The Garment Jungle

Vincent Sherman was always a good director of melodramas, particularly if he had a strong leading lady. He made "The Garment Jungle" in 1957 after the original director, Robert Aldrich, was taken off the picture. You could hardly call it a problem picture but it did deal with the issue of Trade Unions and, in its way, it did find Sherman out of his comfort zone, (Aldrich was much better suited to the material). Nevertheless, it's a good example of its kind with a strong cast headed by Lee J. Cobb and featuring the likes of Robert Loggia, Richard Boone, Wesley Addy and Joseph Wiseman in supporting roles. However it's let down somewhat by its handsome, wooden lead, Kerwin Mathews, who always looked better shirtless, in baggy pants and with a scimitar in his hand. It was also lacking in a strong female lead; Gia Scala and Valerie French are as good as we get here and while both are very pretty neither was ever likely to be Oscar-bait. No "On the Waterfront" then but still worth seeing.

This is a over looked little gem here. The cast is excellent from top to bottom, even the weak link here Kerwin Mathews is better than most of his other roles in films. Lee J. Cobb tackles his role with gusto and scores a home run as the tough hardheaded father/boss.The always excellent Richard Boone shines as the ruthless mob enforcer. Lots of Broadway stage talent on display here. Robert Loggia makes the most of his role in his film debut, Joseph Wiseman's character reminds one of his role as Charley Gennini in Detective Story. Valerie French who did as many Broadway plays as movies is effective in her minor role. The always reliable Harold J. Stone as the shop foreman (Harold grew up in Yiddish theatre and made his Broadway debut in 1939). Even the smaller roles have nice surprises. The wonderful character actor Willis Bouchey (a stable of John Ford in his films, best remembered for his president of the court-martial in Sergeant Rutledge )as a union president. Celia Lovsky (the ex wife of Peter Lorre, and character actress in over 200 TV shows, 40 films),is wasted as the Grandmother. Don't blink or you will miss Joanna Barnes (only one year away from playing the memorable WASP Gloria Upson in Auntie Mame) in her film debut. She only has two lines,but she is so close she is almost kissing the camera. And some very familiar acting thugs doing their nasty business with flair.... And last but not least we come to Gia Scala as the feisty Italian Theresa Renata (Gia was half Sicilian from her father and 1/2 Irish , who left Italy for New york City to eventually study with Stella Adler and the Actors Studio) Gia shows so much promise here. Everyone knows her for Anna in The Guns of Navarone, and she was very good in a handful of other roles in the 50s. Sadly Gia took to the bottle after her The Guns of Navarone role and her career nosedived quickly. ( Well after all she was half Irish) One only has to see how badly her looks and talent had eroded in her 3rd to last acting role in the TV show "Tarzan" with Ron Ely. Toward the end of the show,she has scenes where she is not even looking toward the camera,perhaps having to do a voice over,(unable to remember her lines) and the ending is strange ,like she did not even show up for filming and they had to patch together a ending to the show, with no Gia on the set. (Gia died of a overdose of alcohol and sleeping pills suicide in 1972 after unsuccessful attempts in 1958, when her Mother died, and 1971 ,after learning her ex husband married Barbara Anderson less than a year after their divorce ) A sad end to a very promising career. Speaking of Tarzan, that's Eve Brent as the Receptionist, the future Jane in two Gordon Scott "Tarzan" films.

The Garment Jungle is rare film , but well worth the effort to track it down.

In 1956, in broad daylight in midtown Manhattan, labor columnist Victor Riesel, who had written an expose of corruption in a Long Island union, was blinded by a bottle of acid flung into his face. This was the brutal New York battleground in which the aptly named The Garment Jungle took place the following year, a tough and absorbing drama about the fight to unionize the rag trade.

