sylvia Miles
Sylvia Miles
-Early life and career:Miles was born Sylvia Reuben Lee in New York City, the daughter of Belle and Reuben Lee, a furniture maker....
, Seymour Cassel
Seymour Cassel
Seymour Joseph Cassel is an American actor.He first came to prominence in the 1960s in the pioneering independent films of writer/directorJohn Cassavetes...
and Sarah Vaughan
Sarah Vaughan
Sarah Lois Vaughan was an American jazz singer, described by Scott Yanow as having "one of the most wondrous voices of the 20th century."...
. Vincent Gardenia
Vincent Gardenia
Vincent Gardenia was an Italian American stage, film, and television actor.-Early life:...
, who later became an acclaimed actor for his performance in Moonstruck
Moonstruck
Moonstruck is a 1987 American romantic comedy film directed by Norman Jewison. It stars Cher, Nicolas Cage, Danny Aiello, Vincent Gardenia, and Olympia Dukakis....
, plays a small role.
Background
Twentieth Century Fox based Murder Inc. on a book of the same title by Burton TurkusBurton Turkus
Burton B. Turkus was an attorney and author, best known for prosecuting members of the Brooklyn gang known as "Murder, Inc."....
, which was published in 1951. It is similar in style to the popular TV series The Untouchables
The Untouchables (1959 TV series)
The Untouchables is an American crime drama that ran from 1959 to 1963 on ABC. Based on the memoir of the same name by Eliot Ness and Oscar Fraley, it fictionalized the experiences of Eliot Ness, a real-life Prohibition agent, as he fought crime in Chicago during the 1930s with the help of a...
, which may have inspired the studio to make the movie. Murder Inc. is more factual than The Enforcer, and uses real names.
The story of the Murder Inc. crime group was first told on the screen in the Warner Brothers film The Enforcer
The Enforcer (1951 film)
The Enforcer is a black-and-white 1951 film noir starring Humphrey Bogart. Based on the Murder, Inc. trials, the film is largely a police procedural directed by Bretaigne Windust with uncredited help from Raoul Walsh, who shot most of the film's suspenseful moments, including the ending...
, a semi-fictional film that was released as "Murder Inc." overseas. The film starred Humphrey Bogart
Humphrey Bogart
Humphrey DeForest Bogart was an American actor. He is widely regarded as a cultural icon.The American Film Institute ranked Bogart as the greatest male star in the history of American cinema....
, in his last role for the studio, as a crusading district attorney in the mold of Turkus. A Lepke-type character was played by Everett Sloane
Everett Sloane
Everett Sloane was an American stage, film and television actor, songwriter, and theatre director.-Early life:...
. Ted De Corsia
Ted de Corsia
Ted de Corsia was a radio and movie actor.He is probably best remembered for his role as a gangster turned state's evidence in The Enforcer...
played a character loosely based on Reles. The films differ in that Murder, Inc.
Murder, Inc.
Murder, Inc. was the name given by the press to organized crime groups in the 1920s through the 1940s that resulted in hundreds of murders on behalf of the American Mafia and Jewish Mafia groups who together formed the early organized crime groups in New York and...
is factual and dealt with a Mafia kingpin's establishment of a contract murder organization within that framework and The Enforcer is fictional and had a free-lance group willing to work for anyone, in or out of the mob. The 1951 film begins with De Corsia falling off a ledge, despite Bogart's attempt to save him, and includes gruesome scenes based on fact.
Production notes
Murder Inc. was filmed in and around New York CityNew York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, and the cast consisted largely of actors from the off-Broadway
Off-Broadway
Off-Broadway theater is a term for a professional venue in New York City with a seating capacity between 100 and 499, and for a specific production of a play, musical or revue that appears in such a venue, and which adheres to related trade union and other contracts...
theater. Peter Falk recalled in his autobiography Just One More Thing that the film was "no big deal for Twentieth Century Fox. They hired second-tier stars, nobody had ever heard of them. The cast of off-Broadway stage actors, including me, came cheap. A few dollars a week and a bag of peanuts."
Robert Evans, who later became head of production at Paramount Pictures Corporation but at the time was a young actor, was offered the part of Reles and turned it down. In an interview with The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
in 2002, Evans said:
I was hot as an actor for a few minutes and I turned down parts that got guys nominated for Academy Awards. For example, there was a picture called Murder, Inc which was to star Stuart Whitman, May Britt and myself. I said, "If I'm not going to lead, then I'm not going to play the part." and got a suspension. And they hired an actor who had never been north of 14th Street in New York and had never been to Hollywood - this guy called Peter Falk. And he was nominated for the part that I went on suspension for.
