Episode
The Untouchables: The King of Champagne
Overview
Chicago, the 3rd week of November 1932. Working on an anonymous tip, Eliot Ness and his men raid a warehouse; all the crates are filled with champagne bottles, it was a shipment for the New Year's celebrations. Ness has the landlord who owns the warehouse, Michel (french for Michael) Viton, arrested; but he's released. Birdie, a deaf-mute, takes Viton to his boss, Edmund Wald, a bottle manufacturer (he's also the one who tipped Ness, to get rid of the competition).
Details
- Series
- The Untouchables
- Season
- Season 2
- Episode
- Episode 30
- Air date
- 1961-05-25
- Runtime
- 60 min
Episode context
The King of Champagne is Episode 30 in Season 2 of The Untouchables. It aired on 1961-05-25. The runtime is 60 min.
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Episode 29: The Seventh Vote
Chicago, April 25, 1932. With Capone in prison doing his rap for income tax evasion, his 8 lieutenants are running things; their HQ is the Montmartre Club, in Cicero, 4 miles west of Chicago. Capone's booze trucks are being hijacked, his speaks are tommy-gunned; Capone's breweries are being smashed, and not just by Eliot Ness, but by rival gangs.
Episode 31: The Nick Acropolis Story
Chicago, Summer 1931. Nick Acropolis is the new bookmaker in town, his territory is Illinois and the 6 surrounding states; he covers bets on horse racing, boxing matches, ball games, everything. By August, his operation is $2-million per month. And so Eliot Ness and his Untouchables are on the case; Enrico Rossi has a wiretap on one of Nick's betting parlors, run by Sully Hinds. Nick and his boys pay a visit to their bookkeeper, Louis Manzak, who is Nick's brother-in-law. Louis embezzled 200 grand of Nick's money, to make a side-bet on a boxing match, and lost.
More episodes from this season
Episode 28: The Nero Rankin Story
September 16, 1933. Although Eliot Ness had successfully destroyed The Underground Court (episode # 46), he had not smashed its parent organization, the big Syndicate, in control of over 50% of the nation's crime. With the death of Judge Foley, who was the chairman of the Syndicate, 5 top-ranking members are now assembling at a roadhouse on the outskirts of Chicago-- to vote on whether or not to appoint Nero Rankin as the new chairman; Nero had been designated by Foley to be his successor, in the event of his death.
Episode 32: 90-Proof Dame
Chicago, April 1932. The city is ruled by underworld czars, one of the toughest of which is Nate Kester, former henchman for the Capone mob. To put up a pretense of legality, he owns and runs the Odeon Theatre, which specializes in Burlesque, but his real operation is bootleg booze. Kester has his boys drag in Henry Bogar, who has a 5-6 state territory selling imported brandy. Kester tells him that from now on he will carry his stuff-- cheap rotgut with forged ""de Bouverais"" cognac labels. Bogar tastes the stuff, and calls it slop; he says brandy drinkers will never buy it as long as the real stuff is available.
Episode 27: Stranglehold
New York, 1933. Racketeers are poking their greasy fists into every corner of the nation's business. The Fulton fish market in New York supplies fish on the East Coast to as far west as the Mississippi; they supply 700-million pounds of fish a year, worth $200-million. When Captain Joe McGonigle, owner of the fishing boat the Margie Mac, won't pay protection money, 2 of Frank Mercouris' hoods, Lenny Shore and Swede Kelso, drown his deck hand, and it makes the newspapers; it's only the beginning of trouble with the Syndicate moving in-- and so Eliot Ness and his men fly to New York.
Episode 26: Death for Sale
Chicago, last week of April 1933. Frank Nitti is offered a huge quantity of Chinese opium. Ever since the government had established the Bureau of Narcotics in 1930, the flow of opium from China to the USA had slowed to a trickle, and by 1932 the flow had almost ceased; now, with the end of Prohibition seeming imminent, the Syndicate is ready to deal in opium again. Late on the night of May 4, Nitti sends one of his top lieutenants, Ed Getty, to pick up some opium from Art Rele and his thug Cliff Anders. But Ness and Lee Hobson show up, too; in the shootout, only Art Rele escapes.
Episode 25: Mr. Moon
Autumn 1934. An armored truck, loaded with the special paper used in printing U.S. currency, is headed for the Bureau of Engraving in Washington, D.C. The truck is hijacked, and the 3 armed guards are tommy-gunned. Since counterfeiting will be on a national level, it's a federal offense, and so Eliot Ness and 5 other federal agents from around the country convene in Washington, D.C., and are briefed on the situation.
Episode 24: Ring of Terror
Ring of Terror-- Boxing ring, that is. July 1931, the Chicago Sports Arena was like a hundred other boxing rings across America-- a place where young toughs from reform schools and rotting tenements, willing to sacrifice their blood, could try to rise above the oppression of poverty. But the young men with the boxing gloves only got a small amount of the money; the big payoffs went to the gangsters.
Episode 23: Testimony of Evil
October 11, 1932. Chicago. Less than one month before the elections, David Mantley, running for State's Attorney on the Reform ticket, is making speeches: he says the power behind his opponent, Jeremiah Down, is mobster Bryan O'Malley. At the same time, across town, O'Malley is being feted at a testimonial dinner-- even though a week from now he'll have to stand trial for murder and income tax evasion.
Episode 22: Murder Under Glass
November 1932. FDR was moving to end Prohibition, and the crime syndicate was already shifting away from booze to narcotics. In the next few months, the narcotic supply is running low.
February 20, 1933, Frank Nitti and his lieutenant Pete Konitz fly down to New Orleans, where the Mardi Gras will be taking place. Bouchard is busy having Sully fit his car with bulletproof glass. Later, Nitti is demanding a drug shipment from Bouchard.
Episode 21: The Lily Dallas Story
April 11, 1932. Millionaire building contractor Thomas B. Randall is the target of a kidnapping; he is throwing a party right now. Intruding on his estate that night are: ex-bootlegger and now gang leader George ""Blackie"" Dallas, Pete Appleby (former torpedo for the Purple Gang), Marty Stoke (bank heist expert) and Jiggs (ex-heavyweight boxer and now strongarm man). The gang kills a security guard, and kidnaps Randall-- and they warn his family and guests not to call the police, or he gets it.
Episode 20: The Antidote
Mid-October 1932. The nation's attention is on the election campaign between incumbent president Herbert Hoover and his opponent Franklin D. Roosevelt, who is crippled by polio. With Prohibition still the law of the land, the government is looking for ways to denature alcohol, which legitimate manufactures need for industrial purposes (making perfumes, etc). Should the alcohol fall into the wrong hands, if it was denatured, it would be useless to bootleggers.