Walter Matthau Directs

I was a big Walter Matthau fan. It was great to watch him move his way up from a fine character actor of the early-mid sixties (Lonely are the Brave, Charade, Mirage) to a suprisingly durable leading man for comedy and drama in the late sixties and seventies.

Movie actors have a problem: their entry-level jobs are oftimes embarassments, like "The Blob" for Steve McQueen or "I Was a Teenage Caveman" for Robert Vaughn.

"Gangster Story" is sort of that way for Walter Matthau, except for a few things:

1. He directed it! He never directed again, so this was probably too embarrassing. And yet, working with an "Ed Wood" budget, Matthau at least here presents one of those rare things: a poverty-row quickie that at least moves forward well enough as a narrative and makes sense in terms of character.

2. He is pretty good in it! Matthau already had plenty of movie roles (including "A Face in the Crowd" for Elia Kazan) and TV roles (usually as a heavy, actually, because he was so tall, in things like "Alfred Hitchcock Presents".) So we have here something odd: a dopey-looking cheapjack movie with a trained studio movie actor in it, who actually knows how to read lines and suggest presence and charisma. (Unfortunately, almost everybody else in the cast DOESN'T know how. So its weird: this natural actor trades lines with rank amateurs.)

One aspect of Matthau's murderous bank robber "Jack Martin" that I liked in this film was his very "Walter Matthauish" approach to crime. He plays people for suckers by conning them most believably as a "nice guy" -- then robs or beats them (he kills only bad guys.) Its a pretty funny scene in which he convinces three real cops to stand outside a bank doing nothing while he robs the manager inside -- telling them it is a rehearsal for a movie. Unbelievable? Yes? But Matthaus SELLS it like it is the most natural caper idea imaginable. Later, Matthau knocks out a patsy on the 18th hole of a golf course, runs into the clubhouse and tells the authorities "It looks like a guy is dead out there on the 18th hole!" They all run out -- because Walter is so believable -- and he and his gang then steal their safe.

3. He falls in love in it! I didn't bother to look up exactly when Matthau married "Carol Grace", who has the female lead in the film, but you can see her allure: she's pretty, but not gorgeous, and, cast as a librarian who signs on as a non-criminal Bonnie to Matthau's hangdog Clyde, the two make a charming little couple. You almost believe this meek librarian could hang with a killer, and that the killer might try to change his ways for this pretty-but-not-too pretty lonely woman. Carole Matthau was the former wife of author William Saroyan(she hated him) and wore trademark Kabuki-white makeup on her face for the duration of her life with Matthau. Her acting is amateurish but endearing here, and hubby Walter helps her performance with HIS professionalism.

One more thing: 13 years after "Gangster Story," Walter Matthau would again play a bankrobber, in Don Siegel's sublime little 1973 modern noir "Charley Varrick." If you watch Matthau in "Gangster Story" knowing that Charley Varrick is coming, its like a "prequel" of sorts.

"Gangster Story" is not a good movie. Technical drawbacks and script/acting weaknesses defeat it. But Walter Matthau the actor gave Walter Matthau the director a true "star performance." And soon Matthau was on his way.

P.S. Data here at the imdb says that Matthau's shoestring "Gangster Story" beat the mammoth MGM Gary Cooper-Charlton Heston thriller "The Wreck of the Mary Deare" (an abandoned Alfred Hitchcock project) at the box office when they opened at the same time.