Lee J. Cobb runs a women's-dresses firm; his ardently pro-labor partner, in the opening moments of the film, plummets to his death down a freight elevator shaft. It was no accident. Proud entrepreneur Cobb, though shaken, persists in his campaign to keep unions out of his shop by paying protection to a ruthless mobster (Richard Boone). Cobb's son (Kerwin Matthews) returns from a stay in Europe and, sympathizing with the piece-work jobbers, starts poking his nose into his father's business arrangements. He befriends a union organizer (Robert Loggia) who meets with a knife in an alley. Ultimately even Cobb comes to realize he's been dancing with the devil and tries to break off his alliance with Boone, who in turn unleashes his standard retaliation. But Matthews discovers the location of ledgers recording the history pay-offs....

Vincent Sherman, a veteran of both Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, directed, with some measure of assistance from Robert Aldrich. But here no divas reign; both Gia Scala and Valerie French take subsidiary roles, if not small ones. Hard guys dominate the movie, as they did in On The Waterfront, another look at New York City's labor relations (while nowhere near as mythic as that epic, The Garment Jungle matches it in brutality and in an unapologetically leftist point of view).

The movie boasts clarity and pace; there's even some nicely observed detail. Early scenes in the factory cleave into an upstairs/downstairs dichotomy: the jobbers sweat and toil for a pittance while the fashion models step into and out of elegant frocks (but, in malicious asides, the models grouse about being exploited as `escorts' for out-of-town buyers looking for a big night in the Big Apple).

With the exception of the merely serviceable Matthews (whose young career stumbled after this movie and never regained its footing), the cast is notably fine. Cobb reins in his basso-profundo growl and curmudgeonly shtik, while Boone, Loggia (in his credited debut) and Joseph Wiseman (as a union stoolie) give restrained, convincing performances. Moments when the script threatens to go treacly are swiftly undercut by violence, and the movie never wavers from its plea on behalf of men and women risking their very lives to fight for a living wage. It's a stance that will strike many as hopelessly dated, in an era when Americans aspire to the status of stockholders; maybe that accounts for the obscurity of a bold and unsentimental film from late in the noir cycle that is brazen enough to make an overt political statement.

The struggle for the worker to get a decent living wage with a few benefits has been removed from the consciousness of the proletariat since Ronald Reagan broke the ATC union in the eighties. Since then the populace has been persuaded into believing that the worker is best left to the trickle down generosity of the employer.

This film is a throwback to that struggle and has a message packed with a powerhouse persona of greed, violence, and suppression. It utilizes realistic on location street photography to give a hard boiled and bitter verisimilitude. There are other flashes of "realism" not usually found in typical Hollywood films.

Some very slick indoor photography and gripping performances throughout deliver this expose in a package marked "stay out of it, or its your baby's legs next". Tough stuff for the conservative, establishment, 1950's.

The Garment Jungle is directed by Robert Aldrich and Vincent Sherman. The screenplay is adapted by Harry Kleiner from "Gangsters in the Dress Business" by Lester Velie. It stars Lee J. Cobb, Kerwin Matthews, Richard Boone, Robert Loggia, Gia Scala and Valerie French. Music is by Leith Stevens and cinematography by Joseph Biroc.

Alan Mitchell (Matthews) returns from the War to help his father Walter (Cobb) run the family fashion designer factory. Unfortunately he finds a business being protected by local hoodlum Artie Ravidge (Boone), who has the backing of Walter, and who is defiant in not letting the Union into the company. Things are about to turn very ugly and Alan is right in the middle of it.

Robert Aldrich is uncredited in a lot of sources, but the film was 98% his work. Cobb had a sulk about where his character was going, it all came to a head and Columbia head Harry Cohn, not needing much of an excuse to fire Aldrich (who was sick as well), brought in Sherman to finish the film. Or at least that's the party line story...

Aldrich's mark is all over the film, the harsher edges involving racketeers and violence are unmistakably his. The characterisations are pungent with varying degrees of menace, betrayal, cowardice and stoicism, with morals and ethics brought into sharp focus. Much of the pic is filmed indoors, which is a shame because when Biroc gets to photograph outside in the New York locales, we can see that we could have had a visual film noir treat. Instead we get a very good pro- Union drama with noir tints, though the softening of a key character, which Aldrich didn't aspire to, leaves you wondering just how much more spicy things could have been. 7/10