The Boss

A political fixer rises to the top of a corrupt city and beyond.

This is a movie that cries out for a bigger budget than the cheapjack values the production gets. After all, Brady (Payne) is supposed to be swimming in money and influence as head of a political machine. So we need to see some of that gilded life in order to appreciate his final tumble from the heights. Instead, we get endless seedy conflabs with his cronies or his long-suffering wife. In that sense, the production more resembles a TV drama, say The Untouchables, than a feature length movie.

Also undercutting the effect is actor Payne's heavy-handed turn as the boss. Reviewer Plankton's correct, Payne's incessant growling is almost comical at times. It's an unfortunate one-note performance that over-does the toughness of a political fixer without the necessary slickness. Then too, writer Trumbo's script only hints at the social effects of Brady's corrupt regime without the dirty details—a rather strange outcome for a leftist writer, but then this is the Cold War 1950's.

On the plus side is obscure actress McGehee's sensitive turn as Brady's unloved wife. Her plain-faced predicament is handled with considerable feeling that, to me, is the film's only memorable part. Also actor Bishop does well as Brady's lawyer and confidant. Too bad his career was cut short by an untimely passing.

Perhaps I was expecting too much, but the movie came as an unfortunate disappointment. I'm just sorry a studio with resources like Warner's, along with a Sam Fuller, didn't get the material first.

In trying to jumpstart itself, this movie is somewhat heavy handed at the beginning, taking one notably big and questionable dramatic risk, but gains power slowly and turns into something of a monumental mini-epic with John Payne's changes of hair coloring registering his slow and merciless journey toward a godless end...what a performance, but it's not as good as Gloria McGehee's as the unwanted wife Lorry - which is about as good as you'll ever see from an actress on screen, period. Also great is Robin Morse as Johnny the Organization Man, a wonderful low key performance...where has this movie been all our lives? It's powerful, at times difficult to watch, brutal, and worth the ride.

The Boss (1956)

This is kind of a great movie, a surprise to me, and with some stunning performances, great photography, and a sterling script (thanks to Dalton Trumbo). See it.

While the acting and visuals are going to get you immediately, the script will sneak up on you if you are paying attention. This is a movie begging to play with clichés, and it avoids them. Don't get me wrong, a mob boss in a small city is going to play tough and have cronies and the like. It's a good crime movie, for sure, and believable enough.

But there is, for example, no femme fatale (this is probably not a noir, strictly speaking, even if the dark crime mood makes you think so, but there are lots of noir characters and attitudes). The movie begins a bit off-kilter, I think, but if you think of it as a set-up for what a normal life would have been for the main character, it's necessary.

You see, Matt Brady (played brilliantly by John Payne) is a returning soldier with hopes of marriage as he marches in the opening parade. But then he gets drunk that first night home and things go very south. In another turn (not explained much) he starts rising up as a political and crime figure, becoming the big cheese.

This sounds like a Cagney or Robinson movie from the early 1930s, I suppose, and this movie is set in the 1920s for the most part, as well. But it has a different feel to it, and if you like those kinds of movies you need to give this a try. In addition to a friendly sidekick and his wife, who are regular sorts, there is a whole array of criminal types played well, with flavor but not exaggeration.

Why isn't this more well known? One reason is distribution--the only copy that I know of is a decent visual transfer with terrible sound (on Netflix). If Criterion took this up (or anyone, but I don't think a big studio owns it), it would glisten and be a late great example of its type, coming in the mid-50s as this kind of film was seeing its last days.

Payne, by the way, might be thought of as underrated--he certainly pours it on here, emotionally--and most of the movies I've seen him in he's a compelling type ("Kansas City Confidential" and "99 River Street") though he's a different and more boring guy in "Miracle on 34th Street." Here, the strong and silent type (Gary Cooper style) doesn't get carried too far. He bursts out at times, and has good physical energy on the screen. He might not be handsome enough for Hollywood, but that's a matter of taste, and tastes change.

Based on the story of Boss Tom Pendergast of Kansas City who ruled the roost there succeeding brother Jim from World War I until the outbreak of World War II, John Payne delivers a riveting portrayal of a political boss back in the day when these guys were at their heights running our nation's cities. Mostly, but not all were Democrats who rounded up and registered the foreign ethnic populations and got them to vote for the party slate. In the days before social welfare became a responsibility of government, these bosses while they enriched themselves also fed a lot of hungry people, giving them food and fuel for a winter. Tom Pendergast was no exception there.

When talking about some of the facts of the Pendergast machine operation, the screenplay by Dalton Trumbo under the pseudonym Ben L. Parry sticks pretty close to the facts. In fact Pendergast did do the things described in the film to a country club that high hatted him. The romantic angle however of Payne being in love with Doe Avedon who married best friend William Bishop and then marrying plain Jane Gloria McGehee in a moment of drunken weakness is a complete fabrication. In fact Pendergast's private life as far as we know was a model of probity and he and his wife raised several children, unlike here where he's shown to be a man alone even keeping his wife at room's length away.

The character of Joe Flynn, later Captain Binghamton on McHale's Navy is Harry Truman who was a county judge (commissioner) for Jackson County, Missouri and later United States Senator. Truman himself was honest, but he also winked and nodded at the corruption of others and some of the cronies he put into office as president embarrassed him no end.

Ward Boss Roy Roberts, Payne's brother is James Pendergast and it is true he ran a good chunk of Kansas City from his saloon. It's also quite true that Pendergast did make a deal with organized crime there who did open speakeasies in Kansas City like every place else in the USA. The famous Kansas City massacre did have a bad effect on his public image although not as immediately influential in bringing him down as shown in The Boss.

The Boss is a no frills uncompromising look at the soft underbelly of corruption in America back in the day. It's a well acted drama with John Payne in one of his best dramatic performances.

Dalton Trumbo, who scripted this picture pseudonymously, was so anxious to make his political and sociological points that he (nearly) let the story and characters get away from him. The plot moves, not naturally or logically, but in order to serve the author's purposes. Characters who have been steadfast and dependable, whatever their motives, betray those close to them. The fulfillment of one's ambition requires unprincipled, corrupt behavior, with only indifference or contempt for those who are hurt in the process. The sole semblance of loyalty is found among criminals. Trumbo's viewpoint clearly grows out of his personal experiences, and distorts what might have been a highly effective portrayal of a powerful man who lost more than he gained. The character of Matt Brady is a given: arrogant, thoughtless, insensitive, impetuous. But why? As much as these characteristics help to move the story where the script wants it to go, we are offered no insight into the main character's psyche, and little of significance concerning his background. And his drunken insistence that he and the woman of the streets he picks up are to become man and wife that very night (and thereby provide another key element for the plot) is - to say the least - a bit hard to take. Yet with it all, this film has more than a few effective moments. Those, and the substantial theme being presented, will leave the viewer with much to ponder.