The Way You Wear Your Hat

Oh a hat is a hat
A topper is a topper and you can’t top that
So if you got the bread I say
Why not spend it on something for your head?
"The Hat" by Roger Miller

Josh Brolin (far right) leads the "Gangster Squad"

Well, "Gangster Squad" hit theaters, and the verdict was swift: It’s all about the hats. Critic A. O. Scott wrote in The New York Times, " ‘Gangster Squad’ is less a movie than a costume party run amok…a hectic jumble of fedoras and zoot suits, stockings and cigarettes, and red femme-fatale dresses." Entertainment Weekly reviewer Owen Glieberman remarked, "This is one of those period underworld pictures that revels almost fetishistically in the details of the era: the long coats and fedoras and tommy guns…the ruby red lipsticks and body-hugging ‘40s gowns."

Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone in "Gangster Squad"

The release of "Gangster Squad" coincides with a renewed popularity of old-school men’s hats. In a recent article in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, writer Alejandra Matos noted that "wide-brimmed, high-crowned, feather-adorned hats are resurgent at a time when celebrities (including Johnny Depp, Bruno Mars, and Brad Pitt) and nostalgia-inspired TV shows such as ‘Boardwalk Empire’ and ‘Mad Men’ are telling men it’s acceptable to care about their clothing - including the accessory on their head," which, in particular, was "once as common on a man’s head as socks on his feet."

Libby Ryan of Goorins Hat Store in Uptown,
Minneapolis, custom-stretches a hat

According to The New York Times, only ten American companies were manufacturing hats in 2011, compared to 180 in 1940. Anthony Andler, the owner of a haberdashery in St. Paul, Minnesota, where prices range from $50 to $300, was quoted in the Star-Tribune as saying, "Guys are still intimidated by putting on a hat with a wide brim and a high crown," but once a customer feels comfortable in it, "their confidence increases, and they are more likely to reach for their fedora over a baseball cap…You just want to own it. Have some hattitude."

A manager at another Twin Cities shop in Minnesota noted that a number of customers often ask for Al Pacino’s famous hat worn in "The Godfather," a Homburg which became known simply as the "Godfather Hat." "People always reference ‘Mad Men,’" haberdasher Anthony Andler said. "They also say, ‘I want a gangster hat,’ and I tell them, ‘No, you want a gentleman’s hat. Gangsters are all bums.’"

And that brings us back to "Gangster Squad," which, in the words of Entertainment Weekly’s Owen Glieberman, "beneath the luster of its costumes and set design…is all guns-blazing recklessness and tinny-bloody set pieces." A. O. Scott, in The New York Times, cited the film’s "knucklehead dialogue and inept storytelling," while Jeff Shannon, writing for Roger Ebert, noted, "It offers the marginal pleasure of an all-star cast slumming their way through a thicket of routine plotting, almost laughable dialogue and the constant blaze of tommy guns." A. O. Scott maintained that the movie "gives a cast of first-rate actors the chance to earn some money trying out funny voices and suppressing whatever sense of nuance they might possess."

Scott suggested that the film "would have been more fun as an animated feature, with…animals in the principal roles. Instead of enduring (Sean) Penn’s quacking, duck-faced performance, we might have at least been able to enjoy Mickey Cohen…as an actual duck." St. Paul Pioneer Press critic Chris Hewitt pointed out that it is worth noting that "Gangster Squad" "bears almost no relation to the true story of Mickey Cohen and the LAPD. He was not convicted of the crime the movie claims he was convicted of, he was not brought down the way the movie says he was, and he did not meet the fate the movie says he did…I should report that the movie does get at least one thing right: He was a gangster."

Mickey Cohen (1913-1976) was a Brooklyn-born gangster based in Los Angeles with strong ties to the Mafia from the 1930s through the 1960s. As a boy during Prohibition, he delivered booze to customers from an illegal gin mill. From 1930 to 1933, he was a professional boxer, earning the moniker "Gangster Mickey Cohen." He ran a gambling operation in Chicago and became an enforcer for Al Capone’s Chicago Outfit, serving time in prison for his role in the deaths of several gangsters at a card game gone wrong.

