FINGER MAN
(Allied
Artists Pictures, 1955)
Tagline
“I
had a choice. Life in prison, or the very good chance of a bullet in the head.”
Just the Facts
Dismissed
upon its release by The New York Times
as “another tired little crime melodrama,” and virtually forgotten today, this
blunt excursion into crime and punishment wears its B-movie pedigree with
pride. Finger Man is an early example
of the “one man against the mob” sub-genre, depicting a pitiless world in which
violence is likely to be emotional as well as physical, and inwardly as well as
outwardly directed. It may not be the most flamboyant gangster film of the
fifties, but its harsh narrative and compellingly flawed characters make it one
of the most satisfying.
It’s
the day before Christmas, and crime partners Casey Martin (Frank Lovejoy) and Lefty
Stern (Lewis Charles) await on a stretch of country road their pre-dawn present—a
ripe-for-hijacking truck loaded with booze. No sweat for these pros: Casey
stops the truck at gunpoint, Lefty pistol-whips the driver unconscious. But Casey,
just released from prison, is rusty and sloppy. He not only lets the driver see
his face, he also discards an empty pack of cigarettes smeared with his
fingerprints. Sure enough, the law comes calling later in the day as he unwinds
at a local piano bar. Not regular law, but Treasury Department agents, who haul
Casey downtown to meet their boss, a hardcase named Burns. Casey feigns
innocence, but Burns produces the concussed truck driver to make a positive ID,
and the incriminating cigarette pack—the aptly named Pickerel brand, as Casey
is well and truly hooked. A three-time loser, he now faces the rest of his days
behind bars.
But
Burns dangles an out, albeit a dangerous and, from an underworld perspective,
dishonorable one: If Casey agrees to infiltrate the bootlegging/gambling/prostitution
syndicate run by Dutch Becker (Forrest Tucker) and uncover evidence that will
put the mobster away, he can walk—assuming he doesn’t get killed in the process.
Turning stool pigeon is a bitter pill for Casey to swallow, but Burns has him
boxed in. Casey finds additional motivation when he learns that his sister Lucille,
whom he hasn’t seen in years, used to turn tricks for Dutch until the customers
stopped buying her wares. Kicked to the curb by the callous crime boss, she’s
become a suicidal alcoholic saddled with an illegitimate young daughter she is
unable to care for. Personal animus is now added to Casey’s sense of self-preservation.
Leveraging his standing in the underworld, Casey schemes an introduction to Dutch through another former syndicate prostitute, Lefty’s girlfriend Gladys Baker (Peggie Castle). Casey plays it cagey with the mobster, copping an attitude and playing hard to get. Dutch is intrigued by Casey’s reputation as a talented independent, but wary of the sizeable chip on his shoulder. He especially doesn’t approve of Casey’s violent antipathy towards Lou Terpe (Timothy Carey), Dutch’s bodyguard-cum-torpedo with whom Casey once shared a prison cell. Says Dutch, “Spirit I like. Trouble I don’t like. If you’re gonna work for me there’s one thing you gotta learn. There’s no percentage in us fighting among ourselves….I’m a very mild man, Casey. Violence I don’t like, unless it’s necessary.”
Violence,
of course, is necessary to deal with
internal and external threats to the syndicate. Whether it’s a greedy
prostitute cutting into the take or an undercover cop caught snooping, Dutch’s
retribution—meted out by Terpe and fellow payroll killers Carlos and Walters—is
swift and merciless. Casey takes note as he worms his way into Dutch’s
confidence, treading a fine line between antagonizing Terpe at every
opportunity and making a show of fealty to his new employer.
At the same time, he lets himself become emotionally involved with Gladys; their previously platonic friendship has always held a “what if” sexual undertone. Each recognizes in the other a kindred spirit, Casey remarking: “You never got a break, I never asked for one.” Circumstances cast a pall over their affair, however, and neither one is particularly optimistic about the future. Their instincts prove correct, for both, in different ways, will pay dearly for challenging Dutch’s dark empire.
Matters
come to a head when Casey sets up a bogus bootleg deal for Dutch, wearing a
wire for the treasury boys in hopes the mobster will give himself away. But
Dutch knows a rat when he smells one. Casey’s increasingly suspicious behavior,
plus Terpe’s sudden disappearance, convince Dutch that something’s rotten in
the state of Crimedom, and out come everyone’s guns in a blazing finale. When
the smoke clears, Casey has fulfilled his mandate, but he’ll be playing “Blue
Christmas” next time he sits down at the piano.
