Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, October 15, 1994 TAG: 9412160008
SECTION: SPECTATOR PAGE: 15 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: PATRICIA BRENNAN THE WASHINGTON POST
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Hey, the guy who made agent Eliot Ness famous on ``The Untouchables'' rates a few minutes, right? He got them.
Freeh measured up, Stack said. ``He's a very nice guy. I had a lot of fun with him. He got into the Interpol aspect, which interested me. I liked the fact that he's geopolitical, that he understands that crime is international.''
But Stack's concern is less with the man who made it to the top than with young agents. ``My heart goes out to the young FBIs,'' he said. ``We expect [them to be] the best and brightest and then put them through the hardest training and pay them 22 cents to do the most dangerous of all jobs.
``I don't want to get on my high horse, but it seems we could save a few bucks somewhere else. As it says in `Death of a Salesman': `Attention must be paid; respect must be given.' ''
FBI buff that he is, Stack said he never met J. Edgar Hoover, who, he said, was not a fan of ``The Untouchables,'' an hour-long 1959-'63 crime show set in Chicago during the 1930s. Instead, Hoover favored ABC's ``The FBI,'' produced with his cooperation and starring Efrem Zimbalist Jr.
Nevertheless, Stack came to be known as television's FBI agent. The role won him an Emmy for the 1959-60 season.
``The Untouchables,'' based on Ness and his agents, was originally a two-part story, Stack said. When the show became a series, it was criticized, for its depiction of violence and for its use of Italian-surnamed gangsters.
``No one thought it was going to be a series,'' said Stack. ``When you tell the same story every week, it seemed like a vendetta between Ness and the Italians. It wasn't supposed to go on four years - it was supposed to go on twice.''
Stack, 75, is proud that he's never played the villain and makes no apologies for that. ``I don't care what I sound like,'' he said. ``I've never liked the bad guy. I've never done `The Godfather' syndrome. Some people find that attractive or fun. I don't like paying the bum's taxes. `Law-abiding' is not a bad word.
``With `The Untouchables,' I said, `I'll be involved with this show as long as you show these crumbs to be what they are. I want no psychological approaches, no rationale [such as] ``The reason they are the way they are is because their mother was frightened by a duck.'' They're a bunch of bums, and that's what I like to show them as.' ''
Although he is a fifth-generation Californian and the great-grandson of the man who founded the first theater in Los Angeles, he said, Stack spent his early childhood in France and Italy.
Stack believes that today's gangs have their roots in the Sicilians who brought their Cosa Nostra (Our Thing) with them when they immigrated to the United States.
``It was a subculture that was really more important than the laws of the country they supposedly belonged to,'' he said. ``That's happening now with the gangs, whereby their loyalty is not to the family, not to the country, it's to the crumbums like the Bloods and the Crips.''
Stack's law-and-order image got him roles on other crime shows, including ABC's ``Most Wanted'' and ``Strike Force,'' both focusing on the Los Angeles Police Department. But he also had a role in Steven Spielberg's film ``1941'' and in Zucker/Abrahams' wacky 1980 comedy ``Airplane!'' playing a pilot.
He returned to television in 1988 for ``Unsolved Mysteries,'' which was a Wednesday-night fixture for six seasons. Last month the show turned up on Sunday nights, and this week it settles into a Friday-night slot for the season (at 8 on WSLS-Channel 10).
After his father died when Stack was 9, friends such as Spencer Tracy and Gary Cooper often visited and encouraged the boy's interest in theater.
At the University of Southern California, he was on the polo team and raced speedboats. He made his acting debut opposite Deanna Durbin in ``First Love'' in 1939 and won a 1956 Oscar nomination for ``Written on the Wind.''
Stack is pleased with ``Unsolved Mysteries,'' which dramatizes cases and then seeks viewers' help in solving them. Of the 240 segments focusing on fugitives, 40 percent have resulted in arrests. The show also features ``lost loves,'' heirs, kidnappings, unexplained deaths, missing persons and robberies.
``In `The Untouchables' we brought motion-picture technology for the first time to television. We had some of the best actors on Broadway. And it was fun. But it was like trying to squeeze two quarts of water into half-pint glasses: There just wasn't that amount of time. This (`Unsolved Mysteries') you can live with.''
by CNB