The FBI Story

Infobox_Film
name = The FBI Story


caption =
writer = Don Whitehead
(book)
Richard L. Breen
(screenplay)
John Twist
(screenplay)
starring = James Stewart
Vera Miles
director = Mervyn LeRoy
producer = Mervyn LeRoy
music = Max Steiner
cinematography = Joseph F. Biroc
distributor = Warner Bros.
released = October, 1959
runtime = 149 min.
music = Max Steiner
awards =
country = USA
language = English
imdb_id = 0052792
amg_id = 1:16490
budget =

"The FBI Story" is a 1959 drama film directed and produced by Mervyn LeRoy and starring James Stewart. Based on a book by Don Whitehead, the Federal Bureau of Investigation had great influence over the production, with J. Edgar Hoover acting as a co-producer of sorts. Hoover even forced LeRoy to re-shoot several scenes he didn't think portrayed the FBI in an appropriate light, and played a pivotal role in the casting for the film. Hoover himself briefly appeared in the film.

Plot

John Michael ('Chip') Hardesty (James Stewart) opens the film narrating the story of a young man, Jack Graham (Nick Adams), who took out life insurance on his mother and planted a bomb in her luggage for Columbia Airlines Flight 21 that she was taking from Denver, Colorado, to Portland, Oregon, November 1, 1955. (John "Jack" Gilbert Graham was convicted and executed for killing the 44 (not 49) people on United Airlines Flight 629. [FBI History: [http://www.fbi.gov/libref/historic/famcases/graham/graham.htm Famous Cases: Jack Gilbert Graham] - FBI] [The film makes it appear that his sole motivation was money, the $37,500 life insurance policy, Graham's true motive was revenge for the way his mother had treated him as a small child.] )

Next we see Hardesty as he recounts his history as an FBI agent during a lecture. This style of narrations, lecture, and scenes, are interwoven though out his time as an agent combating various crimes and criminals, including the Ku Klux Klan, Pretty Boy Floyd, Baby Face Nelson, John Dillinger, and spies.

Then he recounts his first involvement as a government clerk in Knoxville, Tennessee in May 1924, and his proposal to a librarian, Lucy Ann Ballard (Vera Miles). They marry with the idea that Hardesty will resign from the FBI and start practicing law. On his way to Washington D.C. his partner, Sam Crandall (Murray Hamilton), tries to talk him out of resigning. Then listing to the new director, J. Edgar Hoover, he becomes inspired to stay. He meets Lucy Ann for a shrimp dinner at Herzog's Seafood Restaurant and tries to evade her questions about his resignation, but she soon tells Chip that she is pregnant, and she lets him stay in the bureau, "for a year".

The next day Chip is sent south to investigate the Ku Klux Klan. He is moved around until he is sent to Ute City, Wade County, Oklahoma (The real case was in Osage County, the Osage Indian murders, between 1921 and 1923. [ [http://www.fbi.gov/page2/jan05/osage012605.htm "A Byte Out of History: Murder and Mayhem in the Osage Hills"] . - FBI] ), to investigate a series of murders of Native Americans who had oil rich mineral rights and land. The FBI lab ties the doctored wills and life insurance policies of the murder victims to a local banker, Dwight McCutcheon (in real life a rancher, William "King of Osage" Hale; played by Fay Roope), with the typewriter that he used. Lucy Ann loses a baby during this time.