Falk said that "for me, Murder Inc. was more than a big deal – it was a miracle. Like being touched from above. Of all the thousands of obscure actors, they picked me." Were it not for being cast in the film, he said, he would not have been cast in his subsequent films A Pocketful of Miracles (1961) and Robin and the Seven Hoods (1964). He said Murder Inc. "made my career." Had he not been selected to portray Reles, he said, he would still be in the off-Broadway theater.
Falk chose his wardrobe for the film from second-hand clothing stores, going from store to store until he got the right coat and hat, to give him the "East Coast 'wise guy' look." He patterned his performance as Reles on would-be gangsters whom he knew in his youth at a pool hall called McGuire's. "I had a real feel for these guys - the way they talked - the gestures - the whole package." Falk said that he rewrote the part, and that Rosenberg let him gave him the latitude to depart from the script.
According to Falk, production of the movie was accelerated because of an impending actor's strike. Rosenberg was fired and replaced by Balaban, who had no experience as a director. Falk said that Balaban "stayed out of the way" while the crew and cast did their jobs. In a 2005 study of gangster movies, Bullets Over Hollywood, film scholar John McCarty said that the "presence of two helmsmen may explain the uneven qualities of the film," in which scenes of powerful impact are "offset by long expanses of unexciting celluloid."
Production of the movie took place up to the very last moments before commencement of the actor's strike. The last scene to be shot was the murder of Walter Sage, portrayed by Morey Amsterdam
Morey Amsterdam
Morey Amsterdam was an American television actor and comedian, best known for the role of Buddy Sorrell on The Dick Van Dyke Show in the early 1960s.-Early life:...
. Because of the shortage of time, the scene, which was set in the Catskill Mountains
Catskill Mountains
The Catskill Mountains, an area in New York State northwest of New York City and southwest of Albany, are a mature dissected plateau, an uplifted region that was subsequently eroded into sharp relief. They are an eastward continuation, and the highest representation, of the Allegheny Plateau...
, was shot right outside the studio on 126th Street in Harlem
Harlem
Harlem is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Manhattan, which since the 1920s has been a major African-American residential, cultural and business center. Originally a Dutch village, formally organized in 1658, it is named after the city of Haarlem in the Netherlands...
. The Sage execution was filmed just minutes before the start of the strike at midnight.
Critical reaction
New York Times film critic Bosley CrowtherBosley Crowther
Bosley Crowther was a journalist and author who was film critic for The New York Times for 27 years. His reviews and articles helped shape the careers of actors, directors and screenwriters, though his reviews, at times, were unnecessarily mean...
dismissed the movie as a "new screen telling of an old story." Crowther singled out Falk's "amusingly vicious performance," and that when he appears "there is a certain dark frightfulness and terror" in the film." But "otherwise the traffic is that of an average gangster film that slacks off too much for proper tension and runs a great deal too long." Crowther praised the other leading performances but said that Morgan, a radio and TV personality known mainly for his sharp wit, "does better when he is telling jokes."
Describing Falk's performance, Crowther wrote:
Mr. Falk, moving as if weary, looking at people out of the corners of his eyes and talking as if he had borrowed Marlon Brando's chewing gum, seems a travesty of a killer, until the water suddenly freezes in his eyes and he whips an icepick from his pocket and starts punching holes in someone's ribs. Then viciousness pours out of him and you get a sense of a felon who is hopelessly cracked and corrupt."
More recent reviewers have generally praised Falk's performance, but have not lavished much praise on the movie itself, with commentators divided on the film's semidocumentary style. A 1986 study of films as art praised the film's "journalistic thoroughness" and "teledramatic immediacy." Falk's performance, it said, "is one of the grittiest portrayals of the primitivism of an underworld henchman on film; the supporting relationships of Whitman's cowardly, acquiescent innocent and May Britt's beleaguered wife perversely juxtaposed to the unusual pathos generated by the crime boss and his aide delineate the glumness of the crime world with few concessions to moral righteousness."
In their 1997 book Crime Movies, film historian Carlos Clarens compared Murder Inc. unfavorably to Samuel Fuller
Samuel Fuller
Samuel Michael Fuller was an American screenwriter, novelist, and film director known for low-budget genre movies with controversial themes.-Personal life:...
