Blue Eyes Crying In The Rain-Watch Your Back, Sister, Watch Your Back-Humphrey Bogart’s “The Enforcer” (1951)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Jack Callahan

The Enforcer, starring Humphrey Bogart, Everett Sloane, 1951  

[Although Jack Callahan very infrequently writes for this publication I feel it is necessary in the now seemingly obligatory interest of transparency to note that Jack has been a major financial supporter of this publication both in the days when it was in hard copy and now on-line. That said it is no accident that Jack is writing this film review since he along with a cohort, a word by-line writer Seth Garth has been falling in love with of late and which some of us have picked up on until some other fall in love expression moves in, of guys like Allan Jackson, Si Lannon, Sam Lowell, and Phil Larkin who all grew up together in the “Acre” section of North Adamsville south of Boston and who spent many an ill-spent Saturday afternoon feasting on such films at the Strand Theater. (This well before Jack took up with his ever-loving high school sweetheart Chrissie McNamara, now his wife, at which time they were balcony-bound and I bet hard-pressed to give detail number one about any film allegedly seen. How they met and became a high school item is a story in itself which I believe Allan Jackson has written about in these pages.)

Since Jack is not a regular writer like those listed above from the Acre a few details are in order-this beyond the need for transparency but maybe gives the reader an idea of why he has been a fervent supporter of this publication. Jack, unlike all the others mentioned and lets’ include the late Peter Paul Markin who has something like legendary status among this crowd reflected in the inordinate amount of stories about him in this space and in others, did not serve in the military during the 1960s, during the time of the hellish Vietnam War. Didn’t serve for the simple reason that he was 4-F which meant physically unable to serve. That disability the result of a severe football injury sustained when he went to State U on a football scholarship and got injured in his sophomore year when his team played Boston College.

Jack, in any case, was not a natural fit for the crowd he hung around with since he was the high school football hero as once could imagine. Except he was very shy despite all the attention every male in the school, and most females, gave him. (He only had eyes for Chrissie and she for him I really ought to have Allan or Seth revive that romance story about this pair). These guys provided cover for him since he was an Acre guy, one of them, one of the poor as sin Catholic boys. Still after high school and college with one short exception when he went West for a while with this crew of ex-G.I.s who turned against the war of their generation after having all the fill they wanted of killing and death Jack was the shoulder to the wheel guy among the cohort. With Chrissie and later four fine daughters Jack became Mr. Toyota of Eastern Massachusetts and therefore of all the guys was the one who made a ton of money. Money which he used partially to help finance a million Acre boy schemes and this publication. That said lets’ let Jack go through his paces doing this film review which he begged me, no, asked me to let him do. Greg Green]

Seth Garth said it best, or the character in the film Key Largo ex-World War II officer Frank McCloud played by Humphrey Bogart the lead actor in the film under review The Enforcer did, “one more Johnny Rocco, more or less, is not worth dying for.” Meaning in that case that one Chi town gangster was not worth death when some other Johnny Rocco was waiting in the wings to move up the food chain. That did stop McCloud from bang-bang shooting old Rocco  when he messed with his woman and it will not stop ADA Ferguson, Bogie’s role here, from putting a gangster underground, sending him to the big step off- letting a few volts do him in. For a while Ferguson was on hard times, looked defeated against the scumbag was trying to send to the chair but whether there was one more Mendoza, the arch-criminal here played by Everett Sloane, or not this one is going down, going down hard.   

The reason that Ferguson was on the ropes for a while in this police procedural, a kind of film noir that we didn’t necessarily like all that much because in the end the story-line was always “crime doesn’t pay” and we didn’t like cops very much in the Acre and had our own reasons for looking kindly on “crime paying” without penalty which I will leave to the reader’s imagination just in case, was that his key witness, his only witness against the kingpin was Mendoza’s “dispatcher.” This stoolie, a guy named Joe, Joe Rico started folding like a hand of cards once the deal was ready to go down, when he was supposed to go to the witness stand and finger his boss for a murder when they first started out together. Fearing the long arm of Mendoza the sappy bleeding all over the place Rico tried to escape and fell down, fell down hard when he slipped off the ledge of the building from which he was attempting to flee. Sorry, Fergie, but those are the breaks when you depend on a rat, a stoolie, a fink, whatever you want to call such a guy. 

