The Mob is a 1951 American film noir crime-thriller produced by Columbia Pictures, directed by Robert Parrish, and starring Broderick Crawford. The screenplay, which was written by William Bowers, is based on the novel Waterfront by Ferguson Findley.
Plot
Johnny Damico (Broderick Crawford), a detective going home on a rainy night, finds himself just a few feet from a shooting on a dark street. The gunman claims to be a detective from another precinct, flashing a real badge, and then slipping away. Damico discovers that the victim of the shooting was a witness who was to have appeared before a grand jury investigating waterfront crime, and that the same man who shot him also murdered the chief investigator on the case just a few hours earlier (which is where the badge came from). Damico could lose his job, but instead he is given the chance to redeem himself by the police commissioner (Ralph Dumke) and the district attorney (Carleton Young).
The authorities then make plans to fly Damico to New Orleans with instructions to work his way "back up", all undercover, as a New Orleans tough-guy named Tim Flynn. Once he returns home by cargo ship, Johnny has the assigned task to discover there the true identity of the head of the waterfront racketeers. All that is known about the mysterious mob boss is that his name is "Blackie" Clegg. The city in which all the action takes place is unspecified, but it is "up" relative to New Orleans, though palm trees are shown. Upon his return, while still under cover, "Flynn" gets a job locally as a longshoreman and quickly makes connections to the mob's network of enforcers as well as to crews of surrounding dockworkers. He is befriended by Tom Clancy (Richard Kiley), a fellow longshoreman who lives at the same hotel. There the two frequently meet after work for drinks, which are invariably served to them by a bartender nicknamed "Smoothie" (Matt Crowley).
Damico, still posing as Flynn, now manages to hook up with union thug Joe Castro (Ernest Borgnine), who tries to frame Damico for murder by having his strong-arm goon Gunner (Neville Brand) temporarily seize the undercover cop's own pistol to shoot and kill a potential stoolie, Culio (Frank DeKova). Castro then has Gunner return the pistol to Damico, who the next day is arrested for the murder by a crooked police sergeant named Bennion (Walter Klavun), although Police Lt. Banks manages to spring him when it's found the murder gun does not match Flynn's gun. (Flynn switched guns anticipating that he was potentially being set up)
After following one blind alley involving a federal agent—the man he knows as Tom Clancy—Damico is given a tip by the bartender Smoothie, who offers to drive Damico to meet the elusive Blackie. Once the two men are at the mob boss's base of operations, Damico is shocked when Smoothie reveals that he is actually Blackie (Matt Crowley). Blackie wants to hire Flynn to kill a witness, an Officer Damico (who does not realize that Flynn is Damico). To Flynn/Damico's horror, the hoods have kidnapped Mary and she has been cruelly interrogated by a brutal hood (Robert Foulk) to reveal the whereabouts of Damico, but Mary won't talk. Flynn pulls his gun, a gunfight ensues, a hood is killed (Robert Foulk), but Blackie is only wounded and escapes secretly to a nearby hospital, where, under a new identity, he is admitted to have his wound treated. Damico's fiancee Mary (Betty Buehler), has been slightly injured while being interrogated at Blackie's office, and has been taken to the same hospital. While Damico visits her, the wounded Blackie learns that they are in the hospital and confronts the couple in Mary's hospital room. Blackie pulls out a pistol from his hospital robe's pocket; just as he is preparing to kill the couple, a pair of police snipers stationed in the adjacent building fatally shoot Blackie as he stands near the hospital room's window. Following this is the light-hearted last scene with Johnny, Mary, Lt. Banks, Tom, and Peggy Clancy meeting together in a bar.