The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond

Saturday is traditionally "Take Out the Trash" day...

The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond (Budd Boetticher, 1960) It sucks that the first film I see of director Budd Boetticher's it's a film he didn't particularly like the results of. He got to do what he intended with the limited budget of a B movie, but casting left a bit to be desired. 

Boetticher was hoping to cast a young Robert Evans for the role of Diamond, but Evans, after toiling in the acting field for awhile with only a few roles to his credit, decided to parlay his fortune from selling ladies' apparel into the movie-producing field and this low-budget gangster movie wasn't something to coax him back.

It might have had something to do with the character. Evans had played Irving Thalberg and the titular Fiend Who Walked the West, but Jack "Legs" Diamond was a small-time bootlegger, thief, and protection racketeer, who was perfectly willing to con and throw over anybody in his desire to rise through the ranks of gangster-hoods. 

Boetticher has Diamond (Ray Danton) and his brother Eddie (Warren Oates!) arrive in The Big Apple with intents to do some petty thievery, but witnessing a botched jewel-heist with the perp gets popped, Diamond scans the building, notices a rooftop entrance and starts to divine a plan. He picks up a dance-hall girl (Karen Steele), who rebuffs him because she's going to be in a dance-competition that night. He waits outside her flat for her partner and fractures his foot, then takes his place. The two win the competition—by Diamond setting the dress of the better couple's female half on fire—and go out for a celebratory movie.

Diamond ditches the girl in the theater for a stretch, making his way to the gents' and going out the window to second-story the jewelry store, dropping in from the roof. He nearly gets away with it, but he's ultimately convicted of the crime and goes to prison, where he spends his time planning his next step—by robbing the type of people who wouldn't call the police, that being gangsters. He sets his sights on Arnold Rothstein (Robert Lowery), who refuses to see such a small-fry as Diamond.

But, Diamond gets his attention by finding out Rothstein's personal account and charging $4,000 worth of goods to it. Diamond is hauled before Rothstein, who'd just as soon shoot him as make him his bodyguard, but Diamond gets a stay of execution when a hood-buddy of the big man takes a liking to Diamond, admiring his chutzpah, and signing him on as his hired gun. Doesn't go too well, though. The mobster and Diamond get gunned down, with Diamond somehow surviving and beginning to think that he can't be killed and becomes emboldened to climb higher.

Rothstein does hire Diamond for bodyguard duty—as he seems to be so successful at it (!) and Diamond uses the opportunity to also become his bag-man, as well, with a particularly rough way of collecting protection money for his boss. He sleeps with whichever moll can get him information, with the ultimate aim of charging the gang-bosses for his protection, something that doesn't go over to well among the thugs.

Boetticher's movie is bare-bones as far as budget, but he manages to keep the 20's setting fairly believable—Warner Brothers was the studio bankrolling it and they had a surplus of get-ups, gats, and jalopies, but the film has the thin veneer of Desilu's "The Untouchables" TV program all over it. something it has in kin with the Arnold Rothstein movie King of the Roaring 20's, made around the same period...about the same period. But, Diamond is such a louse in every way to everybody that Danton's smug demeanor only makes you like the creep less. The best movie villains have a style and swagger that, at least, can be entertaining (think Cagney), but Danton has none of it. Oh, he can wear the clothes...but so can a mannequin. The movie's just a little too set-bound, and set-lit to be very interesting, although Boetticher does try his damnedest.  It's the star that makes it such a stiff.