The Bad Guys Play Bad-With Glenn Ford and Gloria Grahame’s “The Big Heat” In Mind

By Seth Garth

[Sam Lowell was for a long time a free-lance film reviewer for several publications starting in the old days with Rolling Stone when that magazine had some soul, had not turned into a glossy advertisement-rich venture with articles used as filler. He also had worked for the  East Bay Other for a number of years and  more recently as he had slowed down a bit heading toward retirement for the American Film Review (which reviews foreign films as well-some done very well). Over the years he has come to appreciate dramatically the films that he watched on those dismal Saturday afternoon black and white double-feature matinees (complete with a much cheaper than today tub of popcorn which almost requires a credit card handy to purchase) at the Strand Theater in Riverdale where he came of age in order to have an afternoon away from his chaotic family life. Also later to appreciate film revivals that he was addicted to in such locales as the Brattle Theater in Harvard Square and the Pilgrim Theater in Oakland when he lived in California as a young man.

In short Sam had been and is addicted to what then and now are called film noir efforts-a lot of them involving crimes, big and small, of one kind or another. Stuff like The Maltese Falcon where Humphrey Bogart as Sam Spade had to go toe to toe with what in the old days in that same Riverdale neighborhood was called a guy “light on his feet,” Joel Cairo, with a greedy, twisted but determined Fat Man, and worst, worst of all a femme fatale whom he had better not turn his back on for two seconds, make that one second, all encased in the “stuff that dreams were made of.” Our boy Sam got out a live, but was a close one, a very close one. Stuff like The Big Sleep where Phillip Marlowe, play also by Bogie, to keep an old dissipated man from thinking he was a couple failure had to go toe to toe with a sister act, the old man’s two wild-eyed daughters and a bad boy gangster and his “hit man” who did like the cut of his jibe. Another close call, very close. Stuff like the smell of jasmine or whatever the hell she was wearing out in the slumming streets of Los Angles when an insurance guy, played by Fred MacMurray,   gets all wrapped up with dame, a twisted dame who spells murder, murder most foul of her nicely insured husband in Double Indemnity. A guy who didn’t make it but he was probably better off because he had a couple of slugs written all over him, special delivery. Stuff like Jack Callahan, a smart guy, played by Robert Meyers, who wouldn’t leave another man’s woman, a gangster man’s woman alone and went down for the count, went down in flames not by the gangster’s hand but that gun-addled femme he was chasing in The Past Is Past. 

Stuff like, well, you get the idea, the idea that drove most film noir-sex, or at least the thought of sex, dough and violence. Sam had never been much of a police procedural guy, never really rooted for the coppers in such vehicles having had his fair share of real run-ins with real coppers back on those mean streets of Riverdale growing up. Later too. One that caught his attention though, The Big Heat, a dog-eared police procedural was something he had watched a few weeks before we sat down at Jack’s over in Cambridge for a few high-shelf scotches. Sam always liked to tell a story from an odd-ball perspective, from the way the thing would look to a minor character who was still standing at the end.]

“Never trust an honest cop, worse never trust a dishonest cop trying to go honest, worse don’t ever even think about giving a case to an honest cop trying to figure out what happened to a dishonest cop trying to go honest. Get rid of all of them before they break up a good thing, hell, shoot them down like dogs once they start getting too close to stuff that they shouldn’t get too close to. That’s what I learned the hard way about twenty years ago when the whole shebang fell on my head,” ex-Riverdale Police Commissioner Fred Ward was telling a couple of day-time drinkers at Billy’s Tavern in Gloversville a few towns away from his old job town after having just finished a twenty year stretch for forgetting that simple rule. For forgetting that a cop, an honest cop like Frank Bannon, with a chip on his shoulder, helped put him away on accessory to murder, extortion and corruption charges for that time that he did. Yeah, strictly a yellow-bellied cop who didn’t know enough to know that you don’t rat out your own. Fred had made Bannon a detective for the opposite reason, put him on the Trevor case too to close it up tight with no big waves.                          

Fred continued once he bought a round of drinks for the bar stool audience and once they perked up to who he was, who he had been back in the day, back when they were kids and had heard about the stuff happening over in wide-open Riverdale. Had gone there themselves to get their first whiffs of liquor, dope and women some things that small town Gloversville was too backward to be bothered with by Mike Lagana, Big Mike, when he ran the rackets in Riverdale before the fall.  

“Yeah, that Frank Bannon was a piece of work. I had put him on the force as a favor to his father, Arthur Bannon, who had been a cop, had come up with me in the old days, who knew how to play ball, knew how to keep quiet when there was dough to be made by being quiet when whoever was running the rackets hit town. Arthur was dead and in his grave by the time Frank made detective still he should have wised the kid up, wised him up enough know that playing with fire is dangerous to you and yours.  

“Like I say I made him a dick figuring he was out of his blessed father’s mold. Everybody, including Frank, knew what was going on, knew right after the war that Mike Lagana had stuck it to Chilly Devine, stuck him bad and bleeding, and had taken over the rackets in Riverdale. Notched things up a bit too, brought in the hard opium-laced drugs that had been forbidden under Devine,  brought in a couple of casinos with crooked action and brought in the young, too young, whores that probably had guys like you hardly able to wait to come to our town. I didn’t keep close tabs on Frank, didn’t feel I had to and so didn’t know that he was not “on the take,” was one of those stupid cops just looking the other way instead of getting on the gravy train. Once I asked him, asked him after the killings started, trying to reason with him how the hell did he think his father got that nice cottage up in Windom Lake that Frank had spent his summers at on a cop’s pay. Yeah, you bet he had no answer.        

