The Untouchables

by Guy Belleranti


Set in the Prohibition era of the late 1920’s and early 1930’s The Untouchables became a hit television program in 1959. The show started with a two hour pilot and then became a regular series with 118 episodes being aired over four seasons.

The Untouchables focused on Special Agent Elliot Ness and his team of incorruptible (untouchable) agents and their fight against organized crime in Chicago. A few of the criminals the team ran up against included Al Capone, Frank Nitti, George “Bugs” Moran and Vincent “Mad Dog” Coll. The series was very loosely based on the real life of Elliot Ness and his book The Untouchables. The filming was in black and white and this along with the stark, shadowy sets added to the show’s gritty feel.

The Untouchables was the first dramatic series created by Desilu Productions, a studio owned by Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball. Prior to The Untouchables the studio had specialized in comedies, including the classic I Love Lucy.

However, The Untouchables was anything but a comedy. In fact, many called it too violent. Indeed, there were lots of stories of bootleggers, gangland murders and the like, with bullets flying and glass breaking. But there was no gore or gratuitous violence, criminal behavior was not glamorized and good always triumphed over evil.

The program was the first of many television successes for producer Quinn Martin, who later produced such television successes as The Fugitive, The FBI, and The Streets of San Francisco.

The Untouchables also gave actor Robert Stack perhaps his biggest career success. Stack played the lead character, Elliot Ness. Other main or recurring characters, and the actors who played them included:

Agent Martin Flaherty – played by Jerry Paris
Agent Lee Hobson – played by Paul Picerni
Agent William Youngfellow – played by Abel Fernandez
Agent Enrico Rossi – played by Nick Georgiade
Agent Jack Rossman - played by Steve London
Agent Cam Allison – played by Anthony George
Al Capone – played by Neville Brand
Frank Nitti (the enforcer) – played by Bruce Gordon

Newspaper and radio commentator Walter Winchell set the stage for each episode with a narrated introduction.

Guest actors included many soon-to-be stars. Among them were Robert Redford, James Caan, Carroll O’Connor, Charles Bronson, James Coburn and Telly Savalas.

No discussion of The Untouchables would be complete without touching on a couple of the controversies the program sparked. One, as already mentioned, was the violence level. A second was the anger it stirred among many Italian-Americans. In the program’s early years most of the mobsters/crooks were given Italian surnames.

This eventually brought protest from the Italian American League to Combat Defamation. Soon after, one of the show’s major sponsors dropped their sponsorship. Such pressures led to the introduction of criminal characters from other ethnic backgrounds and to the introduction of more Italian-American crime fighters like Agent Enrico Rossi.

The program ended in May 1963, but it wasn’t forgotten. In 1987 Brian De Palma directed a very successful motion picture of the same name with Kevin Costner, Sean Connery and Robert De Niro in lead roles. And in 1993-1994 television aired a new The Untouchables series. This time, however, success was limited, and after 42 episodes the program was cancelled.


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