Black Hand

Just back in New York from Italy, sworn to avenge his father’s murder, Gene Kelly as Johnny (though using assumed name) meets old cop friend Lorelli (J. Carrol Naish) and discovers his contact has been killed, in MGM’s loosely fact-based Black Hand, 1950, directed by Richard Thorpe.

Jumping eight years from the prologue, Gene Kelly is Johnny, with impressive memorized Italian, returning to New York from the old country, looking to avenge his father’s murder, eventually meeting a girl from grade school (Teresa Celli), in MGM’s atmospheric Mafia drama Black Hand, 1950.

Richard Thorpe directs, in a style that might be compared to Francis Coppola's, the opening in Little Italy of MGM's noir-ish Mafia drama Black Hand, 1950, Peter Brocco a soon-to-be-martyred lawyer, Eleonora Mendelssohn his wife, and Raymond Malkin the son who will grow up to be Gene Kelly.