The Mob (1951)

The Mob is a 1951 American film noir crime-thriller produced by Columbia Pictures, directed by Robert Parrish, and starring Broderick Crawford. The screenplay, which was written by William Bowers, is based on the novel Waterfront by Ferguson Findley.

Director – Robert Parrish

Writers – William Bowers (screen play), Ferguson Findley (based on a story by)

Cast –
Broderick Crawford as Johnny Damico
Betty Buehler as Mary Kiernan
Richard Kiley as Thomas “Tom” Clancy
Otto Hulett as Police Lt. Banks
Matt Crowley as Smoothie
Neville Brand as Gunner
Ernest Borgnine as Joe Castro
Walter Klavun as Police Sgt. Bennion
Frank DeKova as Culio
Lynn Baggett as Peggy, Tom Clancy’s wife
Jean Alexander as Doris, Clancy’s sister
Ralph Dumke as Police Commissioner
John Marley as Tony
Charles Bronson as Jack, a Longshoreman (uncredited)

Watch “The Mob” (1951)

Plot

Johnny Damico, a detective going home on a rainy night, finds himself just a few feet from a shooting on a dark street. The gunman claims to be a detective from another precinct, flashing a real badge, and then slipping away. Damico discovers that the victim of the shooting was a witness who was to have appeared before a grand jury investigating waterfront crime, and that the same man who shot him also murdered the chief investigator on the case just a few hours earlier (which is where the badge came from). Damico could lose his job, but instead he is given the chance to redeem himself by the police commissioner and district attorney.

The authorities then make plans to fly Damico to New Orleans with instructions to work his way “back up”, all undercover, as a New Orleans tough-guy named Tim Flynn. Once he returns home by cargo ship, Johnny has the assigned task to discover there the true identity of the head of the waterfront racketeers. All that is known about the mysterious mob boss is that his name is “Blackie” Clegg. The city in which all the action takes place is unspecified, but it is “up” relative to New Orleans, though palm trees are shown. Upon his return, while still under cover, “Flynn” gets a job locally as a longshoreman and quickly makes connections to the mob’s network of enforcers as well as to crews of surrounding dockworkers. He is befriended by Tom Clancy, a fellow longshoreman who lives at the same hotel. There the two frequently meet after work for drinks, which are invariably served to them by a bartender nicknamed “Smoothie”.

Damico, still posing as Flynn, now manages to hook up with union thug Joe Castro, who tries to frame Damico for murder by having his strong-arm goon Gunner temporarily seize the undercover cop’s own pistol to shoot and kill a potential stoolie, Culio. Castro then has Gunner return the pistol to Damico, who the next day is arrested for the murder by a crooked police sergeant named Bennion, although Police Lt. Banks manages to spring him.

After following one blind alley involving a federal agent—the man he knows as Tom Clancy—Damico is given a tip by the bartender Smoothie, who offers to drive Damico to meet the long-sought Blackie. Once the two men are at the mob boss’s office of operations, Damico is shocked when Smoothie reveals that he is actually Blackie. A gunfight ensues, Blackie is wounded but escapes, and goes to a nearby hospital, where, under a new identity, he is admitted to have his wound treated. Damico’s fiance Mary, whom the mob had kidnapped earlier and had injured while interrogating her at Blackie’s office, is taken to the same hospital. When Damico later visits her, the recovering Blackie confronts the couple in Mary’s hospital room. He pulls out a pistol from his hospital robe’s pocket. Just as he is preparing to kill the couple, a pair of police snipers in a nearby building fatally shoot Blackie as a stands near the hospital room’s window.