1/19/2024 0 Comments Robert stack haircutThe camera cranes back revealing Ness alone with Barber’s body as Fortunato howls at him from the background: “You got no heart. As Barber dies, Ness stands and drapes his jacket over him. Fortunato and his men have been ambushed by Barber, leaving the two of them badly wounded. In both cases, the mobsters went down, but their syndicates survived.ĭespite the miscues, the ending is nevertheless compellingly filmed. Ness lost big in The Noise Of Death and failed to win his court case in The Dutch Schultz Story, where Luciano rose to take over. In the series final year, it was widely advertised that Ness would lose a few cases for the first time, when actually this episode dealt with that even if somewhat after the fact. Ness has been played for a fool as blackmail against Fortunato, through and through. Ness finally realizes just how twisted his old friend is when he meets Barber’s wife. This is where the hour falters, sputtering its provoking premise into the aftermath of Barber and Chickie’s abusive relationship though Madlyn Rhue tries her best. When Barber vanishes in the latter half of the episode, we’re left with his girlfriend/secretary Chickie, as she suffers from a traumatic brain injury following an assassination attempt meant for Barber. Now, the not so positives: Ness spends most of the time wandering about, exerting a great deal of his otherwise valuable federal time. This great chemistry will catch ablaze again when Persoff and Stack face each other down in The Waxey Gordon Story in the Second Season. Johnny Fortunato is one of the more brazen and eloquent antagonists that Ness squares off against, flaunting his jury acquittal and dressing Ness down left and right. “You’re spoiling a beautiful friendship and a ten-dollar tie,” he snarls as Ness nearly strangles him. Fortunato marches triumphantly off, his henchmen in tow.Īnother highlight is Nehemiah Persoff, who gets to the chance to chew Maddow’s hard-boiled dialogue left and right. The fighter goes down for the count on the next punch. Fortunato immediately orders a bag of peanuts from the vendor, dumps them onto the floor and pops the bag as a signal to his boy to throw the fight. Fortunato arrives in the 8th round along with his entourage. The episode’s fight scenes offer a great piece of theater, too. Throughout the episode, we see Stack delighted, sensitive, outraged, confused and sensitive – likely the greatest range of emotions Stack will play in a single episode, let alone the entire series. It’s possible that “Head of Fire” is a reference to Ness and Barber is his “Feet of Clay.”įirst the positives: This episode is a great opportunity to spend virtually the entire time with Robert Stack, whose Eliot Ness is positively beaming at the prospect of seeing Frank Barber within the first five minutes. “Feet of Clay” refers to a character flaw or weakness in an otherwise laudable character or leader. This image’s head was of fine gold, his breast and his arms of silver, his belly and his thighs of brass, His legs of iron, his feet part of iron and part of clay.” This great image, whose brightness was excellent, stood before thee and the form thereof was terrible. “Thou, O king, sawest, and behold a great image. “Feet of Clay” is a quote from the Book of Daniel: The Untouchables did not often find itself making literary references, let alone ones to the Old Testament, but credit to Ben Maddow for following up his most excellent Noise of Death with an attempt to probe Ness’ psyche by mixing him in with a manipulative old friend. (This author’s father and he agreed nearly 99% of the time as to what amounted to a quality Untouchables episode, but approach this installment from opposing viewpoints.) Head of Fire – Feet of Clay is an intriguing if not flawed and occasionally ponderous experiment in humanizing Eliot Ness.
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