Cold Fusion Video Reviews

• Written, produced and directed by Max Allan Collins
• Starring
  • Michael Cornelison

Despite the name of the format, a one-man play can be more different from a standard play than a play is from a motion picture. In a one-man play, there can be no pretense that the fourth wall doesn’t exist; the performer has to interact with the audience, because there is no one else. And because the performer largely has to recount events, rather than enact them, a one-man play is an exercise in in-character storytelling. That’s not a liability; storytelling is a powerful but under-appreciated discipline these days, outside of stand-up comedy (and even there, it has faded since the days of, say, Bill Cosby’s prime). But put a good storyteller in front of people with a good story to tell, and his listeners can be as enraptured as by any movie or novel.

“A good Prohibition Agent has to know what he’s up against. *hic*”

Completing the “one-man play/play/movie” triangle, Eliot Ness: An Untouchable Life is the filmed version of a one-man play written and directed by Max Allan Collins, an undisputed master of the crime fiction genre. Obviously, this play covers the life of Eliot Ness, not just his time as the head of the “Untouchables,” but through his long career, ending with his death by heart attack. So the “good story to tell” angle is covered. And playing Ness is Michael Cornelison, an avuncular man who recounts the high points of “his” life from a vantage point near the end, when all of the hoopla is done. Cornelison is a consummate performer; despite the fact that the movie is nothing but him talking, gesturing, moving around the abbreviated sets and occasionally handling props, he is a riveting attraction for the eyes and ears.

“And? What’s missing here?”

I have to confess that I’m no expert on Prohibition-era organized crime. Gangsters and Mafiosos have never really appealed no me. So I come to this movie with little other than a knowledge of some names and terms: Capone, Ness, Prohibition, Untouchables. I can’t vouch for the factual accuracy of anything in the script (though it squares in general outlines to Ness’ Wikipedia entry), I’ll trust Max Allan Collins to get it right where it matters, and keep the departures from known facts in the realms of possibility. And anyway, autobiography (which is what we have here, essentially — a fictionalized autobiography) holds to different standards than third-person biography; when a narrative comes from the mouth of the one who lived it, you expect that narrative to be tailored to that person’s/character’s perceptions and self-image, with the kind of unconscious spin that everyone puts on their life history to give it structure and meaning — to change our memories into a story, as it were. And this is a story of Eliot Ness; as presented here, it’s Eliot Ness’ story of Eliot Ness.

“I kinda wish they had included a bathroom in this three-room set.”

So what do we see here? Four distinct sections of a stage set: A prosaic kitchen, a period office, a section of brick-lined alley in which it’s always night, and a simple table and chairs against a shadowy black background, allowing it to be anywhere. Moving between these, Ness tells the story of his life, growing up an immigrant baker’s son, getting a degree in business, and moving into law enforcement at the urging of his brother-in-law. When President Hoover decided to use the pressure of the Federal Government to crack down on Al Capone, the kingpin of Prohibition-era vice, that pressure trickled down to twenty-three-year-old Ness, who knew the hurdles he’d have to leap in corruption-riddled Chicago just to be on an even playing field with the gangsters. His hand-picked band of less than a dozen younger men with previous police or military experience with no families or other attachments were as near to impervious to corruption as possible, earning them the nickname “the Untouchables.” Through constant badgering at Al Capone’s heels, they were finally instrumental — along with the IRS task force operating in tandem — in putting Capone away for almost a dozen years. Ness was twenty-nine.

“I’d rather have a barrel in front of me than a frontal… Wait, let me start again.”

Most versions of Ness’ story end with Prohibition on the ropes and the most ruthless crime lord in Chicago behind bars. But that was just a single episode. Eliot Ness eventually went to become the Safety Director (head of both police and fire directors) in Cleveland, at the time a notoriously brutal city, under an anti-corruption mayor. If anything, Ness became more visible there, inviting the press along as he personally kicked in doors behind which various mob rackets were festering. He undertook the investigation of what later became tagged as America’s first serial killings, although political machinations kept him from putting the guilty party where he belonged.

This is very obviously a good story, but it could easily become dry and caricatured if there weren’t a human element to Ness. As he was putting together his Untouchables, he was also courting his brother-in-law’s secretary Edna , and after a long engagement punctuated by death threats and hit attempts, they married. But Ness was always committed to his hands-on gang-busting, even in Cleveland; and their attempts to start a family never bore fruit. That marriage fell apart. So, too, did his second marriage, for many of the same reasons. In rendering himself untouchable to the mob, did he also become untouchable in his personal affairs?

“That’s ‘Thomas gun’ to you, punk.”

His major downfall, too, throws another light in his untouchability. In Cleveland, during the mayor’s second term, he was involved in a traffic accident after a night of social drinking. (As he says at the start of the movie, he always thought Prohibition was a stupid law, and he certainly wasn’t above a nip in moderation.) As he tells it here, the reporting officer’s captain was under investigation by Ness for graft, and publicized the accident as retaliation. The famous Prohibition gangbuster, involved in an alcohol-related accident? The irony was just too great. Ness resigned; he hadn’t proved entirely untouchable after all.

All of this, told in just four small blocks of stage, with one voice carrying it all. One would think that it couldn’t help but get tedious, with Ness relating experience after experience, until one realizes that Ness isn’t just telling stories; Ness is the story. The man who made the difference, imperfect though he was, is what makes the stories interesting, not vice versa. The movie begins by recounting his childhood, practically back to his birth; it ends, as it must, with his death. In between, Cornelison paints such a vivid picture from Collins’ script that it’s difficult to remember after the fact that there was only one man on stage. It’s an admirable example of portraying a whole life as a single gripping story.

Some Notable Totables:

• body count: 1
• breasts: 0
• explosions: 0
• ominous thunderstorms: 0
• actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 0