Every Corner Boy’s Dream, Getting Out From Under The Sign Of “From Hunger”-The Big Score -With Sterling Hayden’s “The Killing” In Mind  

By Fritz Taylor

The Killing, starring Sterling Hayden, Collen Gray, directed by Stanley Kubrick, 1956

Johnny Clay, Johnny Boy, let’s call him Johnny Stir because that is what his whole freaking life had amounted to, would amount when the deal went down, was a piece of work. Took stretches in stir, prison, the pen as rest periods so he could set up the next big scheme, plan out stuff, make the perfect plan. (Johnny had one time actually punched out a fellow inmate to lose his “good time” so he could finish planning a caper in peace.) For Johnny it was never about the money really, he figured he never would be able spend all the dough or would blow it in a week in Vegas, something like that. It was all about the plan, about getting the dough, getting some satisfaction that he had the whole thing figured. Johnny’s exploits were so famous, he had figured so many plans that they made a movie, The Killing, Stanley Kubrick famed director did the piece early in his career, about Johnny’s biggest heist, about the racetrack caper, no, the Great Racetrack caper and it does not matter which one but in the case it was a big name one, as it came down in lore in the criminal underworld grapevine. Plenty held it up it up as the greatest dough grab caper of them all.         

Kubrick got old school rock steady, no nonsense hard-hitting not afraid to take a punch or two for the good of the cause, to further the plan, ruggedly handsome with that deep voice that meant don’t fuck around with a straight shooter Sterling Hayden for the Johnny part. Did right to get him, line the actor right up for the Johnny caper probably having heard how he had been a stand-up guy, a heavy lifting guy, the rough edges guy for Doc Davin in that Wyman jewelry store caper a few years before, had worked the asphalt jungle from whence he came and didn’t complain when bleeding like a pig in Doll’s arms the Kentucky coppers nabbed him just as he was about to get back home. Trouble was that Johnny had been doing a nickel on that job in Lexington and so Stanley had to wait for Johnny boy to blow the joint and hope and pray that he didn’t go wacky in his planning and bop some inmate and lose his freaking “good time”-again. Johnny Stir in stir was that kind of noggin.      

By the way everybody knew, everybody who counted, including the coppers in about five states and the feds too since some of the action crossed state lines, that Johnny was Doc’s protégé, had met Johnny when they both were in stir. (Doc for messing around with young girls, a no-no in normal society and among the brethren who take armed robberies seriously too but Doc’s planning abilities and the fact that he never drew a day for any of his real capers got him a bye in the latter circles, had guys lined up wanting to get well on some Doc caper. Johnny, young, feisty and frankly wet behind the ears was doing a one to five for a daylight armed robbery attempt at the Granite City National Bank in Peoria who proved his worth by taking the fall, not snitching, not in his blood when the thing went awry and a panicked banker pulled the alarm and all hell broke loose. What most people didn’t know, except maybe guys who were close to the two men, was that Doc, showing his age a little, slowing down a little had worked out the Wyman caper about 50-50 with Johnny. Johnny, a fast learner in that sense, was eager to help out, to learn the craft.        

It was a beauty too, would have worked out fine. Here is the Johnny part to show his breeding, his bloodlines. You were not going to rob Wyman’s in daylight Johnny knew that much from bitter experience. You also were not going to get far at night with a frontal attack in the night the alarm system was too good. Johnny had Doll, Doll an old bar girl turning tricks to keep herself in rent money and Johnny in canteen cash while he was inside now out of the picture since young Faye (Collen Gray played her in the film) had caught  his eye one night at the Blue Grotto once he got out on doing the nickel and Doll was history, sent him the floor plans of the whole block Wyman’s was on. Saw that the whole thing could be done by blasting through the basement from a store a couple of doors down. Beautiful. The whole thing went off without a hitch until some nosey night watchman, not even a real copper so why was he not just sitting in his chair snoozing like he did every other night. Another Johnny contribution to the plan, checking out the live security patterns, which in the case went for nought.

There was a lot of shooting, the real coppers came in and Johnny and Doll fled, Johnny bleeding like a sieve, as best they could after making sure Doc got away. The other guys, guys he didn’t know, guys Doc wasn’t sure of either since he had been out of circulation for a while, didn’t do squat, a couple got nicked, one guy, a nobody got killed, got dead and bled all the way home like dropping a bread crumb trail giving the coppers a lead once they caught up with him and squeezed him hard before he died about where Johnny and Doc might be. (Doll was a late entry in the getaway since she insisted that she go with Johnny once she saw he was bleeding, told him she would go back to doing tricks to keep them in dough if he asked her to she was that kind of doll and to shut her up Johnny tumbled to her driving him to Kentucky.)

Doc got away clean and nobody ever heard from him again or at least nobody was talking about him and his whereabouts. Johnny as we know got a nickel for bleeding too much to make a clean getaway. Johnny also got religion on confederates, on their reliability, little good it did him in the end.

Problem had been, and Doc and he had gone round and round on the subject, the talent from the old days was just not around anymore. Either they were working somewhere in the food chain for the mob or were off doing something else, something legitimate with their skills in the post- World War II boom, especially the military service guys. So you had to go with what you had as Johnny would find out when he did the racetrack caper. The explosives guy had been battling the bottle for a few years and the expert safe cracker was being harassed by his pregnant wife not to get involved. Christ that would never happen in the old days when you had the pick of the litter in such specialties. Guys were lining up for work to get well.

