The BEST episodes written by John Mantley
#1 - The Purple Gang
The Untouchables - Season 2 - Episode 7
Detroit, August 1932. The notorious Purple Gang-- long synonymous with terror in beer, booze, labor and prostitution-- gets into a new racket: kidnapping. They specialize in snatching other members of the underworld, since they can't go to the police for help. So far, they've kidnapped 9 hoods (the latest mug is Rocky Garver), for a total of 100 grand. The Purple Gang's leader is Eddie Fletcher, bank robber and murderer, who always wears gloves so he never leaves any fingerprints. Next on their list of gangsters to be kidnapped is Ian Tornek, who owns a novelty shop along with his brother-in-law Eric Vajda, who arrived from Europe 7 months ago. But Eliot Ness and his Untouchables also have their eye on Tornek: he's a Capone henchman, who makes a weekly pickup of narcotics every Thursday at 5:00 p.m. at the Railway Express Agency. So Ness and Lee Hobson and Enrico Rossi fly to Detroit. Fletcher's boys snatch Tornek just before his weekly pickup; they phone his wife Martha and dem
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#2 - City Without a Name
The Untouchables - Season 3 - Episode 9
1933. Violence and corruption were at an all-time high in Chicago, New York, St. Louis, Detroit, Kansas City-- virtually every city in the U.S. The lone exception is an Eastern seaboard metropolis, referred to as City Without a Name, in which the voters had used the ballot box to vote corruption out of public office. And Federal agent Arnold Wainwright had kept organized crime out-- but on October 22, he is blasted by machine-guns while in a coffee shop. Eliot Ness and his men are called to the case. Ness goes to the hospital and talks to Wainwright's assistant, Gilbert Burke, who was injured in the attack; Gilbert tells Ness the hit was the work of Lou Mungo. Chicago. At the Montmartre club, Nitti is having a meet. Nitti decides that since Lou Mungo's done the groundwork, it's time for him to take over half of Mungo's action. Nitti sends for Sebastian, who specializes in such acquisitions without using muscle. Sebastian wins a high stakes poker game by bluffing. Nitti tells
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#4 - The Nick Acropolis Story
The Untouchables - Season 2 - Episode 31
Chicago, Summer 1931. Nick Acropolis is the new bookmaker in town, his territory is Illinois and the 6 surrounding states; he covers bets on horse racing, boxing matches, ball games, everything. By August, his operation is $2-million per month. And so Eliot Ness and his Untouchables are on the case; Enrico Rossi has a wiretap on one of Nick's betting parlors, run by Sully Hinds. Nick and his boys pay a visit to their bookkeeper, Louis Manzak, who is Nick's brother-in-law. Louis embezzled 200 grand of Nick's money, to make a side-bet on a boxing match, and lost. Nick roughs him up, and Louis' only excuse is, ""Who would have thought that Locks would lose a decision to Max Baer?""* Nick tells Louis to replace the dough, and fast-- or else! Nick demands the 200 grand in one month, and the usual gangster interest of 25% per month; but Nick wants the 50 grand interest payable in 48 hours. Louis tries to beg and borrow the 50 Gs; his sister Stella offers to come up with half of the 50
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The Untouchables - Season 4 - Episode 12
June 1930. Speak owner Louie Akers-- about to go dry and out of business because Guzik couldn't supply him with hooch for that last 3 weeks-- buys his booze from another supplier. Akers pays Johnny $1,142 for barrels of beer and crates of whiskey, that some deliverymen just dropped off. Just then, a couple of Guzik's boys (Sully and Mac) drive up; they start blasting at the delivery truck (which still has plenty more booze in back), just as it's pulling away. Once the delivery truck is at a safe distance, Johnny gets out and hands the dough over to the booze supplier-- Eliot Ness! (Johnny is an undercover cop.) A short time later, Akers gets a visit from Jake ""Greasy Thumb"" Guzik and a few of his boys.
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#6 - Orville Gant
How the West Was Won - Season 2 - Episode 4
With the sheriff's son held hostage by Flint, the robbery goes forward, leaving two men dead. Jessie's condition worsens as the doctor can't help her. Zeb's and Beth's accounts of her rescue come under suspicion by authorities, causing her to leave abruptly, with her leading Zeb to a mountain cabin.
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#7 - Amnesty
How the West Was Won - Season 2 - Episode 5
Zeb learns Beth's husband is supposedly a dead, guilt-ridden Army hero involved in a military massacre. As Jessie nears death, Zeb decides to take her to an Arapaho medicine man - with a skeptical Luke and Josh in close pursuit.
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Rawhide - Season 7 - Episode 5
Mushy is swindled out of the wagons and the remuda. He is fired, kidnapped by gypsies, sold into slavery and rescued by his new girlfriend.
