Spats Colombo is the main antagonist of the 1959 Billy Wilder comedy film, Some Like It Hot. He's a gangster who's character was based on Al Capone, who started the St. Valentine's Day Massacre. When he catches Jerry and Joe who witness the massacre, he goes after the duo to track them down and kill them.
He was portrayed by the late George Raft.
History[]
Spats is heard to be hosting a funeral parlor. Outside the parlor, Toothpick Charlie was telling police sergeant Mulligan what he needed to know to get in the parlor without drawing suspicion to him. Mulligan enters the parlor and is led to the speakeasy, where Mulligan's surprised to see a floor show being staged. Two of the performers were saxophonist Joe, and bass-player Jerry. Suddenly, Mulligan calls a police raid the round up and arrests everyone, except Jerry and Joe who had snuck out the back and managed to escape. Spats sits at one of the tables with his thick-skulled muscle-bound bodyguards. He introduces his thugs as his lawyers when threatened with arrest by the police sergeant and managed to get away for now.
As Jerry and Joe were trying to find a new job, the duo accepted a one-night stand job playing that evening at a St. Valentine's Dance in Illinois. After Joe tricks a secretary into lending them her car, they pick up the borrowed vehicle from Charlie's Garage in Chicago, where they come across Colombo again. As they are filling the car up with gad, the St. Valentine's Day Massacre is in progress. Spats is getting his revenge in Toothpick Charlie for ratting on him and sending the police raid, Charlie's gangsters are lined up against a wall, as Spats emerges from a vehicle. The gangland killer bids Charlie farewell, averts his eyes, and signals the machine-gun massacre.
When the gas tank overflows and leaks gas onto the floor, it inadvertently reveals Joe's and Jerry's hiding place within the garage. But just as Spats' troop is about to kill the duo for witnessing and massacre, a wounded Charlie reaches for a phone, and Spats bloodies him with a machine-gun and then emasculates him further by kicking the toothpick from his mouth. The duo uses this opportunity to make a getaway eager to get out of town to avoid being massacred. The two of the them disguised themselves as women and joined an all-girls band that was traveling to Miami, Florida.
Ironically, Spats just happened to have a gangster convention a few days later where he had to meet in Miami-- the same city where Joe and Jerry where hiding away. He and his mob arrive at the hotel for the 10th Annual "Friends of Italian Opera" gangster convention and banquet, trailed there by Sergeant Mulligan as suspects in the garage massacre. When Spats passes by a slick young gangster named Johnny Paradise flipping a coin, he grabs the coin in mid-air.
Still in their women disguises, Jerry (Daphne) and Joe (Josephine) went into the hotel lobby and talked about their different outfits. "Daphne" spots Spats in his compact's mirror while applying lipstick to his pursed lips. To save themselves from Spats' revenge, the "girls" decide they had to flee - but first they share an excruciating elevator ride with the flirtatious mobsters. They reach their hotel room and quickly pack their suitcases for a getaway.
The mobsters are suspicious when they see the two dames, Jerry and Joe, climbing down from their second floor balcony room with their instruments, but they recognized the duo from the bullet holes in Jerry's base. After a wild, slapstick chase through the hotel, the two musicians (after changing costumes and appearing as a bellboy and an old man in a wheelchair) find themselves hiding under the gangster's convention banquet table where all the mob members are gathering. They realize that Spats has arrived when his feet are seen from their point of view under the table. The mobster is angered that his goons have lost their trail, and threatens to stuff a grapefruit half into the face of one of his cohorts.
Joe and Jerry hear Little Bonaparte, the nationwide crime syndicate boss, and the rival of Spats from the South Side - open the dinner. Bonaparte criticizes Spats for the "big noise" that he made on the St. Valentine's Day job when rubbing out seven North Side chapter members.
Bonaparte has arranged a party - to commemorate the occasion of the massacre. A giant "Happy Birthday Spats" cake is wheeled in and during the singing of "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow," which was actually a trap for Spats' troop. Spats knew something was up when Bonaparte claimed he was celebrating Spats' birthday when in reality, his birthday was four months away. Johnny Paradise leaped out with a tommy gun, eliminating Spats and his gang.