Summary Judgment
Although
informing is the narrative fulcrum of Finger
Man, it doesn’t dwell overtly on issues of guilt and betrayal, unlike, say,
On the Waterfront (1954), in which
the stool pigeon thematic was at the heart of the film. Casey internalizes rather
than externalizes whatever moral conflict rages in his heart of darkness. But he
isn’t the only transgressor against an underworld code. Dutch is also revealed
as a serial backstabber. He reminds his underlings that he requires
complete honesty and loyalty, yet he doesn’t hesitate to discard those who have
outlived their usefulness to him—like Casey’s sister. “I own men and women,
Casey,” he says at one point. “All over the country, I own ’em. Some of ’em
like to gamble, some of them like to drink, but I own ’em, body and soul.”
However,
a contrast of sorts is drawn between
the two. Dutch’s betrayals are professional, not personal. He acts simply from
an objective need to ensure the syndicate’s survival. Casey is also a
pragmatist, but he’s much more emotional in that he allows personal revenge to
become his prime motivation to take Dutch down. What’s interesting is that Casey’s
ostensibly more humane impetus doesn’t position him within the narrative as a
more sympathetic figure than the mobster. Casey may tell himself that he’s
acting on behalf of his sister and his gal, yet he neglected the former when
she was losing her battle with the bottle, and he selfishly takes Gladys’
affections for granted. His sexism is pronounced and off-putting, even by
mid-fifties standards. It’s a sign of Gladys’ resigned cynicism and despair
that she puts up with Casey’s insensitive treatment. A case could be made that
Dutch—who genuinely likes Casey and who can
be loyal in his own fashion—is more deserving of empathy, if not admiration.
Man in the middle: Dutch’s boys give Casey a beat down. |
While there’s nothing expressionistic about Schuster’s use of the camera, his visual conceptions often prove effective, as when he deftly contrasts and links two crucial scenes that find Casey the reluctant center of attention. The first occurs during his briefing at the Treasury Department, where he’s surrounded by a group of taciturn lawmen in Burns’ office. It’s a cordial meeting, but the way Schuster groups the men around Casey in the tight, constricted space lends the scene an uneasy undertone, and speaks to the separation between those who uphold the law and those who break it. This scene foreshadows one later in the film when Casey meets Dutch at the mob’s warehouse. Once again, he finds himself encircled by a handful of unsmiling men, only this time they’re pointing guns at him, a reflection of Dutch’s encroaching mistrust. The gulf this time is between those who uphold the code of the underworld and those who would transgress it. Schuster’s subtle staging underscores the fact that Casey isn’t welcome among either the good guys or the bad guys.
No sooner has Candy exited than a new B-girl wannabe is ushered into Dutch’s presence, introduced as Mary Smith from Akron, Ohio and claiming to be 21. Dutch clearly understands that she’s much younger, but he’s gentle and polite with the nervous girl as he openly sizes up her moneymaking attributes. Mary is excited by the prospect of what she imagines to be a glamorous, big city lifestyle, but probably doesn’t realize the full implications of this particular career path, or the possibility that she may one day end up in a situation similar to Candy’s. It’s a beautifully understated scene that chillingly delineates the sexual commodification of women, and also hints at the codependency that can exist between exploiter and exploited.
Finger Man is filled with such nuanced yet revealing vignettes, as when Gladys
confesses her feelings for Casey while sitting next to him in his local bar as
he plays piano for the indifferent patrons. (“Paderewski” one wag derisively
dubs him.) As they talk, “Oh, Come All Ye Faithful” suddenly blares from the
jukebox, drowning out Casey’s tune. Gladys watches, perplexed, as Casey angrily
unplugs the machine and storms out of the bar. Cleary unsettled by this reveal
of his psyche, she plays a few notes of the same Christmas carol before swiping
the keys discordantly as the scene fades out. From her expression it’s obvious
she long ago abandoned dreams of Prince Charming.
Schuster
stages the savage with equal aplomb. When the treasury agent tailing Casey
calls in his report from the phone booth in Dutch’s club, he doesn’t realize
Carlos is listening on a party line a short distance away. Dutch is instantly
informed and instantly issues orders. In the very next shot we see Dutch’s
goons dragging the bruised and bloody fed down a dark street, then throwing him
under the wheels of an oncoming truck. Schuster cuts to a POV shot to emphasize
the visceral effect of the four-wheeled juggernaut without showing any of the
gore, letting viewers conjure the horrific outcome.
