Portrait of a Mobster

“He may be stupid, but he’s not dumb,” says Legs Diamond (Ray Danton, reprising his role from the prior year’s The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond) about his partner-turned-rival Dutch Schultz (Vic Morrow) in Joseph Pevney’s Portrait of a Mobster (1961), a fictionalized biography of Schultz, the Prohibition-era New York gangster and bootlegger who was killed at the young age of 33. Borrowing from Marlon Brando’s gruff style, Morrow is excellent as the fearless, charismatic Schultz, whose rise, fall, and fate will be faithfully accompanied by his best friend from childhood, Bo Wetzel (Norman Alden). Early in the film, after murdering a wealthy bootlegger named John Murphy (Larry J. Blake), Schultz attends the wake, where he seduces the dead man’s daughter Iris (Leslie Parrish) as if turned on by the perverseness of the situation; while Iris refuses to marry the gangster, she makes clear her sexual attraction to him even after marrying upstanding police officer Frank Brennan (Peter Breck). Soon bitten by the corruption bug, Frank will find himself working for Schultz behind the scenes, which, combined with his wife’s desire for Schultz, will create a messy psycho-sexual dynamic that will drive both Frank and Iris to alcoholism. Diamond’s thugs will make several attempts on Schultz’s life, who grows increasingly ruthless (for example, torturing a bootlegger with a hot poker until he signs over his business) before the law enforcement walls close in. Sadly, Morrow would famously die, along with two child actors, in a helicopter crash while making Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983).