Young Cohen as a featherweight boxer
(Note the Star of David on his trunks)

Mobster Meyer Lansky sent Cohen to Los Angeles to work with and keep an eye on Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel, who was recklessly spending Mob money to finish constructing the Flamingo Hotel in nearby Las Vegas. Cohen ran the sports book operation at the hotel casino. After Siegel was rubbed out by the Mob in 1947, Cohen took over Siegel’s LA rackets and came to the attention of state and federal authorities in California, while facing several attempts on his life by rival gangsters.

In 1950, Cohen, along with several other underworld figures, was investigated by the U.S. Senate committee. He was convicted of tax evasion and sentenced to prison for four years. He later became an international celebrity in newspapers and on television. Cohen has been described as "loud, boisterous, and pedestrian. He made no apologies for his lifestyle and his lack of refinement." He ran floral shops, paint stores, nightclubs, casinos, gas stations, a haberdashery, and even drove an ice cream truck in the Brentwood section of Los Angeles, hoping to raise money for a planned movie about his life (which never happened).

Cohen was again convicted of tax evasion in 1961 and sent to Alcatraz. He ended up at Atlanta Federal Penitentiary, from which he was released  in 1972. He was misdiagnosed with an ulcer, which turned out to be stomach cancer. Mickey Cohen passed away in his sleep in 1976.

The real-life Gangster Squad, initiated by Los Angeles Police Department’s Sgt. Willie Burns in 1946, was intended to stay in the background of the crime surrounding them, making no arrests but gathering as much intelligence as possible while remaining invisible to the Mob. Their methods, however, were anything but orthodox police procedure, including drive-by pranks on local mobsters. While they harassed gangsters every way they could with a complete disregard for the use of warrants, they never killed anyone, even though Mickey Cohen complained to federal authorities that one of them threatened to shoot him.

The Gangster Squad photographed in 1948

Cohen called them the "stupidity squad" since he deemed them too dumb to nail him with a real crime, arresting him instead  for using foul language. The Gangster Squad never really got Mickey Cohen any more than the real Elliott Ness and the Untouchables got Al Capone (as fictionalized in director Brian DePalma’s "The Untouchables"), who, like Cohen, did prison time for tax evasion.

Critic Jeff Shannon noted, "If anything, ‘Gangster Squad’ is an ‘Untouchables’ wanna-be…without the benefit of a David Mamet screenplay." In a similar vein, Minneapolis Star-Tribune reviewer Colin Covert commented, "It aspires to be this year’s ‘Untouchables.’ It’s closer to unwatchable."

A. O. Scott wrote in The New York Times, "It has no reason for being beyond the parasitic urge to feed on the memories of other, better movies." Speaking of which, Owen Glieberman, in Entertainment Weekly, remarked, "It’s like ‘L.A. Confidential’ remade as a mediocre Jason Statham film," while Chris Hewitt, in the St. Paul Pioneer Press, noted, "The opening credits say ‘Gangster Squad’ was inspired by a true story, but its real inspiration seems to have been ‘L.A. Confidential.’"

It’s not without merit why "L.A. Confidential" stands out as the best of the "other, better movies" upon which "Gangster Squad" fed. Universally acclaimed and adored by critics and audiences alike, the multiple-award-winning 1997 film "L.A. Confidential" even kicks off with a brief appearance by Mickey Cohen, whose first incarceration for tax evasion triggers the tale of crime and corruption in the City of Angels of the early 1950s. The brief, wordless cameo is performed by Paul Guilfoyle, an actor best known for his long-running role as Las Vegas Police Department Captain Jim Brass on the CBS TV series "CSI: Criminal Scene Investigation."

Mickey Cohen (left), Paul Guilfoyle (right)

Director Curtis Hanson (who got his start in filmmaking as a protégé of producer-director Roger Corman) and writer Brian Helgeland’s Academy Award-winning screenplay smartly honed the complex 1990 novel by James Ellroy (author of The Black Dahlia) down to focusing on three individualistic, very diverse LAPD detectives, each wrestling with their own questionable (if not distasteful) moral convictions and each ultimately achieving a redemption of sorts. These are, intentionally, characters one just doesn’t like when first introduced, but it’s a credit to the intelligent scripting and nuanced performances - by Russell Crowe, Guy Pearce, and Kevin Spacey - as they gradually peel away layers of their self-doubt that the viewer grows to genuinely care about the restless souls revealed.

