The St. Valentine's Day Massacre (film)
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| The St. Valentine's Day Massacre | |
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| Directed by | Roger Corman |
| Produced by | Roger Corman |
| Written by | Howard Browne |
| Narrated by | Paul Frees |
| Starring | Jason Robards George Segal Ralph Meeker Uncredited: Jack Nicholson . |
| Music by | Lionel Newman Fred Steiner |
| Cinematography | Milton R. Krasner |
| Editing by | William B. Murphy |
| Distributed by | Twentieth Century-Fox |
| Release date(s) | June 30, 1967 |
| Running time | 100 min. |
| Country | U.S.A. |
| Budget | $2,175,000[1] |
The St. Valentine's Day Massacre is a 1967 gangster film based on the 1929 Chicago mass murder of seven members of the Northside gang, directed against George "Bugs" Moran by Al Capone. It was directed by Roger Corman and written by Howard Browne.
The film starred Jason Robards as Al Capone, George Segal as Peter Gusenberg, David Canary as Frank Gusenberg and Ralph Meeker as Bugs Moran. (Orson Welles was originally supposed to play Capone - but Fox vetoed the deal, fearing that Welles was 'undirectable'.)[2] It was also believed that Welles was the narrator of the film, but it was actually narrated by well-known Hollywood voice actor Paul Frees in Welles' style. A very young Bruce Dern plays one of the victims of the massacre, and Jack Nicholson has a bit part as a gangster. Also featured are Jan Merlin as one of Bugs Moran's lieutenants, and veteran Corman actor Dick Miller as one of the phoney policemen involved in the massacre.
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[edit] Historical accuracy
The film is a somewhat rough mixture of correct historical fact and outright movie fiction, though it is presented in docu-drama style. It is largely accurate in the historical coverage of the event, but creates several character names that exist only in the film, rather than reality, such as "Boris Chapman" and "Adolph Muller", which the film identifies as the two phony "policemen" involved in the massacre. There is considerable speculation on who those two men actually were, but their true identities still remain unknown. It also includes some facts that are erroneously used (such as the real name of Jack McGurn's being given as "Vincenzo Demaury", an alias he used only in later years when working as a golf pro - his birth name was Vincenzo Gebaldi). The film also portrays Capone taking personal revenge on turncoat Unione Siciliano member Joe Aiello by personally murdering him. Capone did order the murder of Aiello, though it was carried out by members of his gang at a much later date. Its portrayal in the movie as having occurred before the massacre is important to the context of the film, but not the fact. In fairness, however, a great deal of research has been done on the Massacre in the last forty years, revealing new facts, and exploding some old theories, none of which writer Browne could have known at the time, chief among them would be the investigations of some of the suspects, and former gangsters later revealing some knowledge of the mass murder. Besides the climactic garage scene, Corman also staged a re-creation of the Moran Gang's attack on Capone headquarters in Cicero, Illinois which left Capone badly shaken, though unhurt. He also staged a stereotypical gangland funeral complete with tuxedo clad gunsels and enormous banks of flowers. Hymie Weiss is shown flying into a rage at Dean O'Banion's sendoff when the largest floral arrangement of them all reads, "From Al". Weiss himself is later killed in an ambush by the Capone mob, leaving Bugs Moran as head of the North Siders. Both Moran and Capone are repeatedly shown swearing bitter oaths of vengeance and disdain towards each other as they urge their respective underlings to wipe out "that no good louse".
Each character is given a verbal voiceover biography as they are introduced, and in some video releases, the biographies of Rheinhard Schwimmer and Adam Heyer, two of the massacre victims, are removed from the soundtrack, possibly due to protest from surviving family members.
[edit] Cast
- Jason Robards as Al Capone
- George Segal as Peter Gusenberg
- Ralph Meeker as Bugs Moran
- Jean Hale as Myrtle
- Jan Merlin as Willie Marks
- Clint Ritchie as Machine Gun Jack McGurn
- David Canary as Frank Gusenberg
- Harold J. Stone as Frank Nitti
- Frank Silvera as Nick Sorello
- Joseph Campanella as Albert Wienshank
- Richard Bakalyan as John Scalise
- Charles Dierkop as Salvanti
- John Agar as Dion O'Bannion
- Joe Turkel as Jake Gusik
- Bruce Dern as Johnny May
- Mickey Deems as Reinhold Schwimmer
- Reed Hadley as Hymie Weiss
- Alexander D'Arcy as Joe Aiello
- Leo Gordon as Heitler
- Jack Nicholson as Gino, hitman (Uncredited)
- Buck Taylor as Poolside interviewer 2 (Uncredited)
- Celia Lovsky as Josephine Schwimmer (Reinhold Schwimmer's mother)
- Milton Frome as Adam Hyer
[edit] Background
The St. Valentine's Day Massacre was not, as might be guessed, inspired by the 1959-63 ABC TV series, The Untouchables, but is one of many motion pictures adapted from a CBS Playhouse 90 episode. Seven Against The Wall, broadcast on Playhouse 90 in December 1958, was also written by Harold Browne and featured actors Milton Frome, Celia Lovsky and Frank Silvera in the same roles that they play in the film.
To make certain the film would have the look of a gangster film, Roger Corman shot the film at the Desilu studios and used other sections of the back lot for different locales of Chicago. He filmed the Massacre scene in one of the Desilu lots which got converted to look like the garage where the crime was committed. (The real garage was torn down by the time the movie started production). Another matter was the recreation of the Massacre itself: before filming, Corman found photos of the mass murders. Then he had the actors for the scene study the stills, followed by rehearsals and the actual shoot. After one take, the massacre came in the way it looked in the old photos and the collapse of each actors followed the positions the murder victims fell in the real massacre.
The film was one of the few that Roger Corman directed from a major Hollywood studio with a generous budget and an open-ended schedule. While most directors would love such an assignment, Corman was disgusted with the incredible waste of time and money involved with "typical" movie production techniques. Corman, an independent director, was most comfortable in his own style: shoestring budgets, and shooting schedules measured in days, rather than weeks. Nonetheless, it is generally considered one of his best films as a director.
[edit] Trivia
In 2009 Empire magazine named it #7 in a poll of the 20 Greatest Gangster Movies You've Never Seen* (*Probably)
[edit] Notes
- ^ Solomon, Aubrey. Twentieth Century Fox: A Corporate and Financial History (The Scarecrow Filmmakers Series). Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press, 1989. ISBN 978-0810842441. p255
- ^ Corman Roger & Jerome, Jim How I Made a Hundred Movies in Hollywood and Never Lost a Dime DaCapo Press 1988
[edit] External links
- The St. Valentine's Day Massacre at the Internet Movie Database
- The St. Valentine's Day Massacre (film) at AllRovi
- The St. Valentine's Day Massacre (film) at the TCM Movie Database
