| “ | Call Mistretta. Tell him to talk to Gallano. | „ |
| ~ Deaney setting up delivery of a drug shipment. |
Walter Hart Deaney was one of the principal villains of the movie Mitchell. He was a corrupt trade union lawyer.
Walter Hart Deaney was portrayed by the late John Saxon.
History[]
For several years, the FBI was working on a case against Deaney and his union for violating a large number of Federal laws. Deaney first came to the attention of Mitchell when Deaney shot an unarmed intruder who was busily burglarizing his house. When the cops arrived with Mitchell in tow to investigate the shooting, Deaney lied about how the burglar went for one of his guns and Deaney shot him in self defense. Mitchell quickly picked up on the fact that the burglar was way too short to reach the handguns in Deaney's gun case. While law enforcement processed the scene, Deaney got on the phone and asked his underworld contacts to have Mistretta talk to Gallano.
Aware that the FBI pretty much had Deaney dead to rights, Chief Albert Pallin ordered Mitchell to shelve his suspicions and forget about Deaney. He instead had Mitchell tail local businessman James Arthur Cummings to see if Cummings would crack about a drug shipment hijacking in Mexico. That didn't stop Mitchell from using his free time to go back to Deaney's house to do some investigating of his own, which nearly got him shot by Deaney.
Unbeknownst to either Chief Pallin or Mitchell, Deaney and Cummings were in league with each other. To get Mitchell off their backs, Deaney hired a prostitute named Greta to go and sleep with Mitchell to distract him. Despite Greta's best efforts Mitchell kept on investigating Cummings, and arrested Greta when he learned she was hired to distract him.
Figuring out that Deaney hired the prostitute, Mitchell went to Deaney's house to confront him. Denaey tried to buy off Mitchell by offering to work with him on a real estate scam which would make Mitchell a lot of money. Mitchell refused and declared that he would either bust Deaney or die trying.
While out riding his dune buggy shortly afterwards, Cummings came by and the two men had a brief conversation. It was decided then to take Mitchell out. Cummings had Mitchell led into an off road area where Deaney and a couple henchmen tried to kill him. The two henchmen were killed, and Deaney himself died trying to run Mitchell down with his dune buggy - which tipped over and burst into flames.
Trivia[]
- In the version of Mitchell used by Best Brains for the MST3K episode the dune buggy scenes had been cut out of the film. As a result Deaney disappears from the film right after Deaney offered to let Mitchell in on a real estate scam - the scene showing Mitchell laying on his bed alone in his apartment was right after the buggy scenes. A radio announcer voice over did say that Deaney had died in the version screened by the MST3K episode. Still the abrupt disappearance of Deaney from the film led Tom Servo to later remark, "Hey, guys, wasn't John Saxon in this movie?”