#9 - Mrs. Harmon
Rawhide - Season 7 - Episode 26
Wish is tired of trail cooking. He quits the drive and befriends a mother and her three boys. She is married to an abusive drunk, Fred Harmon who beats her. At the hotel, Fred tries to beat Wish to within an inch of his life. Mrs. Harmon shoots her husband. Wish takes the blame. Charlie Peg the hotel clerk knows the Mrs. did it and blackmails Wish.
#10 - The Rustler
How the West Was Won - Season 3 - Episode 2
Jessie is blindly in love with a handsome young stranger named Bob, who rescues her from a nasty villain. Together they flee to a small town and finds a priest who agrees to perform the ceremony.
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#11 - Element of Danger
The Untouchables - Season 3 - Episode 19
Chicago, August 29, 1934. That night, in the Haymarket district, special agent Daniel Gosden, a policeman on loan to the Untouchables, goes through a skylight and finds an opium laboratory in the top floor of a rundown tenement hotel. Just then, drug lord Victor Rait and 4 hoods (Gus, Sully, Max, and Trapp) show up, carrying crates of supplies into the place. Rait spots Gosden and gives chase; just as Gosden phones Ness for back-up, Rait blows him away with a shotgun. Then Rait blasts 6 bullets from his gun to disperse the crowd of tenants investigating the noise. Somebody phones the cops, because within minutes Eliot Ness and his men and some policemen are on the scene. Outside, Victor Rait and his boys are calmly loading the crates of narcotics onto their truck. When a policeman asks them what they're doing, Rait shoots the cop. Ness and his men come running; Rait tells his boys to drive off in the truck, fast. Then, Rait puts on a show for Ness: Rait stays behind, and fires h
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#12 - The Gang War
The Untouchables - Season 3 - Episode 13
1932. Chicago is a thirsty town, consuming 86,000 gallons of booze a day; that's 32-million gallons a year. Almost all this booze is beer and rotgut, but 1% is the finest Canadian scotch. Nitti's boys, armed with tommy guns, shoot up a rival speak, the Blue Lion, that's serving the Canadian scotch. Ness and his men investigate; 2 people dead, 3 critically injured. Nitti's plenty sore; there are half a dozen clubs, roadhouses just outside of Cook County, serving Canadian scotch. Where are they getting it? Just then, a bomb goes off in the Montmartre Club; Nitti and his boys are unhurt, but 6 pedestrians and a taxi driver are injured. Nitti orders in 100 hitmen from Detroit. It's a Gang War! To prevent further killings, Ness arrests Nitti and confiscates his gun. Although Nitti is sprung within the hour, Ness blackmails him: Ness tells Nitti, if one more person is killed in the gang war, ""Lee Hobson's gonna put a bullet in me with your gun."" (In the arm or leg, I suppose. Thi
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#13 - Behold Eck!
The Outer Limits - Season 2 - Episode 3
The fate of the Earth is at stake when an optometrist discovers special lenses which enable him to see a frightening, and otherwise invisible, two-dimensional creature.
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#14 - Tunnel of Horrors
The Untouchables - Season 3 - Episode 3
August 28, 1933. That night, Eliot Ness and his Untouchables, and some undercover plainclothes police, are staking out an amusement pier on the Chicago lakefront; they are tailing Alexander Raeder-- owner of the pier, and the source of the new narcotics flooding the Windy City. Ness had received an anonymous tip that Raeder was delivering 15 pounds of heroin, half a million dollars' worth, to a syndicate contact. The drop-off point being the Tunnel of Horrors, a carnival ride which sends small boats through dark tunnels, operated by Johnny Selkirk, who works for Raeder. On the Midway, Ness spots a hood named Marty Mattern along with Arnold Justin, former cop, who now handles the graft for Nitti; if Justin sees the undercover cops (his former colleagues), he'll recognize them and their cover will be blown. Justin does; Mattern panics and makes a run for it, then fires at Ness' men, and Enrico Rossi shoots him. Ness and his men storm into the Tunnel, and find a back room. While Rae
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#15 - Arsenal
The Untouchables - Season 3 - Episode 27
January 1929. Gangster Matt Malloy walks into a sporting goods store; he can't buy an automatic pistol without a police permit, however anyone with $150 can buy a machine-gun. Later, at the Club Montmartre, half a dozen choppers are laid out on Nitti's table. The Council says that now they can move in on the Northside and Bugs Moran. Nitti picks up a chopper and says, ""You got 'em-- use 'em!"" Gang war! The following weeks are the bloodiest in Chicago history; Nitti's gang strikes again and again with choppers at the Bugs Moran mob. The climax is the St. Valentine's Day massacre, Feb. 14, 1929. An immediate ban on machine-guns goes into effect. Feb. 16, Enrico Rossi and Jack Rossman are confiscating choppers from the sporting goods store; Ness and Lee Hobson, with a search-and-seizure warrant, raid Nitti's Montmartre club. Nitti tells Ness he'll get more choppers; Ness tells him there won't be a single one left in town. Nitti sneers, ""A lot of punks have tried to buck the Orga
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#16 - Ring of Terror
The Untouchables - Season 2 - Episode 24
Ring of Terror-- Boxing ring, that is. July 1931, the Chicago Sports Arena was like a hundred other boxing rings across America-- a place where young toughs from reform schools and rotting tenements, willing to sacrifice their blood, could try to rise above the oppression of poverty. But the young men with the boxing gloves only got a small amount of the money; the big payoffs went to the gangsters. Joey McGrath is an up-and-coming young fighter, 23 KOs in 25 fights, and the sports writers have him tagged as the next light-Heavyweight Champ. However, tonight, Joey is having such a bad boxing match that his manager, Barney Jarreau, smells a ""fix."" When Joey is being pummeled by ""Rocky"" Pearson in the 9th round, Barney throws in the towel. Joey collapses. After Joey dies, Barney confronts gangster Acropolis, who was up to something. Fights fall under the jurisdiction of the State Athletic Commission, but when the coroner finds morphine in the dead boxer's body, it becomes a job fo
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#17 - Luke
How the West Was Won - Season 3 - Episode 9
Luke Macahan finds out that there is still a $5000 reward on his head, and to expect more and more bounty hunters as an effect off that fact.