James Cromwell, Guy Pearce, Russell Crowe, Kevin Spacey

At the time of the movie’s production, Australian actors Crowe and Pearce were relatively unknown to American audiences, and the studio was initially leery about casting them as Los Angeles cops. The rest of the cast in this brilliant character-driven drama features Kim Basinger (who won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her performance as a Veronica Lake lookalike hooker), Danny DeVito (as an amoral tabloid journalist), James Cromwell (as a manipulative police captain), and David Strathairn (as an oily operator of an exclusive call-girl service).

Kim Basinger

Curtis Hanson chose not to emphasize period details, such as decor, wardrobe, and hats, to concentrate on the characters, and, instead of employing traditional film noir photographic techniques featuring stylistic lighting and deep shadows, he preferred a naturalistic look. The soundtrack does boast period songs, interlaced with a lush score by Jerry Goldsmith reminiscent of his haunting score for 1974’s "Chinatown."

Annette Bening and Warren Beatty in "Bugsy"

We meet up again with Mickey Cohen onscreen in 1991’s "Bugsy," a romanticized (and fictionalized) account of Brooklyn-born gangster Benjamin Siegel’s life on the West Coast when he is dispatched to run the LA rackets. As portrayed by Warren Beatty at the top of his game, Siegel is alternately a starry-eyed visionary and a vicious psychopath, a family man pathetically devoted to his daughters and a vain, unapologetic womanizer, a cold-hearted, unblinking hit man in one instance, a guilt-torn soul with thoughts of suicide in another. Nearly 25 years after his role in the seminal "Bonnie and Clyde," Beatty’s Siegel is Clyde Barrow all grown up and even more of a nut case than ever before.

Harvey Keitel as Mickey Cohen

In reality, tough guy Mickey Cohen was recruited by the East Coast Mob as, more or less, a bodyguard and babysitter for Siegel, while in the movie, Siegel hires rival gangster Cohen after the latter tries to rip off Siegel. In an Academy Award-nominated performance for Best Supporting Actor, Harvey Keitel comes on (forgive the pun) like gangbusters as Cohen, dropping the f-bomb a dozen times in his memorable first scene. Unfortunately, thereafter, Cohen’s presence is reduced to a grumpy, sardonic yes-man for Siegel as the movie’s spotlight falls on the volatile romance between Siegel and Hollywood starlet Virginia Hill (Annette Bening). The chemistry between Beatty and Bening was so genuine that the two married in real life.

(Coincidentally, in 1974, Harvey Keitel portrayed "Bugsy" Siegel in the made-for-television movie "The Virginia Hill Story," starring Dyan Cannon as his mistress.)

The impressive cast includes Ben Kingsley as Meyer Lansky, Joe Mantegna as George Raft, Elliott Gould as doomed stool pigeon Harry Greenberg, Bebe Neuwirth as an Italian countess, and rock concert promoter Bill Graham as "Lucky" Luciano. (Less than two months before "Bugsy" was released, Graham died in a helicopter crash.)

With a literate script by James Toback (who originally wanted to direct the picture before co-producer Beatty nixed the notion) and directed with a stylish flair for old-fashioned Hollywood glamour, the film exhibits an affectionate, but not obtrusive, attention to detail for the period - big, chunky cars, big, chunky telephones, big, chunky hats. Enhancing the movie’s alluring atmosphere is an elegiac music score by the maestro, Ennio Morricone, an internationally renowned film composer who also scored "Love Affair" and "Bulworth" for Warren Beatty.

There are plenty of big, chunky hats - but no sign of Mickey Cohen - in "Mulholland Falls" (1996), although it is set in the Los Angeles of the Cohen era in the early 1950s. Growling Nick Nolte stars as the head detective of an elite unit of licensed vigilantes called the Hat Squad, "four beefy middle-age guys," in critic Roger Ebert’s words, "wearing fedoras and chain-smoking, and throwing guys, mostly bad guys, over cliffs" - to be exact, the rocky slopes of the Santa Monica Mountains just off Mulholland Drive. As explained in the film, the squad, who answer to no one but the chief of the LAPD, was organized to do two things - get rid of gangsters and criminals. After pitching one unfortunate Chicago mobster (longtime "CSI: Criminal Scene Investigation" star William Petersen in an unbilled cameo) down the "Falls," Nolte snarls, "We don’t have organized crime in L.A., and frankly, we don’t want organized crime."

