Saturday, February 20, 2021

The Lawless Years: The Dutch Schultz Story, Season One E 5 (1959)


The Roaring 20s (the ones from the 1900s, not the 2000s) come to life again in “The Lawless Years”. Gravel voiced James Gregory (Detective Frank Luger in the 1975 to 82 Barney Miller series) stars as the real life New York City cop Barney Ruditsky. 

 Ruditsky was a celebrity cop involved in dozens of high-profile cases and was credited with breaking up ‘Murder Incorporated’.

In this episode Dutch Schultz calls a board meeting of the top ten mobsters in the entire USA. From Cali, to Texas, to Florida, other infested places and cities, they arrive one by one in the Apple for the big parley. The meeting has been called because Schultz is in Dutch with Tom Dewey, New York's crusading special prosecutor. And if Dutch can convince the other mugs to agree, it's gonna be time for Tom Dewey to Hang Down his Head – to keep it from getting shot off by a couple of yeggs with Tommy Guns.

There's a good cast of familiar faces filling the ten chairs surrounding the meeting table and a nice moll named 'Molly', played by Chicago native Selete Cole (in her 80s as of this writing, 2021) who was featured in a number of movies in the 1960s including The Strangler, and The Invaders.

After he left the force, Officer Ruditsky went to Hollywood and worked on many projects including The Lawless Years, to which he was a technical advisor.



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