The Garment Jungle

Since at least the beginning of the 20th century, a single square mile on the west side of Manhattan has served as the center of fashion manufacturing and design; this area, called the Garment District (and its denizens garmentos), has often been associated with controversial practices like sweat shops, organized crime, and union busting, the latter taken to violent extremes in Vincent Sherman’s The Garment Jungle, based on true stories recounted in magazine articles by Lester Velie. The film is adequately carried by its only star, Lee J. Cobb, who first appears drenched in sweat and condemning any organized labor efforts (“I’ll never let that lousy union in!”); Cobb plays fashion house owner Walter Mitchell, but despite the fashion milieu, the film portrays his environs as entirely unglamorous (cramped, dingy, sweaty, loud, and threatening). When Mitchell’s son Adam (Kerwin Matthews) returns from serving in the Korean War just after his dad’s business partner dies in a highly suspicious runaway elevator crash, he joins the company to learn the ropes. The ropes, however, will metaphorically hang multiple characters before all is said and done. Richard Boone plays Artie Ravidge, a gangster to whom Mitchell has been paying protection money to keep the union out, and Robert Loggia plays union organizer Tulio Renata whose wife Theresa (Gia Scala) ironically becomes the Mitchells’ fiercest defender. Sherman doesn’t shy away from violence (a stabbing in the gut, chains to the face) but it’s still toned way down from the original vision of director Robert Aldrich, whom Sherman replaced with only two weeks remaining in production. Legendary cinematographer Biroc asserts his own genius in plenty of scenes, like when Alan and Teresa converse back to back in separate restaurant booths as she nurses her baby. Fun fact: the epic funeral footage used toward the end of the film (“one of the biggest funerals in New York City history”) was actually that of dancer “Bojangles” Robinson.