“But that was after the killings started like I said. So I thought nothing of it when we had to “burn” Jimmy Trevor, Patrolman Jimmy Trevor who had allegedly committed suicide after some bullshit remorse about all the dirty deals he let go down on his beat. About the underage girl whorehouses that were set up on his beat and he had looked the other way on. Got him a nice big house out of the leavings. Had a wife too who was not fussy about how Jimmy made his dough as long as it was “more.”

“We had the wife, Jeanette, tell Frank that Jimmy had been having health issues and was depressed and that was why he put his revolver to his head one late Sunday night. End of story. Like I said we, we meaning me and Mike, put Frank on the case to close it out fast. Then this B-girl, this whore, Jimmy’s whore on the side, Lana Lane, showed up at The Carousel one night, drunk, spied Frank and told him that Jimmy had been fit as a fiddle, had worn her out in bed just the night before he crashed. Had been talking though about going clean. They found her a few days later just out the town line on the side of the road strangled and half naked. Declared an accident by the “on the take” coroner. With her death and growing suspicions about the manner of Jimmy’s demise Frank started getting all square about what was going on. Decided to try and squeeze this Jeanette about what really had happened at the house the night Jimmy died. No soap because that clever little bitch had some papers Jimmy had left behind and was squeezing Mike for quiet money. No way, whatever Frank thought and he thought plenty of evil thoughts about the matter, was she going to stop the cash cow coming in just because somebody blasted her former meal ticket. Or his fancy lady on the side.     

“Frank started asking too many questions. Too many questions in the police locker room, the line-up, at the Carousel, among the beat cops out on the streets and in the patrol cars once he sensed somebody was looking over his shoulder. Trying to stop him short. Big Mike and I talked it over, talked it over plenty before I saw things his way. I just wanted some cop to accidently shoot him in the kneecap which would have finished up the matter, gave him a warning to back off. Big Mike said no way, no way was Frank going to be backed off, not from what he was talking about when Frank visited him unexpectedly at his house asking questions about dead ass Jimmy, asking if Jimmy was on the take. Big Mike threw him out, told him to talk to me. In the meantime Big Mike’s idea which made sense was to blow Frank up to kingdom come. We have Sal Rizzo Mike’s big bang-bang guy rig up his car with enough dynamite to carve out the Grand Canyon and have some left over for the Boulder Dam project. How were we to know that Frank’s wife, Betty, was going to go out to the car to run a couple of errands.        

“After that Frank went mad, went crazy to get us any way he could. Figure out how all the pieces fit. Drove that Jeanette crazy with his badgering. Tried to evoke sympathy for Betty’s murder from his fellow cops. No dice with had those guys so scared they were going to go bang bang that they clammed up, clammed up big time. A guy, a loose cannon, like Frank though had some resources, had a plan. One night when Lee, Lee Makin, Big Mike’s number one hit man was in the Carousel, drinking heavily he tried by design to provoke Frank, tried to have a shoot-out in the club. Frank was as cool as a cucumber from what some of the guys who were there said even when Lee mentioned something nasty about him and Betty doing some hard sex when Frank was out being a boy scout.        

“But there was a method to Frank’s madness because he didn’t give a fuck about what Lee was talking about but was trying to “impress” Lee’s girl, this hot blonde number, Debby, whom Lee had picked up in Vegas. He had heard that she was bored playing house with Lee and wanted a good time. So before Lee and she left she gave him “the look,” the come up and see me look that in the end did us in. Frank I guess although you wouldn’t have known it from his late wife Betty’s personality was a guy that gals liked lean on, to be around. Debby was no different and so Frank and Debby started an off-hand affair. Very quiet, so quiet that not even the ever suspicious Lee found out about it. That is what did us in though. Lee, who as you can imagine, when he was cool as a cucumber put the bang on somebody was a bloody frantic bastard when he was not working. One night when we were playing cards Lee asked Debby to bring the table some coffees. She made some smart remark like she wasn’t a donut shop waitress. That got Lee on his hind legs and he took out his gun and pistol whipped her about seven times. Debby was a bloody mess. I know. I had to take her to the hospital and use every bit of influence I had to keep it quiet.         

“Debby who like any attractive young women without means depended on her looks to survive in the jungle. The emergency room surgeon told me Debby would never look so good again and we left the hospital with her bandaged up like a mummy. I left her at her apartment and the minute I left she went to Frank’s room in the Excelsior Hotel downtown where he was staying since he still couldn’t stand to be in his old home and after telling him what Lee had done she started spilling everything. Everything about how Jimmy had been a “hit” job by Lee. About how Jeanette was blackmailing Mike (although he, Mike, would keep saying not for long) with stuff that Jimmy knew about the mob and its connections. About how Sal Rizzo had killed Lana Lane and his wife. Everything that she knew or thought she knew including that I was in Big Mike’s pocket. She was wrong on that score because the minute I became police commissioner I went to Big Mike and told him what he could and could not do as long as I got my percentage. I was the silent partner not the bagman in the set-up. Mike knew he needed me and that was that.

“With that knowledge in hand Frank foolhardily went up to Lee’s apartment and started shooting once he got in the door. Shot Lee in the shoulder then the leg and he crumbled.  Shot at me but missed. Shot at a couple of Big Mike’s cronies. He wasn’t in a taking prisoners mood. Then Big Mike came in with a gaggle of patrolmen and tried to subdue Frank. No good. Frank winged Mike. Then some Staties Frank had called knowing the score showed up and corralled all of us and that was that. When Frank went back to that room of his Debby had cleared out for parts unknown. Smart girl because if she had stayed around she would not have stayed around once Big Mike’s boys from out-of-town got to her. Big Mike and Lee drew the long stretch and I drew my twenty. End of story.            

“No, not quite. Never let an honest cop do anything but sit in his office all day. No, better-just shoot the bastard.