October 15, 1959: "The Untouchables" Premieres

October 15, 1959: The Untouchables premieres on ABC, based on the memoir of Eliot Ness, published after Ness' death in 1957. The show runs for 4 seasons, and dramatizes Ness, played by Robert Stack, and the team of U.S. Department of the Treasury agents he ran, fighting organized crime in Chicago in the late 1920s and early 1930s.

Despite the fact that Chicago crime boss Al Capone was only shown in the pilot and one other episode, played by Neville Brand, the show popularized Capone's heavily-accented question: "What are we gonna do about Eliot Ness?" Capone had a New York accent, not a native Italian one.

The show pissed off the Italian-American community, to the point where a completely fictional Italian-American character, Agent Rico Rossi, was added to the good guys, played by Nicholas Georgiade. The show also pissed off the Federal Bureau of Investigation, as Director J. Edgar Hoover pointed out that the onscreen version of Ness' team was involved in busts that the FBI did in real life, including that of Ma Barker and her gang (which didn't happen until 1935, a few years after the show's focus).

In fact, the real Ness and his Untouchables had very little to do with Capone's fall, and Ness and Capone met only once, after Capone's conviction in 1931, as Ness escorted Capone from his holding cell to a train taking him to the federal prison in Atlanta. But the show, and the 1987 film version with Kevin Costner as Ness and Robert de Niro as Capone, did a variation on the myth.

Stack won an Emmy Award for his portrayal of Ness. Like Leslie Nielsen, he appeared in the film Airplane! as a spoof of previous dramatic roles of his, and launched a new phase of his career doing that. He got serious again: From 1987 to 2002, hosted the anthology series Unsolved Mysteries, first on NBC, then, from 1997 onward, on CBS. He died in 2003.

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October 15, 1959 was a Thursday. Baseball season had ended 6 days earlier, when the Los Angeles Dodgers won the World Series over the Chicago White Sox in 6 games. Football was in midweek. The NBA season began 2 days later.

There were 2 games played in the NHL. The Montreal Canadiens beat the Toronto Maple Leafs, 4-2 at the Montreal Forum. And the Detroit Red Wings beat the Chicago Black Hawks, 2-1 at the Olympia Stadium in Detroit. The New York Rangers and the Boston Bruins were not scheduled.

Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York, former wife of Britain's Prince Andrew, was born on this day. So was celebrity chief Emeril Lagasse. I'm guessing his first word wasn't, "BAM!"