User Reviews

***SPOILERS*** The "Naked City" episode is about what the narrator tells us the "Common Man" which its star NYC subway token clerk George Lanyand McGraff, George Rose,is anything but. Trying to spice up his life George decides to start a mini crime wave in the city after he fell on his head dead drunk eying a gorgeous blond walking through the park one evening. Caliming he was mugged it's soon found out by the cop in charge of his case Det. Adam Flint, Paul Burke, that the guy is not only full it but a danger to himself and society.

Having nothing to really hold him on George is let back out on the street and gets himself involved in a hijacking of a candy vending truck as well as a fake bomb threat with the police now on an all out five borough dragnet in finding him before he ends up killing himself or someone else! It's George's obsession with the Cold War that has him break into a room at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel and kidnap a waiter there "The Man in the Tuxedo", Joseph Buloff, whom he accuses of being top nuclear physicist Dr. Fliss the inventor of the dreaded, and far more destructive then even the H-Bomb, Q-Bomb!

***SPOILERS*** Trying to get "The Man in the Tuxedo", or Dr. Fliss,to fess up and admit that he's really working for the Soviet KGB not his country the USA George takes him for a ride on the Staten Island Ferry hoping that getting him sea sick would open him up and get "The Man in the Tuxedo" to admit the truth about himself! It was a nice try on George's part but it didn't really work in "The Man in the Tuxedo" seeing right through his missugash, insanity in Yiddish, and not taking him seriously at all! But it was Geroge who in the end did liven up his very boring life in the crazy things that he did during the last 24 hours. And he can now go back to work at the token booth feeling that he did, besides selling tokens, something important in his life!

P.S Check out a 28 year old Michael Castellano waiting on line to buy a subway token off George McGraff who was later to become famous as the sadistic Mafia hit man, his specialty was the garrote, in the 1972 gangster epic "The Godfather" some ten years later.

This is not up to the standards of an otherwise great television series. Sure, every TV show has its flops, but this is absolutely pathetic.

Was this supposed to funny? A drunkard goofing around in New York City, trying to make fools out of the Detectives?

Absolutely no plot. Thanks to the fast forward button I only wasted five minutes on this episode.

DO NOT WASTE YOUR TIME ON THIS ONE!

*** For some reason, IMDb wants me to leave another 150 characters in this review. So let me repeat myself:

This is not up to the standards of an otherwise great television series. Sure, every TV show has its flops, but this is absolutely pathetic. SKIP THIS ONE.

Actor George Rose is one of those nearly legendary guys--whose fascinating, colorful career as a performer is almost totally forgotten today. One only need check IMDB to see the array of his credits-- bearing in mind that much of his activity-- from Shakespeare to Gilbert and Sullivan--- was accomplished on stage, and therefore not listed here. A few years after his Naked City appearance, Mr. Rose was chosen by John Gielgud (with whom he had worked often in England) to play the Gravedigger in the legendary 1964 Richard Burton production of HAMLET (in a cast which featured several other "Naked City" luminaries: Hume Cronyn, George Voskovec, William Redfield and Clement Fowler (!) in the role of Rosencrantz; the performance is available on DVD).

So Mr. Rose was no "Second Fiddle" actor.

One of the great things about Naked City--in addition to being shot on the streets of New York City, early '60's-- is the fact that the series often drew on NYC's Finest theatrical/stage performers, who were not often afforded the wider exposure of major films. So the producers apparently cooked up this off-beat comedy episode, tailor-made for the talents of Mr. Rose.

The thin plot-line....that of a jaded, world-weary "Everyman" who toils in the NYC Subway system as a token clerk, and a.) dearly loves his 2 grandsons, with whom he lives, b.) hates authority figures, especially cops, and c.) has a MAJOR, ongoing love-affair with THE BOTTLE, provides just enough of a framework for a full-blown, comic Tour-de Force by Mr. Rose.

Viewers must keep in mind that "Go Fight City Hall" is essentially an excursion into the world of FARCE-- the sort of thing you might have encountered in any number of Off-Broadway productions of the day. Don't expect it to make too much dramatic sense.

The REAL FUN BEGINS during the final third of the episode with what feels like an old-school Vaudeville routine, as Mr. Rose teams up with the famous Yiddish comedian JOSEPH BULOFF---- as the anonymous "Man in Tuxedo" (actually, he gives his real name at one point). Mr. Rose, in another drunken fantasy "Crusade", assumes Mr. Buloff- an ordinary waiter in the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, is really Soviet nuclear physicist "Dr. Fleiss" and ABDUCTS him.

They end up on an all-night ferry boat trip through New York harbor, a minimalist setting for one of the ZANIEST old-style comedy routines you'll ever witness--- ESPECIALLY when they BREAK THE FOURTH WALL and actually WAVE TO THE CAMERA and the Viewers at Home! It's insane.

"Go Fight City Hall"-- whatever its plot deficiencies--- PRESERVES FOR ALL TIME the performances of two classic, old-style actor-comedians, whose theatrical legacy might otherwise be totally forgotten. The fact that Mr. Rose met an unfortunate, violent death 25 years later makes this show all the more important...and touching. LR