Sun 22 Nov 2009
A Movie Review by Walter Albert: THE HOUSTON STORY (1956).
Posted by Steve under Crime Films , Reviews[3] Comments
THE HOUSTON STORY. Columbia, 1956. Gene Barry, Barbara Hale, Edward Arnold, Paul Richards, Jeanne Cooper, Frank Jenks, John Zaremba, Chris Alcaide, Jack Littlefield, Paul Levitt. William Castle, director; Sam Katzman, producer. Shown at Cinecon 40, Hollywood CA, September 2004.
I didn’t know that Castle, before he made something of a name with gimmicky horror films, directed some crime films, and if this film is any indication, quite competently.
Gene Barry is an oil worker who goes to a local crime-boss (Edward Arnold, considerably thinner than in his years as a major supporting player) with a scheme for skimming off oil from the major companies, installing his unwitting brother-in-law Frank Jenks as the token company president.
Barbara Hale, almost unrecognizable if you mainly know her (as I did) as Perry Mason’s faithful secretary Della Street, is a nightclub singer and gangster’s moll who hooks up with Barry in his meteoric (and brief) rise to the top of the local mob scene.
Jeanne Cooper is the pre-crime spree girl friend of Barry who finally catches on to his double-dealing ways, and there’s a tense final shoot-out at the roadside cafe where she works and wears her heart on a sleeve for the errant Barry.
A fast-paced 80 minutes or so that caught Barry in mid-career between his role as the hero in Pal’s War of the Worlds and his successful career as Bat Masterson (a program I never watched).
Barry showed something of an edge in the brief interview that followed the screening, shortened I would imagine by his almost total lack of recall of much of his career, with the most uncomfortable moment his confused question, “Have we talked about War of the Worlds?,” a subject that had indeed been covered earlier in the interview.
November 22nd, 2009 at 9:51 pm
Not a bad film although having been born and spent early years in Houston as a Halliburton brat I couldn’t help notice how much everything looked like the oil fields of Los Angeles.
I don’t recall Hale as a blonde in anything else, so she does look different here.
This one works well enough though like a lot of movies about the oil business it is pretty far from anything resembling the real business.
As for Arnold’s scheme in the film it might have worked in the twenties and thirties, but not by the time this was made. Gangsters never saw the day they were as tough as the majors in the post war era. Or before that. Ask Al Capone who tried to move in on the Burkburnet strike in Texas and got sent home with his tail between his legs.
Anyway the mob involvement in the oil business was never on the production end, but in union ties in the refining and distribution end and selling stolen equipment.
Not a bad movie though, and while Gene Barry was in some good films, you have to think that forgetting some of his film career might be a blessing. This was a pretty good year for Barry though, his stint on Our Miss Brooks, John Farrow’s Back From Eternity, and the next year Sam Fuller’s China Gate.
November 22nd, 2009 at 10:58 pm
Yes, Barbara Hale as a blonde caught my eye too. And I don’t think we’re the only ones, since when I went looking for scenes from the movie to add to Walter’s review, this is the one that popped up most often.
As a kid, I didn’t notice Gene Barry’s name until he turned up as Bat Masterson, but I certainly enjoyed him and his role in WAR OF THE WORLDS. (I learned that it was he some time later.)
And for some reason, after I taped OUR MISS BROOKS the movie some several years ago, I added two episodes of the TV show from the Disney Channel, and in one of them, I was surprised to see Gene Barry as a leading character. I hadn’t remembered that at all.
I don’t remember if Mr. Boynton was still around then, but he was when they made the movie a few years later. The movie wasn’t very good, but at least it had a happy ending. (Hoping not to give too much away.)
But I digress. I’ve not seen THE HOUSTON STORY, and I think I owe myself the treat.
November 22nd, 2009 at 11:08 pm
Barry came onto the show in 1956 as the Coach, a romantic rival to Mr. Boynton (Robert Rockwell, who also played Superman’s dad Jor-el). The running gag was that Miss Brooks was trying to get Mr. Boynton to notice her, and get the fresh Barry to leave her alone.
One of Barry’s earliest and best roles was in Atomic City, a spy drama much of which was filmed on location near and around Los Alamos in the early fifties. It’s a surprisingly good tough little film.