Softwing Most undeservingly overhyped movie of all time??

SteinMo What a freaking movie. So many twists and turns. Absolutely intense from start to finish.

Seraherrera The movie is wonderful and true, an act of love in all its contradictions and complexity

Billie Morin This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

bkoganbing Lee J. Cobb in a further attempt to buttress his reputation after being a friendly witness at the House Un-American Activities Committee chose yet another labor story in The Garment Jungle. Cobb plays a factory owner of an unorganized shop in the garment center who has uneasy and unofficial partnership with racketeer Richard Boone. Boone provides the muscle to keep out organizers from the International Ladies Garment Workers Union from Cobb's place of business.After the death of Robert Ellenstein who was Cobb's partner, Cobb's son Kerwin Matthews who had not taken an interest in the business up till now is shocked that Cobb is in deep with someone like Boone. Matthews then takes up the mantle of crusader.Which really doesn't fit him well. I found it hard to believe that Matthews suspected nothing up to that time. Probably in real life he would just make sure he didn't know.Boone is his usual good self, but the outstanding performance in the film is a young Robert Loggia who is passionate and dynamic in his role as an ILGWU organizer. God bless man who some 60 years later is still going strong and who is never bad in anything he does. Also standing out are the two females in substantial roles, Gia Scala as Loggia's wife and Valerie French as a buyer who has a thing going with Cobb.I don't think it was an accident that Lee J. Cobb appeared in this role. The ILGWU as a union fought both Communists and racketeers both from taking over the union. The ILGWU president David Dubinsky was a veteran of those wars. He probably understood what Cobb went through in making that decision to be a friendly witness and this film I have no doubt was under ILGWU strict auspices.One thing that was very much in keeping with the times was Loggia's role as an organizer. The rank and file of the ILGWU was passing from a Jewish base to more Latinos, both men and women. Loggia's role as an organizer of Latino background was spot on.Despite some flaws and it's not in the same class as On The Waterfront, The Garment Jungle is a good film with some strong performances by a few players.

sol1218 **SOILERS** With a steel-like grip on the New York City garment industry mobster Artie Ravidge, Richard Boone,has been running a protection racket taking in as much as $2,000.00 a month from clothes manufactures. That's to make sure that their business don't end up being burned by his hoods.The last thing that Ravidge wants is that the garment workers unionize thus putting him and his hoods out of business. It's when Ravidge has the president of Roxton Fashions Walter Mitchell's, Lee J. Cobb, partner and good friend Fred Kenner, (Robert Ellestein), who's in favor of unionizing the workers, killed in an elevator accident that Mitchell starts to have doubts about his relationship with him. Things get even more strained for Mitchell when his son Allan, Kerwin Mathews, shows up-after being away for some time in Europe-to help in running his garment business.Seeing what Ravidge has been doing in strong-arming the workers in preventing them from forming a union Allan decides to throw his lot in with firebrand union organizer Tulio Renata, Robert Loggia. It's when Tulio is later murdered by Ravidge's, with the help of a number of turncoats union members, thugs that even the wimpy Walter Mitchell decides that enough is enough in his having Ravidge, as a silent partner, run his garment business. But by then it's too late for Mitchell to turn evidence in his secret logs that he's been keeping, recoding all he shady deals he's had with Ravidge over the years, without him implicating himself!This is all ironed out by Ravidge himself in him having Mitchell murdered when he started shooting off his mouth in him unionizing his work force. This also had Allan together with the late Tulio's wife Theresa, Gia Scala, get their hands on Mitchel's logs and then try to get them into the hands of the city's District Attorneys office. That's if Ravidge who has everything to lose, including his freedom, allows them to do it!***SPOILERS*** Even though he was killed off early in the movie Tulio Renata was undoubtedly the one person who ended up putting the Ravidge mob behind bars. The fact that Tulio put his life on the line, and ended up losing it, gave the mostly intimidated workers the push that they needed to not only organize but throw Ravidge and his boys out of the garment industry. As for Allan he soon took up the torch that Tulio dropped and, by risking his life, got the goods-his father's secret logs-that not only exposed Ravidge's murderous protection racket but had him arrested indited and finally convicted for the many crimes that he committed.

Robert J. Maxwell Something of a disappointment. Lee J. Cobb is the anti-union head of Roxton Garments in New York. His partner in the business is killed when an elevator is unleashed and plunges twenty-seven floors to the bottom of the shaft, in the scariest scene in the film.Cobb doesn't know it, or doesn't let himself realize it, but the man behind the killing is Richard Boone, who protects the business from union organizers.Then Cobb's son, Kerwin Mathews, returns from Europe determined to learn the business and join his father in running a clean shop. He's shocked -- shocked! -- to learn that Boone has been clobbering the union members and killing a few who have become irretrievably irritating.Robert Loggia is one of the organizers who is killed by a couple of Boone's goons, led by Wesley Addy. Loggia leaves behind a widow, Gia Scala, with whom Mathews, understandably and decorously, takes up.In the end, Cobb pays for his self deception, Addy and Boone get their just desserts, and Mathews winds up with the succulent Scala, after whom an opera house is named.There isn't a sparkle in any line of dialog. A couple of lines are stolen verbatim from "On the Waterfront" -- "pistoleros", "you'll talk yourself right into the grave." The plot is schematic and holds absolutely no surprises. Vincent Sherman's direction is pedestrian. The photography is flat an uninspired, though there are a couple of nice shots of New York streets.Lee J. Cobb can act. In this case, it must have been easy for him because he replays Johnny Friendly from "On the Waterfront," only this time with a soft heart. Richard Boone can act too. Joseph Wiseman, in a minor part, does a good job. Gia Scala hits her marks, says what the script demands, and does what the director tells her to. A stunning woman, her life soured early on. The director and photographer do a good job on Wesley Addy. He has white hair, a blanched face, eyes the color of a glacial lake, and he's sometimes shot through a wide-angle lens than turns his surprisingly fleshy lips into those of some kind of parasitic fish. I don't see him as a low-tier muscle man though. He and Boone should have switched roles. Harold J. Stone is his reliable self, although he's forced to be more "Italian", as Tony, than comes naturally to him. Nobody else in anything resembling a major part is more than mediocre, and some performers don't clear even that bar. Kerwin Mathews may be a nice guy in real life, but he's blandly sterile and belongs in domestic dramas on afternoon television.Great title, suggestive of intrigue and shadows. Some good people in the cast. A potentially explosive expose of a business nobody knows much about but which deals in megabucks.And it all comes out like this.

jimmccool I was lucky enough to see a VHS-transfer copy of this, and despite the poor quality, I can recommend this as a top-notch Crime/Mob/Racket thriller. Not exactly noir, but shares many many similar qualities - fast pace, seedy NY locations, opening voice-over etc. Think 'Phenix City Story' and you won't go far wrong - though this is actually even better than that. As usual, Lee J. Cobb is outstanding. And it seems strange to see Cobb here, in such an unashamedly 'leftish' film, after the trouble he had with HUAC earlier in the decade. There's not one mention of the 'C' word, though "anti-communism" would undoubtedly have been the cover for the Mob's anti-union activities... This is only one of very few films I can think of from Hollywood with a pro-Union message - and I doubt if it could even have been made during the height of the McCarthyite witch-hunt. Find it, watch it, enjoy it. And then join your local trade union, organise to keep the mobsters and agitators out.