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I'm not convinced that we're seeing a straight-forward crime story with THE GANGSTER. It's practically an opium dream. He goes to the beach in a suit and tie and Elisha Cook comes along with a cohort and Cook keeps yapping about how he's going to knock Sullivan down - the 12-inch disparity in height makes this laughable.

Shubunka, Jammey, Karty - these names are so precious. Note the stylized sets - the hotel just off the boardwalk that seems about six-feet deep, it stops at the boardwalk. Yet when he runs into the lobby, it's as big as The Waldorf.

Shubunka, the gangster with no gang. He apparently gets his mob from Rent-A-Hood and when he tries to recruit, the potential members all laugh at him. He's big time, but has no money to afford out-of-town hoods. Sheldon Leonard anticipates his every move, yet he needs some silly list of Shubunka's operations. If Shubunka has all of those businesses under his control, why is he in the ice cream parlor all day?

Belita thinks she's a dancer, Ireland has a system to beat the races but he's in dutch with the mob - apparently Shubunka doesn't have the gambling concession on the boardwalk so Ireland goes to him for the money he owes since his fool-proof plan didn't work. Harry Morgan thinks he a stud and Fifi D'Orsay thinks she's a Goddess. The only one who knows his place is Tamiroff and he's smart enough to be scared but too dumb to have cut his ties with Shubunka sooner.

Lest you think I'm being negative, I'm not. It all seems as if Sullivan is hallucinating about his life and all of the characters are exaggerated, including himself. It's fascinating to watch.

A most unusual episode as it's Louis Quinn as Roscoe who is front and center. Stuart Bailey is nowhere to be seen, the rest have some perfunctory involvement and even Byron Keith (earlier billed as Keith Byron) has a substitute batter in Richard X. Slattery playing a homicide detective. Not only does Roscoe get the scenes and lines, he even gets a girlfriend - and one who loves playing the ponies also.

We get to see a better look than usual at Roscoe's living quarters, a rooming house which seems a bit better than the conditions he lived-in in earlier seasons. Perhaps that was necessary so as to provide a place suitable for the female math teacher in the room next door, she uses a slide rule to pick long shots. We get to meet Roscoe's bookie, a barber named Little Ed who is played (albeit not billed) by screen vet Murray Alper who was usually cast as a cab or truck driver as in "The Maltese Falcon," "Strangers on a Train" and "Saboteur." Alan Baxter, one of the primary villains in "Saboteur" is also present as a mob boss who puts the pieces in motion to set the story here.

Roscoe gets in the middle of a turf war among some organized crime families strictly by being in the wrong place at the right time. Plot developments cause him to be stalked by hired killer James Best as well as by the family of one of Best's victims - they think Roscoe was the finger guy for the killing.

With so little involvement by the regulars other than Louis Quinn, one might almost think that the waters were being tested for a spin off. Whether that's so or not, it's still a highly enjoyable episode especially since it does veer from the norm but then, Strip did that fairly often.

The Jack Kelly episodes have always tended to get the short shrift but this is a great example of the stylistic differences between what went to Garner and what went to Kelly. Here, as often happens to a Maverick brother, we see Bart winning a nice pot in the opening, only to lose it.

This time it comes from the hotel safe being robbed so in order to generate some cash, Bart accepts the job of body guard to the bank president played by lovely Julie Adams. She just happens to be receiving threatening notes and is the target of an errant shot from a would-be assassin. Of course, she and Bart become an item, much to the dismay of the town Mayor.

It's a good yarn with several twists, well worth seeing to catch Bart as a lover and a fighter and to appreciate Mr. Kelly's talents in both departments.