The FBI Story is a 1959 American crime drama film starring James Stewart, and produced and directed by Mervyn LeRoy. The screenplay by Richard L. Breen and John Twist is based on a book by Don Whitehead.
Plot
John Michael ("Chip") Hardesty (James Stewart) describes a murder, seen in a flashback. He then narrates the incident in which Jack Gilbert Graham (Nick Adams) took out life insurance on his mother and planted a bomb in her luggage for a flight she was taking from Denver, Colorado in 1955. Hardesty is shown delivering a lecture to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). He begins to recount his history as an agent of the bureau, which is shown as a series of flashbacks comprising the remainder of the film.
In May 1924, Hardesty was working as a government clerk for the nascent FBI in Knoxville, Tennessee. He proposes to his sweetheart, a librarian named Lucy Ann Ballard (Vera Miles). Ballard thinks Hardesty's potential is being wasted by the FBI and wants him to start practicing law. They marry with this idea in mind. Hardesty is inspired to stay with the bureau after hearing a speech from its new director, J. Edgar Hoover. Lucy Ann reveals that she is pregnant; she persuades Hardesty to stay in the bureau for just a preliminary year.
Hardesty is sent to the South to investigate the Ku Klux Klan. He is moved around until he is sent to Ute City, Wade County, Oklahoma to investigate a series of murders of Native Americans who had oil-rich mineral land and rights. The FBI was compelled to investigate after one of the murders was committed on federal government land. The FBI forensics laboratory ties the doctored wills and life insurance policies of the murder victims to a local banker, Dwight McCutcheon (Fay Roope), with the typewriter that he used. Lucy Ann, already the mother of three, suffers a miscarriage around this time.
On June 17, 1933, three FBI agents were escorting Frank "Jelly" Nash from a train to a car outside the Union Station in Kansas City when they were ambushed and killed. This event changed the FBI; a year later, Congress gave the FBI statutory authority to carry guns and make arrests. Hardesty and his friend Sam Crandall (Murray Hamilton) are excited by his prospect, but Lucy Ann does not like the idea at all.
After receiving a tip, Hardesty and Crandall head to Spider Lake, Wisconsin, on April 22, 1934, but barking dogs alert the gangsters and they scatter. The agents then head to a nearby country store to call the Chicago office. When they get there they find Baby Face Nelson (William Phipps) holding two men hostage. Nelson opens fire, fatally wounding Crandall.
Hardesty then recounts his involvement in the capture and/or deaths of numerous infamous mobsters of the day including John Dillinger, Pretty Boy Floyd, Baby Face Nelson, and Machine Gun Kelly. Because she fears for his life and is unable to persuade Chip to leave the bureau, Lucy decides to spend some time apart and takes the children for an extended stay with her parents. While preparing an Easter egg hunt, Lucy calls her mother "a nag, a real nag." Later, Lucy's mother sarcastically tells Lucy that Lucy's father is also "a nag." Realizing that she has been nagging her husband to leave his job and that she and the children are miserable without him, Lucy and the children return home.
With the U.S. entry into World War II, "enemy aliens" (Americans of Japanese, German, and Italian descent) are quickly rounded up by the FBI and sent to internment camps to prevent possible espionage and collaboration with Axis powers. The ranks of the bureau are quickly doubled from about 2,500 to more than 5,000 agents. One of those aspiring new agents is the deceased Sam's son George who is worried that he will never live up to his father's reputation; a romance buds between him and Hardesty's oldest daughter. Hardesty's only son announces his enlistment in the U.S. Marine Corps. Lucy is heartbroken, fearing he will be killed in war. Eventually she understands that he, like many American boys, is willing to sacrifice his safety at home to serve his country.
Hardesty is sent to South America to relieve three agents whose identities have been compromised. The third is revealed to be George; he has been deep in the jungle intercepting secret radio messages. Local authorities move in, forcing the FBI agents to destroy the equipment and flee. Back in the U.S., Hardesty and Lucy receive a telegram informing them their son has been killed in the line of duty during the Battle of Iwo Jima. Though devastated, they comfort each other, praying their son did not suffer.