Episode
The Untouchables: A Fist of Five
Overview
Chicago, 1929. Mike Brannon's been a cop for 15 years, but now he's being suspended for hospitalizing ""one of Tony Lamberto's dope-pushing punks."" Mike thinks Captain Bellows is corrupt for not going to bat for him. There is a tense moment when the Captain asks for Mike's gun-- Mike points it at him. But then, Mike turns the gun over and leaves.
Details
- Series
- The Untouchables
- Season
- Season 4
- Episode
- Episode 10
- Air date
- 1962-12-04
- Runtime
- 60 min
Episode context
A Fist of Five is Episode 10 in Season 4 of The Untouchables. It aired on 1962-12-04. The runtime is 60 min.
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Episode 9: Come and Kill Me
July 4, 1930. 40,000 horse racing fans fill Arlington Park. Ness and his men have Arnold ""Spats"" Vincent under surveillance; they will close in on him as soon as he gets a piece of paper: a list with the names of officials in high places who are ready to do business with the crime cartel. 2 hoods (one tall, one short), apparently associates of Spats, approach him. The tall hood sits next to him and whispers something to him; then he stabs Spats.
Episode 11: The Floyd Gibbons Story
Chicago, October 1932. Within minutes of the time the Globe's top reporter Carlton Edmunds was shot, Eliot Ness and his men are on the scene. Ostensibly it appears a stray bullet in a gunfight hit Edmunds; he was just a passerby in the wrong place at the wrong time.
More episodes from this season
Episode 8: Elegy
1929.* Notorious gangster boss Charlie Radick is dying of leukemia; there'll be no mourning for him, the other overlords will be vying for his throne. All Radick wants to do is see his long-lost daughter before he dies. Ness visits Radick; Ness is afraid a gang war might break out, as rival gangs scramble to take over. Ness says, ""Turn over your books to me; names of the people in your organization, distribution points, contacts in City Hall."" Radick says while he was in prison, he left his daughter with a couple; 3 years ago she ran away.
Episode 12: Double Cross
June 1930. Speak owner Louie Akers-- about to go dry and out of business because Guzik couldn't supply him with hooch for that last 3 weeks-- buys his booze from another supplier. Akers pays Johnny $1,142 for barrels of beer and crates of whiskey, that some deliverymen just dropped off. Just then, a couple of Guzik's boys (Sully and Mac) drive up; they start blasting at the delivery truck (which still has plenty more booze in back), just as it's pulling away.
Episode 7: The Eddie O'Gara Story
Chicago. Right after the St. Valentine's Day Massacre. (February 14, 1929.) Ness and his men are scouring Chicago, looking for Bugs Moran. Ness says there used to be 2 gangs in town, now there's just one. Ness figures if they get to Moran first, maybe he'll talk-- he might just be mad enough to give them the information they need.
Episode 13: Search for a Dead Man
June 1929.* A body is dumped into Lake Michigan; when it's fished out 3-4 weeks later, on July 10, the Bureau of Missing Persons has a John Doe on its hands. And so, Lt. Agatha Stewart and her sidekick Frank Benson are on the case. At the City Morgue, all the coroner can tell about the decomposed body is the approximate age, 50, and that the deceased might have had a bad heart.
Episode 6: Bird in the Hand
December 12, 1929. That night, gangster Arnie Kurtz is in a car, watching a hit he ordered. Another car, speeding along and with a chopper blasting, guns down a pedestrian; but the victim pulls a gun and fires back, his bullet goes through the windshield. The car crashes; the driver is dead, but the hitman escapes. Arnie Kurtz goes to establish his alibi; at 10:35, his wife Stella drops in on her brother Benno Fisk, who owns a pawn shop. Stella has a job for him: deliver a payment of 100 Gs to a gangster in Washington, DC, for her hubby Arnie. Benno will be gone for 3-4 days, so Stella takes his 2 pet birds with her; Stella and Arnie are permanent guests at the swanky Lakeview Hotel.
Episode 14: The Speculator
1929. Eliot Ness gets another anonymous phone tip: a big meet at a warehouse on Grover Street, Nitti and all the boys will be there. At the warehouse, about 20 hoods are putting their record books into a huge trunk. Since Al Capone got nailed because of bookkeeping, from now on nobody is to keep any written records; there will only be one central file, and the bookkeeper will be Leo Stazak.
Episode 5: The Pea
Chicago, December 18, 1930. On the southside of town, Herbie Catcher is playing 8-ball for 50 cents a game, in a dilapidated pool joint. Herbie, not being much of a pool player, gets cleaned out by Cooker. Herbie's best friend is Josh, a nice black man who happens to be blind, who is the employee working in the pool hall. Josh tells him, ""You'd be surprised at the things I can see, I'm an owl in the dark."" (""Owl"" is his nickname.) Since Herbie can't make money shooting pool, and only has a job working as a busboy, he is in the habit of getting a few bucks by giving Eliot Ness tips.
Episode 15: Snowball
October 16, 1930. Jackson Parker is a small-time bootlegger, he has his henchman Benny deliver bottles of booze to places on a college campus: student unions, fraternity houses. Parker is arrogant, he tells Benny he could ""throw him out with the rest of the garbage."" Parker has big plans: he thinks he's meeting with Frank Nitti. At the Montmartre club, Nitti is telling his assembled lieutenants, ""And after we get that pipeline set up, the feds will have to dig up every street in Chicago to find it."" A round of laughter.
Episode 4: The Economist
Chicago, the Summer of 1932. There are 12-million unemployed in the U.S.; with less money to spend, the price of booze goes down. The whiskey Syndicate is meeting; the chairman is the powerful gangster Vincent Tunis who runs the town. His 3 lieutenants suggest they hit the speaks. To make a point, Tunis demands a toothpick from his underling Charlie Grach; Tunis roughs him up, bloodies his nose, and points a gun at Charlie*-- demanding a toothpick.
Episode 16: Jake Dance
Late Summer 1930. It started in Wichita, Kansas: a staggering gait called the Jake Dance. (we see a man staggering along using a cane in each hand.) There are many different kinds of alcohol, but the only kind that is safe to drink is ethyl alcohol; many people had been drinking Ginger Jake, which is contaminated with methyl alcohol, also called ""wood alcky."" And people who drank a lot of it often suffered permanent loss of muscle coordination, and developed a staggering gait called the Jake Dance. Many died.