In “The Rusty Heller Story,” Elizabeth Montgomery took Prohibition-era Chicago by storm as Heller, a seductive Dixie damsel who pits a newly arrived mob faction against Al Capone’s teetering empire and then plays both against the cops. “Now don’t you go appealing to my decency, because I ain’t got any,” she drawls to a clearly smitten Ness (Robert Stack). This episode records Capone’s arrest and conviction, but it’s the glint of a grin Heller brings to Ness’s granite mug that carves this episode in TV history.
Montgomery “was about the last choice for this part,” Stack says, “because she was a Foxcroft girl from a society family. How in the world could she play a Southern hooker? But she surprised the bejesus out of everybody. She should have won an Emmy.”
Original Airdate: October 13, 1960