The minute they grabbed Johnny, bleeding and all, he was already working on his next plan, the first of his own under his own imprimatur. He would spend that nickel, really four and half years since he was a model prisoner as he was anxious to get his plan in motion. This time no mistakes, no mistakes that he could help. Johnny had like a lot of guys coming up in the 1930s heard about the legendary bank robber Willie Sutton whose most famous utterance was that when he was asked by the coppers when he cashed his check on some not well thought out caper why he robbed banks he nonchalantly answered-“that is where the money is.” That first Johnny stir time Granite City bank robbery was based on that same idea although he would not hear about Sutton’s famous remark until he was in stir the first time and some yegg fished him on the tale.

Here is where Johnny figured something out from his own botched experience, something Willie and another guy named Pretty Boy Floyd didn’t see coming. The days of robbing banks was history, was too filled with pitfalls to make sense. Johnny’s take was where else would the money be. Dough, lots of it, the coin of the realm which from hunger guys like Kentucky poor white trash farm boy Johnny counted as valuable, as worth grabbing. That is where the Kentucky part came in, a racetrack, a high-end race track on a busy weekend big stakes day like the Derby would have tons of dough just waiting for the smartest guy in the room to grab it before the track owners got their mitts on it. So Johnny worked and worked on the thing figuring who he needed. Who could help get the loot.

           

The thing had to be an inside job, needed some people on the inside to clear the path and to keep some distractions while the heist was in progress. Needed a ticket teller, maybe a bar-tender, definitely a cop. Doc Davin would have been proud of his protégé, would have tipped his hat to Johnny if he had worn a hat. Johnny contacted his old friend Dibs, a guy he did time with and whom he trusted since Benny Long, the famous wrestler and a guy Johnny had used on a couple of capers when he needed muscle, physical muscle and not bang-bang guys, had vouched for him. Benny’s word was enough and in the end Dibs did just fine even if he went down, fell down hard when times got weird. Dibs set up the teller and the bartender knowing that the teller had a bitch wife with expensive tastes and sharp tongue problems and the bar-tender who was a stone-cold junkie in the days when nobody, not even race track owners, was testing for illegal drug use of their employees. Dibs also got the copper who was moonlighting at the track to earn some cash since he, the copper, was up to his ears in gambling debts to Sam Sloane and Slone was breathing down his neck for pay up or else dough. When Johnny cleared stir he got Benny, hard muscle and a sharpshooter from the Army he knew to complete the picture. Day labor.

Go. Day of action. Bank teller lets Johnny led by copper into the back room where the money was being counted in nice next small denomination piles (beautiful, Johnny, beautiful on that unmarked bills angle. Genius.) Meanwhile to keep everybody spinning, keep seven balls in the air Benny starts a brawl in the bar egged on by the bar-tender (the bar being the way that Johnny and copper would exit the joint). Here is where things got even hairier although it might crimp a legend’s status with some people. That ex-Army sharp-shooter was to kill the lead horse in the featured race creating chaos in the stands and elsewhere. Maybe there was some poetic justice in the fact that ex-Army get killed by a security cop after he killed Man of War or whoever took the tumble. No big deal he was just day labor, wages anyway. 

The long and short of it was that the whole thing worked fine, the loot was gotten out of the track and nobody, not the coppers, not the race people knew what the hell had happened. Like I said they still talk about the Great Derby robbery in hushed voices in many a cell and backroom. So Johnny picked up a win just as he got an assist on the Wyman caper since both went off without a hitch. But sometimes, hell, most of the time some goddam thing fouls up the works and mars what should be total victory.

That is what laid Johnny, Johnny Stir in case you forgot, low. This ticket teller was a loose cannon, was a nervous nelly afraid of his own shadow, afraid of losing his bitch wife’s affections if he didn’t come up with dough. When he copped to the caper he told wifey that payday was coming, hold on. Bitch wife having no confidence in her man pressed for details. He spilled his guts, spilled all that she needed to know. Know to pass on to her lover who was as dough crazy as she was. He would hold up the joint where the money split was to happen. In the event the deal, the money split went down too soon Johnny had not arrived to parcel out the shares. Lover boy and Johnny’s boys went bang-bang with nobody left standing except that stinking little teller. He lasted long enough to get home and go bang-bang with that gold-digging wife before he fell down. A little rough justice anyway.

Johnny saw what had happened at the share-splitting apartment and knew he had to blow town fast, knew that the coppers would figure out that these bloody scenes revolved around the Great Derby heist. Johnny grabbed Faye and they were ready to blow on the fastest plane out (the fastest then cumbersome prop jobs). One problem all the dough had to go from a trash bag to a quickly bought suitcase to be carried on board the plane. No go- the suitcase had to be checked.

Here where fate is kind of funny. The suitcase got knocked off the cart it on heading to the plane’s cargo area. All the dough went to the winds, all four of them. So long dough. Johnny and Fay tried to get away from the airport but before they can the coppers start to grab them. Fay standing by her man urged him to run but he said what was basically 1950s WTF and accepted his fate. See it was never about the money, never. Always about the execution of the plan, the kinkier the better. Fay knowing what Johnny was facing told her man she would turn tricks to keep herself in rent money and Johnny in canteen money as she waited for him to finish his time. Johnny nodded knowingly (he had been down that road with Doll back when who stooped to anything to keep herself, them in dough and only told Fay to stick to blowjobs and such and leave her ass for him when he got out). Even before the coppers put the hand-cuffs on Johnny was thinking about the next caper, the next plan. Something to do with Monets from the art museum, the Chicago Art Institute, something that would not blow away in the wind. Yeah, that Johnny Stir was a piece of work, a real piece of work.