Texas Noir Watch: The Houston Story (1956)

Watched:  01/25/2026

Format:  YouTube

Viewing:  First

Director: William Castle

The funny thing about The Houston Story (1956) is that there's probably a good idea for a movie in here, somewhere between a less dumb and horny Landman and less intense There Will Be Blood, but the script is so phoned in, it's both a mess and a little too pat.  But it does make Della Street (aka: Barbara Hale) seem like a bombshell, so it has that going for it.

It took me a minute to realize this is the kind of movie where our lead is a true noir protagonist - he's not on the side of the angels, he's a guy who's seen an angle and he's pursuing it to the top.  I read Lee J. Cobb was originally slated to play the role, and I can see that completely.  Instead we get Gene Barry - who is good! - but who didn't give "morally ambiguous POV character" in the first ten minutes of the movie.

Essentially, Barry plays an oil-field worker.  He gets the attention of the Houston mob by identifying a corpse found beneath the "docks of Houston" as a woman he know in Oklahoma.  However - that isn't who it is.  Barry happens to know that the woman he's named is actually living in Houston under the name Zoe Crane and mixed up with a second-banana mobster.  

With the mobster's attention, he brings a plan to the head banana (Edward Arnold) - and that banana, in turn, takes the plan to his syndicate boss in St Louis.  In the 1950's and 60's, mobsters were all about transitioning into more legitimate looking fronts in movies, which I assume mirrored real life (see The Godfather Part II).  

The scheme is essentially to drink milkshakes across Texas oil fields.  

To do this, they set up a shell company for the mob, and things go fine until a power fight breaks out between the second-banana and Gene Barry.  In part, because Barbara Hale goes for Gene Barry over the banana.

This movie also posits that Gene Barry is balancing a cute waitress he won't marry (Jeanne Cooper) and Barbara Hale, and he treats Cooper like dirt.  And she loves it.  Oh, 1950's.

The movie essentially refuses to acknowledge geography, neglecting to tell us they've gone to Galveston, won't show where the drilling is happening, when people are in Houston or when they've left.  It thinks 1950's Houston had a similar skyline to Manhattan.  And, it ignores that the other oil men of the era were probably as likely to figure out what these guys were up to and either sick the Feds on them or casually have these clowns bumped off.  

I do like that, in this movie, Gene Barry (1) punches a guy so hard from an observation deck that he knocks him right off the skyscraper, and (2) a scene later throws a throw pillow so hard, he knocks a guy across the room.  

Is this a good movie?  Not really.  The set-up is so convoluted, I was genuinely lost at times.  You do see a bit of mid-Century Houston, which is not particularly well-documented.  But I got to see that park by the Museum and another locale or two.  But otherwise, Houston looks like generic Anytown, USA in the movie, and I believe 90% of the movie was shot back in LA if the trees and streets are any indication.  

I also am not sure how much drilling happened around Houston itself.  I genuinely don't know, and kind of assume - not a lot?  Maybe for a while, but West Texas and other fields have usually been where one gets oil in Texas.  We definitely had jack pumps around all over when I was a kid living there, but never thought much about what was being pumped between Houston and the Gulf.

Anyway, I guess they couldn't name the movie "The Midland/ Odessa Story".