's Underworld USA (1961), which was released at about the same time, on the grounds that it stuck too closely to the facts. Falk, he said, delivered a "miscalculated comic performance" as Reles, and "the power and resonance of The Enforcer
The Enforcer (1951 film)
The Enforcer is a black-and-white 1951 film noir starring Humphrey Bogart. Based on the Murder, Inc. trials, the film is largely a police procedural directed by Bretaigne Windust with uncredited help from Raoul Walsh, who shot most of the film's suspenseful moments, including the ending...
was missing, chiefly because the facts tyrannized the weak screenplay." In contrast, they said, Underworld USA was a "free and colorful fiction" that "packed the visual and dramatic wallop of an atrocity photo in the National Enquirer."
After release of the movie on DVD
DVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
, DVD Review called Murder Inc. "an entertaining, if somewhat trifling, piece of violent fluff." It said "Peter Falk walks away with the movie anyway. Falk was nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Academy Award for this film, and it is easy to see why. He imbues his role with the sleazy charisma and rugged charm that would later become his trademark on the long-running 'Columbo.'" Another reviewer said in 2001 that "the best thing about the film was Falk's tough-guy performance. Otherwise, everything was routine."
In 2005, film scholar John McCarty praised Falk's performance and David J. Stewart
David J. Stewart
David J. Stewart was an American Broadway, film, and television actor.Born Abe J. Siegel in Omaha, Nebraska, Stewart was known primarily as a New York stage actor...
's "reptilian" Lepke, and says "the film belongs to Stewart and Falk; as with Daniel Day-Lewis
Daniel Day-Lewis
Daniel Michael Blake Day-Lewis is an English actor with both British and Irish citizenship. His portrayals of Christy Brown in My Left Foot and Daniel Plainview in There Will Be Blood won Academy and BAFTA Awards for Best Actor, and Screen Actors Guild as well as Golden Globe Awards for the latter...
in Gangs of New York
Gangs of New York
Gangs of New York is a 2002 historical film set in the mid-19th century in the Five Points district of New York City. It was directed by Martin Scorsese and written by Jay Cocks, Steven Zaillian, and Kenneth Lonergan. The film was inspired by Herbert Asbury's 1928 nonfiction book, The Gangs of New...
, it is mostly when they are on the screen that this minor but engaging docudrama about the mob's ugly but profitable murder-for-hire business really cooks.".
Awards and nominations
Falk was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting ActorAcademy Award for Best Supporting Actor
Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role is one of the Academy Awards of Merit presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize an actor who has delivered an outstanding performance while working within the film industry. Since its inception, however, the...
for his performance as Reles. It was the movie's only Academy Award nomination. The winner was Peter Ustinov
Peter Ustinov
Peter Alexander Ustinov CBE was an English actor, writer and dramatist. He was also renowned as a filmmaker, theatre and opera director, stage designer, author, screenwriter, comedian, humourist, newspaper and magazine columnist, radio broadcaster and television presenter...
for his portrayal of a slave merchant in the Stanley Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick was an American film director, writer, producer, and photographer who lived in England during most of the last four decades of his career...
film Spartacus.
Falk unsuccessfully campaigned for the award. In a 1997 interview with writer Arthur Marx
Arthur Marx
Arthur Julius Marx was an American author, a former ranked amateur tennis player, and son of entertainer Groucho Marx and his first wife, Ruth Johnson....
, Falk said that the idea of campaigning for the award was suggested by Sal Mineo
Sal Mineo
Salvatore "Sal" Mineo, Jr. , was an American film and theatre actor, best known for his performance as John "Plato" Crawford opposite James Dean in the film Rebel Without a Cause...
, but that he didn't take the idea seriously until it was suggested by Abe Lastfogel
Abe Lastfogel
Abraham Isaac "Abe" Lastfogel was one of the first employees and a long-time President of the William Morris Agency, a large diverisified talent agency....
, head of the William Morris Agency
William Morris Agency
WME is the largest talent agency in the world, with offices in Beverly Hills, New York City, Nashville, London, and Miami. WME represents elite artists from all facets of the entertainment industry, including motion pictures, television, music, theatre, publishing, and physical production...
. He hired a press agent "and what do you know – I got nominated." Falk described what happened at the award ceremonies as follows:
"Now we're in our seats; the press agent, Judd Bernard, is seated on my right. It's my category and I heard a voice say, 'And the winner is Peter...' I'm rising out of my seat. '...Ustinov.' I'm heading back down. When I hit the seat, I turn to the press agent: 'You're fired.' I didn't want him charging me for another day."