A sluggish, middling film noir rescued by the sturdy presences of its two lead stars, "The Racket" (1951) should prove of interest for all fans of this most American of cinematic genres. Producer Howard Hughes, who had just acquired a controlling interest in RKO three years earlier, had also been the producer of the 1928 silent film called "The Racket" (based on the stage play by Bartlett Cormack, which had featured Edward G. Robinson in the role of "the heavy"), and apparently thought this old property a perfect one for updating, as Tennessee Senator Estes Kefauver and his investigating crime commission were then making headlines. Hughes brought together RKO's top two leading men, Roberts Mitchum and Ryan, hired John Cromwell to direct (Cromwell's "Caged," released a year earlier, had turned out to be a noir masterpiece), and engaged Sam Fuller to write a script (Hughes ultimately rejected the script and got William Haines to do a complete rewrite). As it turns out, though, despite all this great talent involved, and the assistance of a wonderful cast of supporting actors, the resulting film is a bland affair; somewhat slow moving, deficient in suspense and action, and even scarce in the juicy dialogue department. Still, as I said, the picture is certainly not without interest.
In the film, Mitchum plays Capt. Tom McQuigg, seemingly one of the few honest cops in the purposely unnamed midsize city where the picture transpires (it is Anywhere, America). As head of his precinct, McQuigg's main concern is his childhood acquaintance Nick Scanlon (Ryan), a criminal boss whose old-school, violent methods have begun to rankle the more businesslike Syndicate that has been making inroads everywhere and bribing such figures as the Assistant D.A. Welch (played by the great character actor Ray Collins) and the police commissioner himself (William Conrad, perhaps best known today as TV's Cannon). With the Syndicate backing Welch in an upcoming election, matters between McQuigg and Scanlon come to a head, and are escalated when honest Officer Robert Johnson (not the bluesman, but rather played by William Talman, who many will recall as Perry Mason's adversary Hamilton Burger; an odd casting choice, for this viewer, since I recall Talman best as psycho fugitive Emmett Myers in Ida Lupino's great film noir of 1953, "The Hitch-Hiker") sets himself up as a decoy, and when nightclub chantootsie Irene Hayes (Lizabeth Scott, born Emma Matzo, who had previously been directed by Cromwell in the Humphrey Bogart 1947 noir "Dead Reckoning"), formerly engaged to Scanlon's kid brother, decides to testify against him...and thus, like Johnson, setting herself up for elimination by the Mob....
The two Roberts, who had previously appeared together in the infinitely superior noir "Crossfire" in 1947 and would costar, many years later, in "The Longest Day" (1962) and "Anzio" (1968), DO work very well together here, although Ryan easily dominates the proceedings, his seething, violent Scanlon ("I was running this town when you cheap jerks were still eating at diners!") ever so much more memorable than Mitchum's overly laid-back McQuigg. Scott, despite her rather underwritten character, yet manages to make an impression, and gets to lip-synch the song "A Lovely Way to Spend an Evening" in a rather dingy-looking nightclub setting. Besides the great character actors already named, "The Racket" features Robert Hutton (future director of the 1962 schlock favorite "The Slime People") as a young reporter, Les Tremayne (who would appear IN "The Slime People"!) as the crime commission head, and Herb Vigran (as that nightclub owner) and Tito Vuolo (as Nick's barber), whose faces should certainly be familiar to baby-boomer fans of the old "Adventures of Superman" TV show. The film, despite its dearth of action, yet manages to offer at least four scenes that are comparatively gripping: a Mob-orchestrated explosion in McQuigg's house, a foreshadowing of a somewhat similar sequence in the awesome noir "The Big Heat" (1953); a nighttime dukeout that McQuigg engages in atop a roof with a Mob thug, with no musical accompaniment; a high-speed car chase between Nick and the cops; and the arrival of a pair of hit men at Johnson's suburban home.
"The Racket" is currently available on a fine-looking Warner Bros. DVD and features one of the best commentary tracks that I've heard in ages. This commentary, by the founder of the Film Noir Foundation, Eddie Muller, shows off Muller's encyclopedic knowledge in a highly conversational, understated manner. Among the dozens and dozens of fascinating tidbits that Muller shares with us is the fact that, despite his 1948 arrest for marijuana possession, Mitchum continued to enjoy the support and loyalty of Howard Hughes (who effectively salvaged his career). He also tells us that the Irene Hayes character was called "Helen Hayes" in the 1928 screen version, a name that had to be changed for obvious reasons; that Nicholas Ray directed numerous scenes after the shooting wrapped (the opening sequence in the governor's office, Mitchum's entrance, the rooftop fight, the nightclub scene, etc.); and that the two main differences between the two versions are the beefing up of the Johnson character and the introduction of the Syndicate angle. He also mentions that he prefers the silent version to the one under discussion here, which makes one wish that this original were available on DVD. The fact that it is not might warrant the investigation of a "crime" commission itself....
