The Undercover Man

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The Undercover Man
movie poster
Directed by	Joseph H. Lewis
Produced by	Robert Rossen
Written by	Frank J. Wilson article "Undercover Man: He Trapped Capone" Sydney Boehm
Starring	Glenn Ford Nina Foch
Cinematography	Burnett Guffey
Distributed by	Columbia Pictures
Release date(s)	March 21 1949 premiere
Running time	85 min
Language	English
IMDb profile

The Undercover Man is a 1949 crime drama film starring Glenn Ford. This one of a number of film noir for director Joseph H. Lewis, who went on to direct Gun Crazy and The Big Combo.

[edit] Plot

Frank Warren is a treasury agent assigned to put an end to the activities of a powerful mob crime boss. The "undercover" agent poses as a criminal to seek out information but is frustrated when all he finds are terrified witnesses and corrupt police officers. Although most informants end up dead, Agent Warren gets critical information about the mob from an unlikely source.

[edit] Trivia

The film was based on an article entitled "He Trapped Capone," the first part of the autobiography Undercover Man by Federal Agent Frank Wilson, which was serialized in Collier's in 1947.

Many details were fictionalized. The time-frame was changed from the Prohibition era to the post-war era. Chicago became an unnamed, fairly nondescript big city. Capone was referred to only as the shadowy "Big Boy" (ironically, this was also how the Capone figure in the Dick Tracy comic strip was referred to), and only photographed from the rear, and was a more diversified mobster rather than primarily a bootlegger (reflecting the change in US Organized Crime following Prohibition's repeal). And of course, IRS Criminal Investigator Frank Wlson became IRS Criminal Investigator Frank Warren.

Nevertheless, the film authentically portrayed the efforts of Wilson's team to put together a tax evasion case against Capone, and, in many respects, despite the name changes and nondescript settings, the film is a far more accurate depiction of the investigation than later films on the same subject like The Untouchables.

As one example, in The Untouchables the judge presiding over Capone's trial abruptly changes juries in the middle of the case, something that would never happen in real life. What actually happened was that the judge switched jury panels just before the trial began, and this incident is accurately portrayed in The Undercover Man.