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#18 - Mr. Moon
The Untouchables - Season 2 - Episode 25
Autumn 1934. An armored truck, loaded with the special paper used in printing U.S. currency, is headed for the Bureau of Engraving in Washington, D.C. The truck is hijacked, and the 3 armed guards are tommy-gunned. Since counterfeiting will be on a national level, it's a federal offense, and so Eliot Ness and 5 other federal agents from around the country convene in Washington, D.C., and are briefed on the situation. When Ness gets back to Chicago, the Untouchables go through a large list of forgers. They determine that the top man is Hans Dreiser, doing 20-to-life in Leavenworth Prison in Kansas. One night, there's an explosion in the high-voltage power transformer next to Leavenworth Prison. During the brief power blackout, Dreiser escapes over the 20-foot-high wall with a rope; 2 of Mr. Moon's men are in a waiting car. Next day, Ness is in Leavenworth County, and talking to the Power Company managers. Benny Joplin had been the inspector for the transformer, it turns out he's
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#19 - Big Man, Big Target
Gunsmoke - Season 10 - Episode 10
Ellie Merchant, the wife of farmer Joe Merchant, is having a passionate affair with outlaw Pike Beechum. Beechum intends to remove Joe and any other obstacle between him and Ellie.
#20 - L'Affaire Riel
How the West Was Won - Season 3 - Episode 6
Zeb Macahan is asked by general Sheridan to find Louis Riel so he can be sent back to Canada since he is wanted.
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#21 - The Lady
Gunsmoke - Season 10 - Episode 27
A woman and her adult, attractive niece stop in Dodge to earn some money to complete their journey to San Francisco. When an offer of marriage to her aunt threatens to derail those plans, the niece takes action.
#22 - The Nick Moses Story
The Untouchables - Season 2 - Episode 19
1932. Just 3 weeks after Al Capone was convicted on the ironic charge of income tax evasion, the Justice Department in Washington, D.C. was calling its leading law enforcement agents from all over the country to fly to the nation's capital to testify and get a new Anti-Racketeering Bill passed. Back in Chicago, 4 of Capone's bigshots who ran his bootlegging empire had skipped town, like rats deserting a sinking ship: only Frank Nitti ""the Enforcer"" had the guts to remain in the Windy City, as did Nick Moses. With the gang bosses assembling again, Ness can't leave Chicago. Ness says, ""It looks like you'll be going to Washington without me,"" and he shakes District Attorney Asbury's hand, ""bring us back a law, Beecher."" At the Club Montmartre, Nitti presides over a meet. Overlord Vinnie is grousing that Nick Moses muscled in on his territory while he was in Miami; Nick counters that Vinnie ran out, so his district was up for grabs. Nitti tells them to settle this ""peaceful."" That ni
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The Untouchables - Season 4 - Episode 18
1933. Prohibition ends. But that doesn't mean the war on crime is over for Eliot Ness and his Untouchables. The syndicate has already moved on to a more profitable-- and more deadly-- source of income: narcotics. By September, Ness and his men had found and destroyed every major source of narcotics. By early October, the price of a bindle of heroin jumps from $20 to $50. Nitti and his boys want to take advantage of this seller's market. Nitti has a dope smuggler named Yang brought in from Shanghai. At the Montmartre Club, 5 lieutenants put their money on the table: elderly Tony, 350 Gs; Mike, 275; ailing Sam Weidman, 600; Kurt Koenig, 350; and Larry Bass, 425. Nitti quips, ""Two million bucks-- there ain't been that much dough on this table since we bought the Southside."" When Sam Weidman asks how can they be sure Yang will deliver, Nitti snaps, ""Whatta ya think we're dealin' with, some 2-bit punk?"" He walks over to a huge globe, a yard in diameter. ""He's got poppy fields in
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