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The Lawless Years is an American crime drama series that aired on NBC from April 16 1959, to September 22, 1961. The series is the first of its kind set set during the Roaring 20s, having predated ABC's far more successful The Untouchables by six months. The series stars James Gregory and Robert Karnes.
1959
Detective Ruditsky relates the story of Nick Joseph, a small-time hood from Manhattan's Lower East Side, who rises from petty theft to become an ace contract killer for the syndicate's notorious Murder, Inc.
An immigrant woman tries to get Ruditsky to set her son on the straight and narrow. It seems as though he's been hanging around with a gang of hoodlums. Ruditsky gives it his best effort but it could be a tough sell.
Jane Cooper, recently paroled from prison, proves that she hasn't learned anything when she once again begins hanging around with underworld characters. Only this time it seems as though her mobster boyfriends keep dying off.
Cutie Jaffe, a small-time hood with big time ambitions, begins knocking over some of his brother-in-law's bootlegging trucks. Will Cutie rise in the underworld hierarchy or is he headed for a hard fall?
Dutch Schultz wants to bump off special prosecutor Thomas Dewey who has been after him. The syndicate bigwigs deny him permission to make the hit but the Dutchman proceeds with his plans anyway.
Small time racketeer Eddie Safronek plots revenge against the hoods who beat him up and left him for dead.
The underworld bribes police detective Harry Kramer in order to get him to withhold information in a case.
After a moll is found murdered, flashbacks tell her story and those of mobsters Tony Sappio and Big Ed Harper, who both loved not wisely but too well.
The body of a murdered young woman is dragged from the Harlem River and the police ascertain that she was killed because she knew too much regarding the activities of a bootlegging gang. Ruditsky then becomes puzzled when the attorney of the chief suspect insists on going to trial as quickly as possible.
Ex-convict Maxey Gorman gets a Machiavellian character named A.J. to finance his entry into the bootlegging business. The two men become partners but when the dough starts pouring in Maxie looks for a way to rid himself of A. J.
Muddy Kasoff has been renting automobiles for gangsters to use but he has been secretly tippin the cops. When the hoods discover that Muddy has been informing they have him killed. Ruditsky investigates and discovers that a cigar band might be an important clue.
When Ruditsky can't be bribed by a waterfront crime gang they attempt to frame him by making it look like he's on the take.
Ruditsky warns visiting high roller Big Ziggy to get out of town but before he can hit the road he get roped into a crooked poker game with three cardsharps.
Dick Wilson (2) as Game Boy Miles | Harry Arnie as Benny | Brad Trumbull (2) as O'Neill | Lou Herbert as Titanic Thompson | Jack Kruschen as Laughing Boy | John Vivyan as Big Ziggy
At a wild gangland party a young girl falls out of a window and is killed. When evidence shows that the girl was pushed, visiting Chicago mobster Ray Baker is arrested and charged with the crime. But Ruditsky has his doubts and thinks that the real culprit might be another mobster.
ucky Silva is a small-time hood who by a combination of circumstance, ambition, and drive rises quickly to a position of prominence in New York's Mafia.
A judge is murdered right before a state crime commission is scheduled to take a look into his activities.
Ruditsky is temporarily assigned to duty in a Brooklyn precinct and must get the goods on a gang of hooligans who are pulling off a series of drug store robberies.
1959
When a young hoodlum named Al Brown destroys a blind man's shop it puts Ruditsky on his trail. But it will be under another name in another city that Brown becomes notorious.
When the trail of a murdered garment factor owner leads back to the notorious Lepke Buchalter he sends the htman responsible, Big Greeny, to stay in Los Angeles under the auspices of the equally notorious Bugsy Siegal.
Ruditsky goes after Art Harris, a racketeer who's muscled his way into the political scene in order to protect his organized crime interests.
Mob boss Bobo Konig puts a bounty of $50,000 on psychotic gunman Billy Boy Creel who immediately goes underground. Ruditsky then tries to find Billy Boy before Konig's killers do.
Gangster Louis Otto was once a childhood friend of Ruditsky's. Now he's wanted for the murder of an underling.
A former union trucker who now owns a candy store is pressured by the Mob to leave New York City because he knows too much about their past labor racketeering activities. When he refuses to leave the city, the Mob bumps him off. The man's crippled son is the only witness to his father's killing.
Shortly after busting up a numbers racket, Ruditsky finds himself the target of a person or persons unknown.
The Mob kidnaps the son of a millionaire and holds him for a ransom of $100,000. Or did they?
1961
Robert Karnes
Max Fields
James Gregory
Barney Ruditsky
