The Big Heat

1953: Fritz Lang, director; starring Glenn Ford, Lee Marvin, Gloria Grahame. Classic noir with Ford as an apparently rare honest (but violent) cop whose wife was murdered, Marvin as a brutish Mob capo, and Grahame as a tough girl with a heart of gold. The film is notable in that it posits a crime syndicate in league with crooked police and politicians to run the city rackets, perhaps reflecting the famous Kefauver Senate committee hearings two years earlier that exposed the Mob’s influence on American society. Grahame gets this classic line borrowed from Vaudeville performer Sophie Tucker: “So I’m a gangster’s girl. I’ve been rich and I’ve been poor. Believe me, rich is better.”