Al Capone (1959)

In 1919 Chicago, an ambitious young man (Rod Steiger) gets a job as a bodyguard for a mob boss (Joe De Santis). But it isn't long before he rises in the crime organization and eventually becoming the head of it. Directed by Richard Wilson (RAW WIND IN EDEN). A mixture of fiction and fact or more fiction than fact, the film gives us an edgy deglamorized portrait of mobster Al Capone. However, it's still no more impressive than an episode from THE UNTOUCHABLES which would debut some seven months after this movie came out. Rod Steiger gives one of his mannered scenery chewing performances that's so distracting that it takes you out of the picture. The real Capone got married in 1918 and stayed married until his death in 1947 yet the film gives him a fictional mistress (Fay Spain), the widow of a man he had killed. So much for accuracy. With Martin Balsam, Nehemiah Persoff, James Gregory, Robert Gist and Murvyn Vye.