Chicago during the dry years (prohibition) was a venue which had a very rough exterior. Morally rigid guidelines, and a facet of poverty comprising of reprehensible destitution were unfortunate elements of American living which initiated an irascible backlash of pandemic criminal activity. Such tumultuous and illegal shenanigans embodied some extremely visceral emotions with hundreds of thousands of people who lived in Chicago! The television show "The Untouchables" dealt with hard bitten reality which evoked agitated behavior on both sides of the law! Elliot Ness was on a vigilante crusade to stop the flow of liquor into Chicago during the Prohibition era! As it turns out, Elliot Ness himself died of a heart attack which was attributable to his alcoholism! What is the point of this information? Not to depict Ness as a hypocrite, rather, to reiterate that Elliot Ness believed in enforcing the law, regardless of what his position was on any given social issue! The series, "The Untouchables" is an historically succinct account of how Al Capone ruled Chicago during a specific era! The federal agents were either bought off, or, like Ness, they were motivated by disdain and vehement objection for key members of the syndicate who were repetitively thwarting them! An onslaught of prominent actors and actresses made guest appearances on "The Untouchables". This made the series very powerful!! These special guest stars played the roles of Ness' scruple-less adversaries! More often than not, Ness would engage in an ideological diatribe with these criminals. In turn, these ruthlessly calm and collective masterminds of financially lucrative chicanery would emphatically ameliorate their reckless actions by blaming either their environment, or, the nation's prevailing circumstances! A couple of guest stars' appearances won Emmy awards for their segment performances on this series. (Elizabeth Montgomery and Robert Redford) The directing for "The Untouchables" focused on being extremely authentic! The narrating by Walter Winchell added a very wry and supercilious touch to the entire plot of each week's episode! The acting by guest stars and regulars (like Robert Stack) was outstanding! (Especially for the small screen). Chicago, in the twenties and thirties, was a city that cultivated it's identity by making nefariously illicit and felonious escapades their precariously notorious trademark!! The series "The Untouchables" illustrated such copious crimes with a very vividly pejorative and fatalistic disposition!! I loved this show, one of my favorites in all of television!! Mostly on account of the fact that as a Chicagoan, the show "The Untouchables" exudes a very definite and cynical identifiability!
Review of The Untouchables
