Episode
The Untouchables: The Noise of Death
Overview
Chicago, March 31, 1933. Giuseppe ""Joe"" Bucco is at home when he gets a visit from his wife's cousin, Barbara Vittorini-- she says her husband Arturo has been missing for 3 days, and accuses Bucco of killing him. Bucco has his flunkie Abe Garfinkel take her home. Bucco knows about rub-out attempts, Guzik's boys once shot him 4 times, but he lived; Bucco swears to his wife Anna that he doesn't know where Arturo is.
Details
- Series
- The Untouchables
- Season
- Season 1
- Episode
- Episode 14
- Air date
- 1960-01-14
- Runtime
- 60 min
Episode context
The Noise of Death is Episode 14 in Season 1 of The Untouchables. It aired on 1960-01-14. The runtime is 60 min.
Previous / Next
Episode 13: Syndicate Sanctuary
30 miles from Chicago, the (fictitious) Calum City; population: 10,000. Judge Leon Zabo is running for mayor, to clean up the town. Working hard in his campaign headquarters is his lovely daughter, Rosetta Zabo. Judge Zabo tried to put an end to vice, graft and corruption; in the last 6 months, he had closed down 110 bars, clubs and gambling casinos in the notorious Barbary Coast district.
Episode 15: Star Witness
1934. The Depression was over 4 years old, and Al Capone was in Alcatraz. Many of the rackets had seemingly legit fronts, such as Midwest Enterprises, Inc. -- the president is Luigi Renaldo, former lieutenant for Capone. Renaldo is going to Florida on business, and leaving his 2nd-in-command in charge: his Enforcer Paolo Rienzi. But, unbeknownst to his boss, Rienzi tells Tubby to get a couple of guys and work over their accountant,
More episodes from this season
Episode 12: The Underground Railway
The night of August 3, 1933, outside the Louisburg Federal Prison in Pennsylvania. After serving 2 years of a life sentence for his part in the holdup of a Federal Reserve bank shipment, Frank Halloway is busting out, climbing over the wall. When a fellow inmate breaks his leg from the jump from the high prison wall, ruthless Frank Halloway hops into the getaway car that was left there for him-- and runs over the hapless inmate.
Episode 16: The St. Louis Story
Spring 1931. Gangland warfare had broken out again with sudden violence in the streets of St. Louis. Tim Harrington, who was long entrenched as the undisputed boss of the city, was fighting off the challenge to his leadership from Joe Courtney, an upstart hoodlum. The elder Dink Conway calls for a sit-down between the two, at the Jockey Club. Dink points out they are operating the old way: shootouts and dealing in cash. He offers them organization and protection, and says the new way is to use fronts to cover your criminal activities and keep books so the Feds can't get you on income tax evasion (he knows what happened to Al Capone).
Episode 11: You Can't Pick the Number
Chicago, October 1932. The depths of the Great Depression, marked by unemployment and poverty. The only chance some people felt they had to rise out of poverty, if only for a short time, was to win the lottery or at the punch-boards. The mob saw this as an opportunity, by coming up with a numbers game. People picked a number from 0-999; their odds of winning were 1-in-a-1,000-- the payoff was 600-to-1. The thousands of losers, pouring money into the mob, were never mentioned.
Episode 17: One-Armed Bandits
Chicago, February 1932. Crime has been spreading all over, from the dark alleys of Cicero to the social atmosphere of the Gold Coast. Crooked attorney Paul Curtiz is attending a party being hosted by gangster overlord Augie Viale, king of the southside of Chicago. At the affair, Viale is openly paying off this guests with cash-- police commissioners, judges, lawyers, and businessmen; all of them ready to hand Chicago to Viale on a silver platter.
Episode 10: The Dutch Schultz Story
March 1935. One of the toughest mobsters in New York City is Dutch Schultz. He and his mob were responsible for over 100 murders. Dutch is into every racket: liquor, narcotics, labor shakedowns, the numbers, selling protection. But "Lucky" Luciano is muscling in on his territory; to try to keep his clients from paying to Luciano, Dutch Schultz has his boys work his clients over with fists. When Joe Floris won't pay 30% protection money to Schultz, saying he is already paying 15% to Luciano, Joe Floris gets some acid in the face, blinding him. But Dutch has a gentler side, too-- his wife just had a baby
Episode 18: Little Egypt
Little Egypt (not the Belly Dancer) was the city of Morraine, the heart of the gangster-infected area in downstate Illinois known as ""Little Egypt."" Election night, 1931. New mayor Marcus Stone is giving a speech on the radio-- he meant what he said about reform, and promises to rid the town of Charlie Byron (a Major in WWI) and his gang, whom he calls ""bloodsuckers"" and ""scum."" Listening to the radio is Major Byron, who gives his gang orders to knock off both Mayor Stone and Sheriff Mooney; they both get tommy-gunned that night.
Episode 9: The Tri-State Gang
In the latter part of 1933, there was an epidemic of truck hijackings in the states of Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania; this was the work of 6 gangsters: the Tri-State Gang. Tonight, in Richmond, Virginia, they're hijacking a truckload of radios. As usual "Big" Bill Phillips, a 6'4" ox of a man, takes over the hijacked truck, transferring the load onto their truck; Artie McLeod, a cheap tinhorn gambler, puts a burlap sack over the driver's head, blinding him, and chains the driver to a tree.
Episode 19: The Big Squeeze
Chicago. Prior to May 1934, robbing state banks was not a federal offense. Bandits only had local police to contend with, and they were often understaffed, inefficient or corrupt. This led to a rash of successful, though clumsily executed, bank robberies. In this city alone, there were 422 robberies in the last year, with 221 casualties. On March 1934, Eliot Ness is meeting with his friend D.A. Beecher Asbury. Ness tells him that until bank robbery becomes a federal offense, there's not much he can about it.
Episode 8: The Artichoke King
April 19, 1931. New York City. Every 48 hours, more than 25 million pounds of fruits and vegetables stream into the city; this multi-million dollar business is the target of gangsters. Eliot Ness and his Untouchables have recently been brought to New York on special assignment to investigate the produce market racket. After senior Angelo Cestari, a produce retailer, is machine-gunned by one of Terranova's gangsters, Ness talks to his son Tony Cestari; Tony tells Ness that his father didn't deal with Terranova like the other retailers did, and now he's paid the ultimate price.
Episode 20: The Unhired Assassin (1)
Movie: ""The Gun of Zangara""
Chicago. November 9, 1932. FDR has just been elected president, and the repeal of Prohibition is inevitable. But later that night, Ness and his men smash another of Capone's breweries. Agent Youngfellow asks Eliot, ""Are we going to be out of work?"" But Ness tells him no-- after all, bootleg booze was only a part of the Capone empire: there's still narcotics, gambling, prostitution, protection rackets, etc. Capone may start muscling in on legitimate businesses; in fact, Ness is having a meeting with Mayor Anton Cermak-- they want to ""clean up this town"" before the Chicago World's Fair in the spring of 1933.