While Finger Man belongs to the less-is-more school of screen mayhem, the threat of violence is ever present in its settings and characters. The focus is clearly on the latter—how they size each other up, play their angles, run their schemes, dole out punishment, receive comeuppance. That’s as it should be, since it’s the performances that really distinguish this film. Frank Lovejoy, his name notwithstanding, made a career of playing hard-boiled characters, but he was never harder or more unlikeable than as the porcupine-prickly Casey—surly, sensitive to criticism and liable to fly off the handle at the slightest provocation, real or imagined. His antipathy to Terpe is almost psychotic. Even with Gladys, he’s tender one moment, sociopathically domineering the next. Lovejoy invests Casey with just enough humanity to keep the audience more or less on his side, but it’s a close call.
As
usual, it’s the bad guys who flash the most charisma. Forrest Tucker’s imposing
build and looks made him a natural for playing heavies, but he was a more
sophisticated actor than he was generally given credit for. He plays Dutch soft-spokenly while leaving no doubt of his essentially ruthless nature. There
are more baroque mob bosses in fifties films, but few as intimidating. He was
similarly impressive in another underworld film Hoodlum Empire (1952), but more frequently appeared in westerns. Intriguingly,
Tucker shared the same name as a notorious real-life criminal and escape artist
who was active during the actor’s lifetime. Art imitating life, or vice-versa?
Also
making his presence felt is Timothy Carey, whose persona was so outsize and outré
it not only upstaged fellow actors, but entire films. Even when Carey
is doing nothing, his unsettling facial tics, death’s head grimace and strangled
utterance of even innocuous lines communicate otherworldly malevolence. As Lou Terpe (the very name evokes something rotten), he’s Dutch’s
attack dog—snarling at everyone around him, pawing at women, his bite always
ready to back up his bark. No wonder Dutch keeps him on a short leash. He even
whimpers like a dog when Casey nearly beats him to death. But even a rabid dog
that has to be put down engenders more sympathy. We never see Terpe interact
with his fellow hoodlums; he’s a pariah even within his peer group. Schuster
underlines this in a nightclub scene by isolating Terpe at a table apart from
Dutch and his entourage. Carey’s feral performance in this film caught the
attention of the up-and-coming Stanley Kubrick, who created another memorably
twisted role for the actor in The Killing
(1956).
Other
standouts include Evelyn Eaton as Casey’s soused sister, who evokes in a couple
of brief scenes a state of complete moral, physical and emotional collapse. And
then there is B-movie bad girl Peggie Castle—unfairly dubbed “the poor man’s
Claire Trevor”—who had few peers at playing sexually dangerous women who were
usually killed off before the final reel, as in I, the Jury (1953) and 99
River Street (1953). Gladys Baker is arguably her richest incarnation of
this luckless noir trope. She’s no femme fatale, just an unsentimental romantic
who’s been around the block enough times to realize that harboring dreams of a
happy ending is a luxury she can’t afford. Like most of the film’s luckless
ones, she eventually finds herself trapped in the shadows where the bad things
run wild.
Fingering the Fifties
•
Flattops and fedoras.
•
Casey reads Modern Detective magazine
during a clandestine meet with a treasury agent.
•
Bar patrons getting pickled at midday.
Quotable
CASEY
MARTIN: “I had that all-gone feeling right in the middle of my stomach. The
feeling that the roof had caved in and there wasn’t much use in trying to dig
my way out.”
AGENT
JOHNNY COOPER: “You’re getting a break, Casey. Don’t throw it away.”
CASEY
MARTIN: “You call getting myself killed getting a break?”
CASEY
MARTIN: “I met Dutch—seemed to like me.”
AGENT
JOHNNY COOPER: “Make him love you.”
LUCILLE
MARTIN: “I used to be the prettiest girl ever worked for Dutch. I used to be
proud. Now I got no pride.”
DUTCH
BECKER [speaking of Casey]: “You know him, Lou?”
LOU
TERPE: “Yeah. I saw him every day for four years in Atlanta…I don’t like him.”
DUTCH
BECKER: “You don’t like nobody.”
LOU
TERPE: “Nobody.”
GLADYS
BAKER: “You’re two people, aren’t you, Casey?”
CASEY
MARTIN: “Who isn’t?”
Credits
Director:
Harold D. Schuster; screenplay: Warren Douglas; producer: Lindsley Parsons;
cinematography: William A. Sickner; editing: Maurice Wright; music: Paul Dunlap
Cast:
Frank
Lovejoy (Casey Martin); Forrest Tucker (Dutch Becker); Peggie Castle (Gladys
Baker); Timothy Carey (Lou Terpe); John Cliff (Johnny Cooper); William F.
Leicester (Jim Rogers); Glen Gordon (Carlos Armor); John Close (Walters); Hugh
Sanders (Burns); Evelyn Eaton (Lucille Martin); Charles Maxwell (Fred Amory);
Lewis Charles (Lefty Stern)