Posted on 01/22/2016 5:03:50 PM PST by ETL
I was watching a mob documentary the other day on gangster "Crazy Joe" Gallo and it was mentioned that he modeled his real life character after a character in this movie, a thug named "Tommy Udo", portrayed by actor Richard Widmark. So I thought I'd see if I could find it on YouTube, and did. Turned out to be an excellent old-school gangster film. Some of you I'm sure have seen it. But, if not, it's one I'd recommend.
The story revolves around a former robber played by Victor Mature and the ruthless, violent Tommy Udo (Richard Widmark). The movie also starred Brian Donlevy and introduced Coleen Gray in her first billed role.
CAST: Victor Mature as Nick Bianco Brian Donlevy as Assistant District Attorney Louis D'Angelo Coleen Gray as Nettie Richard Widmark as Tommy Udo Taylor Holmes as Earl Howser, Attorney Howard Smith as Warden Karl Malden as Sergeant William Cullen Anthony Ross as Big Eddie Williams Millard Mitchell as Detective Shelby Temple Texas as Buster Jay Jostyn as District Attorney J. Scott Smart as Skeets, Club 66 Maitre D' Mildred Dunnock as Mrs. Rizzo - wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Gallo
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Crazy Joe Gallo (left) with girlfriend (black hair, white dress) and comedian David Steinberg and his wife or girlfriend (on left).
Site of Joe Gallo's death: Umberto's Clam House, Mulberry Street, New York City.
VIDEO: Joe Crazy Gallo Documentary: 45 min
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9nS01o6meg
bkmk for later
Great mpvie. Widmark as “Tommy Udo’’ the killer with the smirking laugh and a head full of snakes.
You can of course full screen YouTube videos by clicking the icon in the lower right corner of the screen.
Ooh! I just saw it last week. Mature never gave a rat’s fat fanny about his image, he was probably the most down to earth “star”, it was mainly just a job. Seeing how he stood up to death really taught me about, you know, what they used to call “manhood”. Richard Widmark’s improvised psychopath cackle I think was the inspiration for Frank Gorshin’s tv Batman “Riddler”.
Frank Gorshin was nominated for an Emmy Award (Outstanding Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Comedy) for his best remembered role as The Riddler on ABC’s 1960s live-action television series Batman, starring Adam West. Gorshin’s portrayal of the character included a high, deranged cackle, inspired by that of Tommy Udo (Richard Widmark) in Kiss of Death (1947). He played the Riddler in ten episodes of the series as well as the theatrical movie, although John Astin made one appearance in the role when Gorshin was unavailable. He reprised the role in the 1979 television movie Legends of the Superheroes.
One of the most memorable scenes from the movie is when Tommy Udo pushed the wheel chair bound lady down the flight of steps. I remember watching the movie as a little boy and that scene stuck in my mind.
Yeah, I can do that. Man, Widmark nailed that role.
Tommy Udo's voice sounds a little like Mel Blanc's Bugs Bunny.
Widmark’s first role.
There’s a better copy on StageVu for those who are familiar with that site.
Thanks.
That portrayal made Widmarks career. The scene where he rolls the old lady down a flight of stairs became a classic.
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"It's been 40 years since Joey "Crazy Joe" Gallo was gunned down in Little Italy's Umberto's Clam House, but the mobster's bride of only three weeks remembers the notorious gangland slaying as if it were yesterday.
"It was very dramatic," recalled Sina Essary, whose daughter Lisa, then 10, was also there when the assassins' bullets rang out.
"This was the first time in history that the Mafia had shot and killed someone in front of his sister, wife and child," she said.
Essary, now 70, can't forget the chaos that erupted as Gallo's party sat at a table in the early hours of April 7, 1972, and prepared to dig into second helpings of scungilli, shrimp and pasta when four assassins barged in and fired as many as two dozen gunshots.
"I have PTSD, although we didn't call it that back then," she said. "Even now, whenever I hear a car engine misfire, I jump."
Essary spoke to The Post from her farm, in a Nashville suburb, where she rescues thoroughbred horses and is writing her memoirs.
She and Gallo were an unlikely couple.
The charismatic gangster was targeted for death by the Colombo crime family because less than a year earlier, family boss Joe Colombo had been shot and permanently incapacitated - and Gallo was widely considered the wiseguy who set up the shooting.
The clown prince of the Mafia - who used to keep a mountain lion in his Brooklyn social club - was reputed to have been one of the shooters in the 1957 barber-chair slaying of boss Albert Anastasia.
He had spent a decade in prison on an attempted extortion conviction where he read French authors including Camus and Sartre.
Essary had planned to become a nun, but instead married, had a child and got divorced.
She moved into an apartment in the same 12th Street building where Gallo lived.
"To be honest, when I met him, I felt sorry for him," Essary said. "He was all skin and bones."
Gallo's Brooklyn tough-guy persona and intellectual patina proved hard to resist.
"He was very romantic. He would come home with flowers and gifts. I wasn't used to that," Essary explained.
Several days before the slaying, Gallo lost his temper with her for the first time when she unwittingly accepted delivery of a package at their apartment - a gift he thought might be a bomb.
On his final night, Gallo and his new bride enjoyed a champagne-filled evening celebrating his 43rd birthday at the Copacabana nightclub with the likes of comedian David Steinberg and actor Jerry Orbach, who played a character based on Gallo in the film "The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight."
The couple, along with Lisa, Gallo's sister Carmella Fiorello, bodyguard Peter "Pete The Greek" Diapoulis, and his date, Edith Russo, later headed to Umberto's on Mulberry Street.
Inside Umberto's, a Colombo loyalist, Joseph Luparelli, spotted Gallo and limped off on his bum knee to tip off his pals.
Soon after, four assassins burst in and started firing at Gallo, who along with Diapoulis was seated with his back to the door. Their table turned over and Essary used it as a barricade to protect her daughter as Gallo tried to escape the fusillade.
"I had a fur coat on her and I covered her with it completely and told her to just play dead," Essary recalled.
Gallo, mortally wounded, staggered out to the street not far from his Cadillac, where he collapsed on his back in a puddle of his own blood. He died cursing the assassins, according to press reports.
No one was ever charged with Gallo's murder.
Essary went on to marry and divorce both a gynecologist and a Wall Street financier. Her daughter is now a successful Hollywood casting director.
http://nypost.com/2012/04/03/married-to-mob-until-night-of-horror/
The above story is from 2002.
...make that, 2012.
Gallo, mortally wounded, staggered out to the street not far from his Cadillac, where he collapsed on his back in a puddle of
his own blood. He died cursing the assassins, according to press reports.
Oops! Sorry! That post (#19) was obviously meant for a different thread.
This one:
Who Murdered Alexander Litvinenko?
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3387471/posts
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