But here is where Ferguson got wise, figured he had nothing to lose by reviewing the case from day one via a bunch of flashbacks (and then some back flashbacks on those which sounds menacing to follow but was not, not at all). Wait a minute, maybe I better lay out Mendoza’s racket first, and why Ferguson was desperate to get him to the chair. (This “lay out” veteran reviewer Seth’s suggestion). Why Rico would rather have fallen down than get the big kiss-off from one of Mendoza’s killer boys. This wily Mendoza must had had some time on his hands and furthermore have been tired of living on cheap street because he figured out a racket a that a few guys in the Acre would have loved to have thought of, the perfect crime. Murder for hire, murder without any apparent motive for the coppers to pin something on somebody who knew the deceased on. Beautiful in its way.  Mendoza puts the word out that he has an operation to take care of some unwanted person for somebody didn’t matter the reason or non-reason. Rico, away from Mendoza for plausible deniability purposes, “dispatches” the “hit” man, pays him off and that is that. Clean hands, clean as a whistle, perfect crime. Except there was one little misstep right at the beginning of Mendoza and Rico’s beautiful friendship. The first murder for hire killing of a restaurant owner ordered up by parties unknown was witnessed by a guy and his daughter who walked in while Mendoza did his dirty deed.            

That of course meant that there were two witnesses to what happened and while they were left alone for whatever reason Mendoza left them alone for that would be Fergie’s edge if he could find either one. Assuming that he knew there were witnesses which he did once he dug the dirt up which started him on his long road investigation. The rest of the story line depends on those flashbacks mentioned above. After going for years working the murder for hire racket Mendoza stepped into a cab which was being driven by the guy who saw him murder the restaurant owner.  One cabbie gone to cabbie heaven if there is such a place for the over-charging bastards. Of course if you kill Papa then you need to waste the daughter since you needed to tidy things up. And that was done too, or it sure looked like it was done.

The “hit” man on the daughter job nothing but a stone- cold killer though screwed up, made the cardinal error of hits. Got to know the young woman and so was ready to back her out, flee with her. But you don’t do that to a guy like Mendoza and so he ordered the weak-kneed hit man to kill her under penalty of being killed himself. That is when things really unraveled. See Mister bad-ass hitman had moral qualms about killing his girl and went to the coppers who though he was screwy. Then Ferguson got into the act, especially when that stone-cold killer committed suicide. Fergusson conducted a thorough investigation (which is how he got Rico and how he had Mendoza in the slammer ready for the big step-off) including talking to the slain girl’s roommate after her mutilated body was found. No help. But Ferguson was intrepid working on every angle and not quitting, not falling down himself. The pieces start coming together though once the racket’s aims were exposed when Ferguson was able to ride the train up to Rico’s part in the whole caper.

You know though that no way was Mendoza was going to get sprung, although not for lack of trying. Not by his lawyers but by his gallery of hit men two of who he dispatched to kill that loose end roommate once he got wise to something. That wise to something is the beauty of the whole film although we knew what had happened long before Ferguson and his coppers knew what hit them. See that hit man who killed his girl, murdered her under duress, killed the wrong girl-she had brown eyes but eye witness to that restaurant murder Rico who almost spilled his guts out distinctly remembered the girl’s eyes were blue. Bingo roommate and double bingo Ferguson who wasted one of the two hit man sent to kill her under jail cell Mendoza’s orders. Nice, still though thinking back on it I wish every police procedural didn’t “prove” crime doesn’t pay. Okay that is the Acre in me speaking.