The irreplaceable WAC brings forth another sterling HD remaster of a vintage crime thriller. Robert Mitchum and Robert Ryan go head-to-head in this remake of Howard Hughes’ silent hit; the context is modern mob racketeering but the screenplay turns the conflict into an old-fashioned personal grudge match. Playboy producer Hughes threw the picture together and then brought on 4 directors for extensive re-shoots. Lizabeth Scott and Ray Collins are along for the ride, while we admire the acting of clean cop William Talman and sleazy politico cop William Conrad.

The Racket
Blu-ray
Warner Archive Collection
1951 / B&W / 1:37 Academy / 89 min. / Street Date October 14, 2025 / Available at Amazon / 27.31
Starring: Robert Mitchum, Lizabeth Scott, Robert Ryan, William Talman, Ray Collins, Robert Hutton, Virginia Huston, William Conrad, Joyce Mackenzie, Walter Sande, Les Tremayne, Don Porter, Walter Baldwin, Tito Vuolo, Done Beddoe, Howland Chamberlain, Harry Lauter, John McGuire, Milburn Stone, Max Wagner, Sally Yarnell.
Cinematography: George E. Diskant
Art Directors: Albert S. D’Agostino, Jack Okey
Costumes: Michael Woulfe
Film Editor: Sherman Todd
Music Composer: Paul Sawtell
Screenplay by William Wister Haines, W.R. Burnett from a play by Bartlett Cormack
Presented by Howard Hughes
Produced by Edmund Grainger
Uncredited directors Mel Ferrer, Tay Garnett, Nicholas Ray, Sherman Todd
Directed by John Cromwell

It had to be a massive tax dodge. Either that, or Howard Hughes bought the RKO studio just because he wanted to play making movies, and interview aspiring actresses. As if perpetually remaking  Hell’s Angels he spent the better part of a decade re-shooting aerial footage for his bizarre picture  Jet Pilot. He didn’t remake his earlier productions  Scarface or  The Outlaw, but he did push through a re-do project he thought couldn’t lose. His first silent version had been a big hit back in 1928.

Hughes assigned RKO’s top tough-guy actors Robert Mitchum and Robert Ryan to the remake. The duo had clicked in the studio’s earlier ‘socially conscious’ hit  Crossfire, and the new film could be a rematch bout. It’s too bad that Robert Mitchum is cast as a straight-laced authority figure, like Walter Huston in the early sound police saga  The Beast of the City. He’s tall, strong, sincere … and square.

1951’s The Racket shows precisely how Howard Hughes’ sloppy filmmaking habits ruined so many of the films he supervised. The silent movie’s W.R. Burnett script has only been minimally updated, creating several glaring inconsistencies. Disruptive rewrites and re-shoots guarantee that its parts don’t fit together. A resulting narrative confusion makes the film appear to endorse police vengeance murders. Still, with Robert Mitchum and Robert Ryan to look at, The Racket is never boring.

Tough police captain Thomas McQuigg (Robert Mitchum) takes charge of a precinct in a big city known to be in the grip of vicious racketeer Nick Scanlon (Robert Ryan). The mob has recently moved in, and its slick ‘accountant mobster’ Connolly (Don Porter) can’t break Scanlon of old habits. Scanlon insists on using violence, and has his thug Durko (Max Wagner) rub out a squealer (Howland Chamberlain). McQuigg aims to provoke Scanlon into revealing the weak points in his operation. He dispatches honest cop Bob Johnson (William Talman) to shake down Scanlon’s brother Joe (Brett King), who is dating nightclub singer Irene Hayes (Lizabeth Scott). McQuigg would like to find the Mr. Big behind Scanlon, but the fix has also sewn up City Hall. The local D.A. Mortimer Welsh (Ray Collins) is running for Mayor, and wants things to remain quiet until after the election. But he also feeds the syndicate information right from police headquarters. Welsh is assisted by an equally corrupt detective, Sgt. Turk (William Conrad).

At the first Oscars ceremony, Howard Hughes’ 1928 silent film was nominated for a Best Picture Academy Award. 24 years later, this literal remake replays many of the original’s scenes, right down to the blocking of shots. In his absorbing audio commentary ‘Noir Czar’ Eddie Muller opines that the major thrust of Hughes’ meddling was to slowly re-transform a new script back into the old show.

Thus new scenes are dropped into the film that don’t connect with those around them. A spectacular stunt at a railroad crossing sets up an exciting foot chase … that happens off-screen. Completely on his own, William Talman’s fearless cop Bob Johnson has his name printed in the paper so that the mob will know where to find him. He lures two hit men to his house and guns them down in a reverse ambush. Not only is there no investigation, we hear no further mention of the incident, not even a “Nice shootin’, Bob” from the other cops.

Did Howard Hughes understand star Robert Mitchum’s appeal as a shady-but-ethical anti-hero?  RKO’s biggest star is not the best candidate to play a straight-arrow police Captain. McQuigg never wears a uniform. He hangs around the station slouching over the desk like it was a bar. But he also takes point when chasing down a crook in the street. Tough guy Robert Ryan is fine in yet another predictable part as a hot-headed bad guy. The gangster Nick Scanlon would be too ‘colorful’ for Capone’s Chicago, let alone this unidentified big city of 1951. His big downfall is an emotional crisis over a misbehaving brother. He is far too easily tricked into blowing his cool.