Like the Gangster Squad, there really was the Hat Squad. The Hat Squad was formed a bit later than the former and operated much more in the open. In a 1987 article for the Los Angeles Times, Jack Hawn described them as "four young impeccably dressed men - in dark, tailor-made, single-breasted suits (which cost two-weeks’ pay), wide-brimmed hats ($25), and polished shoes. All were over six feet tall and collectively they weighed more than half a ton."

The Hat Squad: Clarence "Red' Stromwall, Edward Benson, Harold Crowder, Max Herman

"Working out of the robbery division of the Los Angeles Police Department through the 1950s and early ‘60s," Hawn wrote, "the four became a legend…an elite team that quickly gained a national reputation among law enforcement agencies as well as the underworld." According to one police veteran, "They were so feared and respected that when we’d announce such and such a case had been turned over to the Hat Squad, many of the suspects in those cases would voluntarily give themselves up."

The Hat Squad was disbanded in 1962 when Max Herman, the team’s leader, resigned from the police department after 17 years to practice law. When Herman died, age 65, in January 1987, his funeral was attended by a number of former convicts the squad had sent to prison.

Michael Madsen, Chazz Palminteri, Nick Nolte, Chris Penn

"Four men," Nolte says in "Mulholland Falls," "no politics, no favors." His well-cast partners are Chazz Palminteri, Michael Madsen, and the late Chris Penn (brother of "Gangster Squad's" Sean Penn). Investigating the murder of a young woman (with whom, coincidentally, Nolte once had an affair), the team gradually unravels a conspiracy that involves the military, the Atomic Energy Commission, and the FBI, resulting in what Ebert called "a Chinatown of the early Atomic Age."

The standout supporting cast features Treat Williams, John Malkovich, Andrew McCarthy, Ed Lauter, and Daniel Baldwin as a preppy G-man who gets schooled the hard way by Nolte: "This is L.A. This is my town. Out here you’re a trespasser. Out here I could pick you up, burn your house, f*** your wife, and kill your dog. And the only thing that’ll protect you is if I can’t find you, and I already found you." Along with the aforementioned William Petersen, other unbilled cast members include Rob Lowe, Louise Fletcher, and Bruce Dern as LAPD Chief William Parker, based on the real-life Parker, who was LA’s longest-serving police chief. (Interestingly, in the film "Gangster Squad," Nick Nolte portrays Chief Parker.)

Melanie Griffith

Melanie Griffith is heartbreaking as Nolte’s suffering wife, while "one of the key casting decisions," according to Ebert, "was to use Jennifer Connelly as the wounded beauty at the heart of the story." The New York Times reviewer Janet Maslin pointed out that Connelly’s "bombshell attributes are fully exploited here." "Connelly is sexy in the way Marilyn Monroe was sexy," Ebert noted, "as if she doesn’t quite believe it, and can’t quite help it - and she finds the right note, halfway between innocence and heedless abandon."

Jennifer Connelly

Jazz pianist and arranger Dave Grusin provided an effective score for "Mulholland Falls," which boasts production design evocative of the period, thanks to Hollywood veteran Richard Sylbert, whose prolific career included an Academy Award for Warren Beatty’s "Dick Tracy" and an Oscar nomination for Roman Polanski’s "Chinatown." (Sylbert has a cameo in the film as a coroner.)

This was the first Hollywood movie directed by New Zealand-born Lee Tamahori, who made "Once Were Warriors," the acclaimed 1994 drama of an urban Maori family. Tamahori later directed the 2002 James Bond adventure "Die Another Day" and the chilling true story of Uday Hussein’s political decoy, "The Devil’s Double" (2011).

Gangster Squad's Sgt. Jack O'Mara (center)

According to Los Angeles Times writer Paul Lieberman, whose series of articles chronicling LAPD’s Gangster Squad inspired the screenplay for the film of the same name, Sgt. Jack O’Mara of the real squad (portrayed in "Gangster Squad" by Josh Brolin) loved "Mulholland Falls" and "thought it was true to life. He disliked ‘L.A. Confidential,’ however,  because so many of the cops were depicted as crooked and even killers." Lieberman himself "thought ‘L.A. Confidential’ was terrific - few understood the noir mindset better than (author) James Ellroy."

"Mulholland Falls" was co-produced by the late Richard D. Zanuck, making this film a fitting conclusion to the moviehouse screenings of the gangster film cycle, which started over 80 years ago when Richard’s father, Darryl F. Zanuck, produced "Little Caesar" and "The Public Enemy."