The Untouchables
 In the 1930s, gangsters and G-Men alike were busy dealing with the
fallout of Prohibition. Real-life government agent Eliot Ness put Al
Capone in jail for tax evasion, and because he and his team of law
enforcers couldn't be bribed (and back then, practically everyone had
their price), they were nicknamed "The Untouchables".
In real life, Ness and his men went their separate ways after
Capone's arrest, but the series had them stay together well into the
40's, going gun to gun against nearly every famous gangster of the time,
with some Nazis and presidential assassins thrown in for good measure.
Desilu, the production company owned by Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz,
produced the two-hour TV Untouchables movie that started it all -
based on the 1947 novel co-written by Ness.
It had a course, documentary feel to it, and the voice-over drone,
which added a sense of reality to the proceedings, came courtesy of
Walter Winchell, the ubiquitous voice of 30s and 40s era newsreels (and
who, incidentally, had actually pointed a Communist-witch hunter finger
at none other than Lucille Ball a few years prior).
The TV movie was
such a success that years later, it was even released as a movie in the
cinemas.
Several networks vied for the rights to make an Untouchables
series, but ABC won the bidding war and insisted that each episode be as
action-packed as the pilot.
 By the end of the second season, The
Untouchables was a ratings hit, and the producers claimed that
real-life shady sorts called in with kudos and even suggestions for
story ideas. But unfortunately, Ness and the gang had also attracted
plenty of controversy.
In the show, Eliot Ness' most frequent enemy was Frank Nitti, Al
Capone's right-hand man and the leader of Capone's empire after Ness
sent the big man to the pokey.
And when it wasn't Nitti raising hell,
you can bet it was some other Italian-American - which left Italian
civic groups up in arms about their biased portrayal.
The FBI was unhappy because the show insinuated that it was Ness who
arrested crooks like George 'Bugsy' Moran and Ma Barker, when it was
actually the Agency.
Such pressure eventually forced ABC to create
additional FBI characters to more accurately portray the people involved
in the show's historically-based cases.
The real Capone family was unhappy that the show was making money
from Al's name and brought a million-dollar lawsuit against producer
Desi Arnaz for using the Capone likeness for profit. This was
particularly upsetting for Arnaz who had been a classmate and friend of
Al Capone's son.
Desi Arnaz, the network, and the chairman of the Italian-American
League to Combat Defamation made peace with one another and agreed that
no more Italian surnames would be used for the bad guys.
 In the show's
last years, its violence was toned down substantially, and gangsters of
various non-Italian ethnicities popped up - there was even a Russian
villain named Joe Vodka.
But the show wasn't the same anymore, and the very things that
angered special interest groups were the things that made it a naughty
viewing pleasure.
Now on Tuesday nights, watchers were starting to skip
the Chicago crime scene altogether, and tune into Jack Benny or The
Price is Right.
Though a good crime-busting premise will sometimes take a breather,
it never completely retires. Brian De Palma directed a new The
Untouchables feature film in 1987, starring Kevin Costner and based
loosely on Ness' book and the resulting series.
Producer Quinn Martin went on to produce a number of other crime
dramas, including The FBI and The Streets of San Francisco,
both employing the same type of ominous narration that Walter Winchell
provided on The Untouchables.
The later shows had more revolvers
than tommy guns, but the same type of quasi-authentic (by Hollywood
standards, at least) look at crime.
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