Izzy & Moe (1985)

A different way of telling a story

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

As with most movies based on true stories or events, this film has its fiction and deviations from the facts. The biggest one is the insertion of a love interest for Moe Smith, in the person of Dallas Carter. The romance addition to films is Hollywood's (and television's) way to make them appeal to the broadest audience. That and the few other deviations aside in this movie, "Izzy and Moe" stands as a fairly accurate portrayal of the two most famous U.S. prohibition agents. Isador Einstein and Moe Smith were U.S. police officers whose achievements during the first five plus years of Prohibition were legendary. If anything, this movie tones down the level and breadth of the famous pair's booze busting raids.Jackie Gleason and Art Carney are superb in their roles as Izzy and Moe. They somewhat resemble the two real characters. Izzy was a short, portly guy, just as is Gleason. Moe was taller, like Carney, but he had a bigger build. Cynthia Harris has a fine role as Dallas Carter, the fictitious romantic interest of Moe. Dick Latessa does a good job as Lt. Murphy, the head of the New York prohibition office. He portrays an element of crooked law enforcement that existed within the prohibition units of the time. Drew Snyder is very good as Agent McCoy, and the extensive supporting cast all do a good job.A big plus for this TV movie is the care that went into building sets and getting props that reflected 1920s New York. The street scenes, the store and building fronts, the carts and wagons, and the number of vintage autos create a sense of reality and of being in the time and place. The background music of the period helped set the tone and carried it through to the end.This was a wonderful film for Gleason and Carney to cap their long careers of working together in film and television. Both were talented actors and comedians. Carney won an Oscar and several Emmys, and Gleason was nominated for an Oscar and had Golden Globe and Emmy nominations. Gleason also had his own big band and composed music. He had a genius for comedy, although his boozing characters were not to the liking of everyone.The real Izzy and Moe worked as agents during the first five plus years of prohibition. In a 1932 autobiography, "Prohibition Agent No. 1," Izzy said that he and Moe used more than 100 disguises. The movie shows them using several, including one with Moe dressed as a woman. I saw one photo of the pair in disguise on the Internet in which Moe seems to be dressed as a woman, with a fur coat wrapped around him and a woman's hat pulled down on his head. From 1920 to 1926, they raided speakeasies and stills and closed down hundreds of operations. On one Sunday alone, they staged 71 raids. They made just short of 5,000 arrests (4.932) and had a conviction rate of 95%. They confiscated 5 million gallons of liquor.Prohibition was popular in rural areas but not so much so in the big cities. So, the prohibition agents weren't liked that much. But Izzy and Moe were the exception, and their exploits, means and manners were reported and captured the admiration of the public. Neither men carried weapons, and they were personable characters who could pull off disguises with aplomb. Izzy said that they were never uncovered or spotted. Still, the government in 1926 laid them off, along with 36 other agents. The claim was that because of their notoriety, they could no longer be effective. Yet they had been all along, and never once discovered. I'm inclined to go with the suspicion prevalent at the time that there was jealousy within the government ranks. Until Elliott Ness became an agent in 1927 and began cracking down in Chicago, little more headway was made after Izzy and Moe were retired.Prohibition lasted until 1933. Izzy and Moe went on to successful careers in insurance even through the Depression. Both men had families. Izzy was 57 when he died in 1938 and Moe was 73 when he died in 1960. This is an entertaining and lighthearted treatment of a time and situation in America that saw a serious in crime, especially murders.

Two aging old coots rival the untouchables in this fantasia on the prohibition era that is an entertaining burlesque on a historical subject. Jackie Gleason and Art Carney are reunited to play the title characters, old friends who has had several fallings-out yet reconciled to become New York answer to what Kevin Costner would document several years later in a major Hollywood Blockbuster. Gleason, dressed to the nines, doesn't exactly get a warm welcome from Carney, having been raided by the feds which has closed his speakeasy. So the last thing he's interested in doing it becoming a government agent himself, but since Gleason owes him money, it seems like the easier way to get it back. The results are nowhere near realistic in a historical value, but to see Kramden and Norton together again is a shear delight. The detail of the 1920's is well put together, and caricatures of various 20's personalities add an authenticity that is lacking from the overall narrative. Cynthia Harris is excellent as a hostess based upon Texas Guinan, while Thelma Lee is a delight as Gleason's obnoxious mother-in-law. The highlight is the opportunity to see Carney in drag, looking like Dame Edna, and having a wedding scene with Gleason as the groom. So don't expect Prohibition 101 in this fictitious variation of New York's fight against rum runners, but a good old fashioned style modern version of what is Warner Brothers might have done in the main d 1930's with EGR and Cagney.

For some reason, despite repeated reunions in their "Honeymooner" roles as Ralph Kramden and Ed Norton, Jackie Gleason and Art Carney never appeared together in a straight (or close to straight) film until a year or so before Gleason died. Then they appeared in this made-for-television film about Prohibition American, and two of it's forgotten heroes: Izzie Einstein and Moe Smith. As has been mentioned before this is not historically accurate by any standard. But it is nice as a record that the two stars' chemistry could sustain a non-"Honeymooner" plot.Historically Izzie and Moe were Prohibition agents. That would actually set the public opinion of them at a low, as most people (except died-in-the-wool prohibitionists) disliked the rise in crime across the country due to the idiotic Volstead Amendment. Most of the Prohibition agents were a humorless, businesslike group. The only one who permanently raised himself above the bunch was Eliot Ness, by his memoirs THE UNTOUCHABLES, which became a hit television show. But Izzie and Moe almost did the same. From 1920 - 1926 their antics at swooping down on illegal gin mills and distilleries convulsed the nation. Izzie and Moe used a wide variety of disguises. They could come into a speakeasy as Harvard professors, or as doctors, or as actors, or as drunks...whatever, if they knew it would not raise suspicion they would try it. And when they did, the newspapers printed the stories...which delighted the public who otherwise might have supported the speakeasies and not the government. Finally, in 1926, the Department of Justice fired them as agents: they claimed that their notoriety had rendered them useless as effective agents. In reality it was pure jealousy. They were the only two agents (before the belated arrival of Ness) who gained public liking.The actual story would be worth a serious retelling in movie form. That is not the case here, which does touch on their use of colorful disguises (although I don't think either of them ever dressed up as a woman). It does show the failure of Prohibition due in part to corruption within the Department of Justice and it's agents. However, the story of Moe's (Carney's) so-called romance with a speakeasy hostess named Dallas (based on Texas Guinan) is totally false. Also the fight against one super mobster (based on Dutch Schultz in the film) is not true either - he was one of many targets for them. But with such defects the film is good to watch the two old pros having a ball in the gin-mills of the 1920s. Hopefully it will be released again sometime.

Gleason and Carney do a very good job in this film. Unfortunately, the reason a friend invited me over to watch it was because he knows I'm a history buff with a special interest in the Prohibition era -- and let's face it, even by Hollywood standards the historical facts were trashed. The real Izzy and Moe were very interesting people, if you want to see what they were up to leave this movie on the shelf and head to the library.