The Mob

Last week, I talked about the movie Murder by Contract regarding movies that were leaving Tubi at the end of April 2024. I recently watched another movie that's leaving at the end of the month, an early 1950s crime movie called The Mob. (Apparently, both movies did get video releases on Columbia noir box sets, even tough The Mob is to me a straight-up crime movie and not a noir. Just in case you don't get the chance to see either before the end of the month.)

Broderick Crawford is the star of the movie, and considering his pedigree to this point, you'd think he's the mobster. Except that he isn't. He's police detective Johnny Damico, and as the movie opens he's at a pawn shop one night looking for a diamond ring to buy for the girlfriend he's planning to pop the question to! Alas, this conversation is disrupted by a shooting. Damico stops the shooter, who shows Damico his police badge. Apparently, it was much more common in those days for lone policemen to shoot fleeing suspects without a bunch of other people around.

Except, as it turns out, this guy wasn't a police officer. He had shot someone who was a police officer, and then stole that guy's badge to be able to get away with murder, with the victim of the shooting Damico heard being a witness to a grand jury case about waterfront corruption. (Note that The Mob was made three years before On the Waterfront.) Damico's bosses are none too pleased about his letting a murderer get away with it, so they suspend him from the force for 60 days, appparently not caring what the union thinks.

Then again, they aren't really suspending him. They need a way to get him out of town for a bit and into some undercover work. So they get a fake photo of Damico and then send Damico to New Orleans, where he'll be given a union card for a longshoreman. He's to come back from New Orleans with the the fake identity Tim Flynn on the pretense that he's got a criminal record there (the authorities there are creating a fake record in case anyone questions him). When he returns, he's going to get a job on the waterfront and figure out who the "Blackie Clegg" is who is running the corrupt longshoremen's union.

Damico, now posing as Flynn, shows up at the hiring office and the dive bars that service the waterfront, asking way too many questions. The only person who shows anything close to friendship is a fellow longshoreman, Tom Clancy (Richard Kiley). But when Flynn starts asking questions of the guy who hands out the jobs and refers to "Castro", the gangsters are none too pleased. Flynn is taken to meet Castro (Ernest Borgnine in a very early role) to try to find out what the deal is with this mouthy newcomer.

Of course, we know the deal, and we also know that because there's a Production Code, crime is not going to pay. But how we get from where we are to where the movie is going to end is something you're going to have to watch for yourself. There's murder, kidnapping, and the real Clegg being unmaksed.

Apparently The Mob got great reviews when it was released back in 1951. Having watched it, I'd have to say that it's a decidedly competent movie. It's not one I'd give the sort of high praise it got in 1951, but at the same time I'd point out there's nothing terribly wrong with it. Broderick gives a good performance, although I do wonder if the script makes him too curious for his own good. That's not Crawford's fault, of course.

There are any number of familiar faces in the supporting roles, such as Neville Brand as a henchman or an uncredited Charles Bronson whose face and voice are immediately recognizable. It all works, even if it is following a formula. The Mob does what it does more than well enough to entertain.