The Racket may be a reasonably honest in its presentation of organized crime, but its silent-movie dramatics leave us with loose-cannon bad guys. The new ‘corporate’ mobster Connolly tells Nick Scanlon to clean up his act, but he keeps doing things the old way: beating his own men, ordering outright murders. In the film’s least credible scene, Scanlon airs his family laundry right in front of Captain McQuigg, who just stands in the corner and watches. Scanlon is upset because he wanted his little brother Joe to have a ‘better life’ outside the rackets … a sentimental ‘Andy Hardy’ issue that falls completely flat.

When Scanlon can’t get his own lieutenants to follow orders without a pistol-whipping, we know he’s not long for this world. Captain McQuigg needs to do very little — the city’s big crime racketeer is so unstable, he self-destructs all on his own. The climactic showdown is pure silent-movie stuff. It’s not difficult to nail a bad guy who strolls right into a precinct house and commits a capital crime.

The Racket goes part of the way toward suggesting a much more sophisticated attitude toward corruption in city politics — and then takes three giant steps back. Captain McQuigg knows all about D.A. Welsh’s cooperation with the mob, and Welsh barely tries to hide it. Welsh’s detective buddy Sgt. Turk displays a smug attitude about ‘city politics’ as well. Yet McQuigg never makes the connection that either man would tip off the mob when the going gets tough.

(spoiler)

By bending a new script back into the shape of the silent original, Howard Hughes ends The Racket on an entirely unsatisfactory note. Now under arrest, Scanlon threatens to tell the cops everything he knows, and somehow expects the mob to come to his rescue. An unseen ‘bigger Mob boss back East’ instead orders Welsh and Turk to silence Scanlon. Captain McQuigg actively abets this, apparently eager to see Scanlon pay with his life for killing a cop. Although the crusading crime commission arrives to settle the hash of the dirty D.A. and his cop partner, their investigation will be hindered because McQuigg has helped arrange for the vital witness to be murdered.

McQuigg signs off for the night and goes home to his wife, having ‘broken the mob.’  He has instead ensured that the Mr. Bigs back East can sleep easy. The Racket ends up showing how more than a few big cities functioned in the late 1940s, when elite units within police departments protected the mobsters and looked out for their best interests.

Robert Mitchum is his smooth self, if never very much like a police captain. As in many of his bad-guy roles, Robert Ryan is stuck with an overly volatile character who becomes too predictable. He’s at his best in early scenes, such as  his pleasant/threatening exchange with Howland Chamberlain’s squealer. Favorite William Talman was usually a noir villain, but not here.  ←  As McQuigg’s true-blue beat cop he has more action scenes than anyone. Lizabeth Scott receives high billing but her character has no direct connection to the male stars. She’s instead romanced by Robert Hutton’s ineffectual cub reporter. She sings a song, dubbed.

Virginia Huston (Mitchum’s girlfriend from  Out of the Past) has a good scene or two as Talman’s wife, although her big acting moment takes place behind a closed door. William Conrad  (The Killers) is fun as the reptilian bad detective.  →  Always interjecting sly remarks, his Sgt. Turk acts as if he’s accountable to nobody.

In the semi-irrelevant trivia department, director John Cromwell is said to have played the leading role of McQuigg in the original Broadway play of The Racket. His son, actor James Cromwell, would play a prominent role in the 1997 Curtis Hanson / James Ellroy classic  L.A. Confidential. That police drama takes place in the same year as The Racket, in the same kind of quasi-corrupt city environment.

The Warner Archive Collection Blu-ray of The Racket would not make the top ten in a list of WB / MGM / RKO noirs we’d like to see on HD, but the teaming of stars Mitchum and Ryan justifies the pick, and more. Cameraman George E. Diskant had filmed the superior RKO noirs  Rifffraff,  They Live By Night and  On Dangerous Ground, and would go directly from The Racket to provide the stunning images for  The Narrow Margin (which should be the WAC’s top contender for Blu-ray honors). The studio’s dwindling output soon saw Diskant move to TV work.

The Racket’s location photography of nighttime Los Angeles is really impressive, especially when we recognize an iconic building on Washington Blvd. in Culver City. The rich B&W contrasts even make the backlot scenes look good, and arrange attractive close-ups for Lizabeth Scott. She’s unfortunately on board mostly for show.

The one real extra is ported over from a 2006 DVD, an excellent audio commentary by Eddie Muller. Muller compares the two versions of the film and sorts out the maze of re-shoots as best he can. Instead of re-synching the commentary to the new image, the WAC apparently found that it can save money just by leaving it against the old standard definition feature transfer. Thus we can’t listen to Eddie and see the good transfer at the same time.

The trailer on view is also something we didn’t expect to see with the WAC — it appears to have been sourced from the web, a weak scan up-rezzed to standard def, and looking pretty terrible.

We’ll bet that the Italian distributor also disliked the idea of Robert Mitchum playing an honest cop: they substituted a Mitchum image from Out of the Past, implying that the star is playing a crooked member of ‘La Gang.’  ↗

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

The Racket
Blu-ray rates:
Movie: Good
Video: Excellent
Sound: Excellent
Supplements:
2006 audio commentary by Eddie Muller
original trailer.
Deaf and Hearing-impaired Friendly? YES; Subtitles: English (feature only)
Packaging: One Blu-ray in Keep case
Reviewed: November 12, 2025
(7420rack)

Visit CineSavant’s Main Column Page
Glenn Erickson answers most reader mail: cinesavant@gmail.com

Text © Copyright 2025 Glenn Erickson