On June 17, 1933, FBI agents; McAlester, Oklahoma, Police Chief Otto Reed; and Kansas City police officers, were escorting Frank "Jelly" Nash from a train to a car outside the Union Station in Kansas City. When they got into the vehicle, another vehicle pulled up behind them, three men (Verne Miller, Charles "Pretty Boy" Floyd, and Adam Richetti) got out and opened fire on the car with Nash and the law enforcement officers. Otto Reed, Bureau Special Agent Raymond J. Caffrey, and Kansas City Policemen W. J. Grooms and Frank Hermanson, were all killed in what is now called the Kansas City Massacre (Nash was not intentionally shot as the film shows). Following the Kansas City Massacre average citizens and civic groups decided that they had had enough and started to demand actions against gangsters like Pretty Boy Floyd, Baby Face Nelson, John Dillinger, Machine Gun Kelly, and Bonnie and Clyde. The Kansas City Massacre changed the FBI, prior to this event the agency did not have authority to carry firearms (although many agents did) and make arrests (they could make a "citizen's arrest", then call a U.S. Marshall or local law officer), but a year later Congress gave the FBI statutory authority to carry guns and make arrests. Hardesty and Crandall are very excited by the Weyburn Bill (the right for agents to carry firearms), calling it "a real Christmas present", but Lucy Ann does not like the idea at all. [FBI History: [http://www.fbi.gov/libref/historic/famcases/floyd/floyd.htm Famous Cases: Kansas City Massacre - Charles Arthur "Pretty Boy" Floyd] . - FBI] [FBI History: [http://www.fbi.gov/libref/historic/history/historicdates.htm Timeline of FBI History] . - FBI] [Headline Archives: [http://www.fbi.gov/page2/june08/kansascity_061708.html FBI 100: The Kansas City Massacre] . - FBI. - 06/17/08] [http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/dillinger/peopleevents/e_fbi.html "People & Events: The Rise of the FBI"] . - | [http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/dillinger/filmmore/ps_crime.html "Primary Sources: Some Anti-Dillinger Laws"] . - "American Experience". - PBS. - Retrieved: 2008-07-04]

After receiving a tip, Hardesty and Crandall head to Spider Lake, Wisconsin on April 22, 1934, but after barking dogs alerted the gangsters they scattered. They then head to a nearby country store to call the Chicago office. When they get there they find two men sitting in a car, with Baby Face Nelson (William Phipps), holding them hostage. Nelson comes up shooting, mortally wounding Crandall. (The real incident did occur on April 22, Baby Face Nelson, was hiding out with John Dillinger, but it was at the Little Bohemia Lodge just outside Manitowish Waters, Wisconsin, the two agents were Special Agents J. C. Newman and W. Carter Baum, Baum is the agent killed in the shootout. With them was also a local constable not shown in the film. Nelson was holding two hostages in a house, and when the car came up, Nelson wanting the vehicle, rushed shutting for the occupants to get out, but then opened fire on the car shooting all three lawmen. [FBI History: [http://www.fbi.gov/libref/historic/famcases/babyface/babyface.htm Famous Cases: "Baby Face" Nelson"] . - FBI] )

The last investigation, "50-Cent Clue", involves an espionage case of a New York City clothes cleaners finding a hollow half-dollar with microfilm inside. The microfilm contains a series of numbers, which the FBI tries to decipher. (The real case involved a nickel, not a half-dollar, and took four years to unfold, not the short matter of days in the film. On June 22, 1953, a newspaper boy, collecting for the "Brooklyn Eagle", was paid with a nickel that didn't sound and feel right to him. But it wasn't until a KGB agent, Reino Häyhänen, wanted to defect in May, 1957, would the FBI be able to link the nickel to KGB agents, including Vilyam Genrikhovich Fisher (aka Rudolph Ivanovich Abel) in the Hollow Nickel Case. The deciphered message in the nickel turned out to be worthless, a personal message to Häyhänen from the KGB in Moscow welcoming him to the U.S. and instructing him on getting set up. [FBI History: [http://www.fbi.gov/libref/historic/famcases/abel/abel.htm Famous Cases: Rudolph Ivanovich Abel (Hollow Nickel Case)] . - FBI] )

Reception

The film found minor success when first released, but was poorly received by critics. The most common criticism was the film played more like propaganda than a stand-alone film. These critiques are based in fact, as the film's production was greatly associated with the real FBI, and even J. Edgar Hoover. Today, the film has largely been forgotten, though it has been recently released on DVD, and memorable for its stars James Stewart and Vera Miles. This film also inspired producer Quinn Martin to produce his long-running television series of "The F.B.I.". The film naturally deals with the FBI's successes and has exciting scenes depicting its war on gangsters in the 1930s; one critic compared the sequences to the memorable gangster films Warner Brothers made during that decade.

Cast

*James Stewart "as" John Michael ('Chip') Hardesty
*Vera Miles "as" Lucy Ann Hardesty
*Murray Hamilton "as" Sam Crandall
*Larry Pennell "as" George Crandall
*Nick Adams "as" John Gilbert ('Jack') Graham
*Diane Jergens "as" Jennie Hardesty
*Jean Willes "as" Anna Sage
*Joyce Taylor "as" Anne Hardesty
*Victor Millan "as" Mario

References