170-646: The Public Enemy ( Enemies of the Public in the UK) is a 1931 American pre-Code gangster film produced and distributed by Warner Bros. The film was directed by William A. Wellman , and starring James Cagney , Jean Harlow , Edward Woods , Donald Cook and Joan Blondell . The film relates the story of a young man's rise in the criminal underworld in Prohibition -era urban America. The supporting players include Beryl Mercer , Murray Kinnell , and Mae Clarke . The screenplay
340-453: A World War I veteran cast onto the streets with a morphine addiction from his hospital stay. In Wild Boys of the Road (1933), the young man played by Frankie Darrow leads a group of dispossessed juvenile drifters who frequently brawl with the police. Such gangs were common; around 250,000 youths traveled the country by hopping trains or hitchhiking in search of better economic circumstances in
510-725: A bouncer in organized crime premises such as brothels. In his early twenties, Capone moved to Chicago and became a bodyguard of Johnny Torrio , head of a criminal syndicate that illegally supplied alcohol —the forerunner of the Outfit—and was politically protected through the Unione Siciliana . A conflict with the North Side Gang was instrumental in Capone's rise and fall. Torrio went into retirement after North Side gunmen almost killed him, handing control to Capone. Although Capone expanded
680-563: A cardiac arrest on January 22, and on January 25, surrounded by his family in his home, died after his heart failed as a result of apoplexy . His body was transported back to Chicago a week later and a private funeral was held. He was originally buried at Mount Olivet Cemetery in Chicago. In 1950, Capone's remains, along with those of his father, Gabriele, and brother, Frank, were moved to Mount Carmel Cemetery in Hillside, Illinois . Capone
850-486: A chorus girl , she regularly received diamonds and pearls as gifts, but now must content herself with a corned beef sandwich. In Union Depot (1932), Douglas Fairbanks Jr. puts a luscious meal as the first order of business on his itinerary after coming into money. Given the social circumstances, politically oriented social problem films ridiculed politicians and portrayed them as incompetent bumblers, scoundrels, and liars. In The Dark Horse (1932), Warren William
1020-621: A soup kitchen in Chicago during the Depression. The Saint Valentine's Day Massacre led to public outcry about Thompson's alliance with Capone, and this was a factor in Anton J. Cermak winning the mayoral election on April 6, 1931. Capone was known for ordering other men to do his dirty work for him. In May 1929, one of Capone's bodyguards , Frank Rio , uncovered a plot by three of his men; Albert Anselmi, John Scalise and Joseph Giunta . They had been persuaded by Aiello to depose Capone and take over
1190-492: A "police raid". The faux police lined the seven victims along a wall and signaled for accomplices armed with machine guns and shotguns. Moran was not among the victims. Photos of the slain victims shocked the public and damaged Capone's image. Within days, Capone received a summons to testify before a Chicago grand jury on charges of federal Prohibition violations, but he claimed to be too unwell to attend. In an effort to clean up his image, Capone donated to charities and sponsored
1360-406: A $ 100 bill in half and told Dodds that he would get the other half when he learned it. Capone also sent two bodyguards to accompany jazz pianist Earl Hines on a road trip. Capone indulged in custom suits, cigars, gourmet food and drink, and female companionship. He was particularly known for his flamboyant and costly jewelry. His favorite responses to questions about his activities were "I am just
1530-493: A $ 50,000 bounty to anyone who eliminated Capone. At least ten gunmen tried to collect on the bounty, but ended up dead. Capone's ally Ralph Sheldon attempted to kill both Capone and Lombardo for Aiello's reward, but Capone henchman, Frank Nitti , had an intelligence network that learned of the transaction and had Sheldon shot in front of a West Side hotel, although he survived the incident. In November 1927, Aiello organized machine-gun ambushes across from Lombardo's home and
1700-526: A Prohibition agent in Homer , Nebraska ; Raffaele James Capone , also known as Ralph Capone or "Bottles", who took charge of his brother's beverage industry; Salvatore "Frank" Capone ; Ermina Capone, who died at the age of one; Ermino "John" Capone; Albert Capone; Matthew Capone and Mafalda Capone. Ralph and Frank worked with Al in his criminal empire. Frank did so until his death on April 1, 1924. Ralph ran Al's bottling companies (both legal and illegal) early on and
1870-404: A baseball bat" and that he would have instead let an enforcer perform the murders; however, despite claims that the story was first reported by author Walter Noble Burns in his 1931 book The One-Way Ride: The Red Trail of Chicago Gangland from Prohibition to Jake Lingle , Capone biographers Max Allan Collins and A. Brad Schwartz have found versions of the story in press coverage shortly after
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#17328584905142040-579: A building named after himself that is larger than the Empire State Building . He tricks everyone he knows into poverty to appropriate others' wealth. He is ultimately shot by his secretary ( Verree Teasdale ), who then ends the film and her own life by walking off the roof of the skyscraper. Americans' mistrust and dislike of lawyers was a frequent topic of dissection in social problem films such Lawyer Man (1933), State's Attorney , and The Mouthpiece (1932). In films such as Paid (1930),
2210-502: A businessman, giving the people what they want" and "All I do is satisfy a public demand". Capone had become a national celebrity and talking point. Capone based himself in Cicero , Illinois , after using bribery and widespread intimidation to take over town council elections, making it difficult for the North Siders to target him. Capone's driver was found tortured and murdered, and there
2380-492: A cablegram to all the studios in March 1934 mandating that Dillinger not be portrayed in any motion picture. The genre entered a new level following the release of Little Caesar (1931), which featured Edward G. Robinson as gangster Rico Bandello. Caesar , along with The Public Enemy (starring James Cagney ) and Scarface (1932) (starring Paul Muni ), were, by standards of the time, incredibly violent films that created
2550-665: A censorship board in 1921. Virginia followed suit the next year, and eight individual states had a board by the advent of sound film. Many of these boards were ineffectual. By the 1920s, the New York stage, a frequent source of subsequent screen material, had topless shows; performances were filled with profanity, mature subject matter, and sexually suggestive dialogue. Early during the sound system conversion process, it became apparent that what might be acceptable in New York would not be so in Kansas. In 1927, Hays suggested studio executives form
2720-461: A cigar store frequented by Capone, but those plans were foiled after an anonymous tip led police to raid several addresses and arrest Milwaukee gunman Angelo La Mantio and four other Aiello gunmen. After the police discovered receipts for the apartments in La Mantio's pockets, he confessed that Aiello had hired him to kill Capone and Lombardo, leading the police to arrest Aiello himself and bring him to
2890-429: A committee to discuss film censorship. Irving Thalberg of Metro Goldwyn Mayer (MGM), Sol Wurtzel of Fox , and E. H. Allen of Paramount responded by collaborating on a list they called the " Don'ts and Be Carefuls ", based on items that were challenged by local censor boards, and which consisted of eleven subjects best avoided, and twenty-six to be handled very carefully. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) approved
3060-451: A court appearance after his attorney claimed he suffered a nervous breakdown. Aiello disappeared with some family members to Trenton, New Jersey , where he continued his campaign against Capone and Lombardo. Chicago politicians had long been associated with questionable methods, and even newspaper circulation "wars", but the need for bootleggers to have protection in city hall introduced a far more serious level of violence and graft. Capone
3230-608: A dispossessed juvenile delinquent is in court expecting a jail sentence. However the judge lets the boy go free, revealing to him the symbol of the New Deal behind his desk, and tells him "[t]hings are going to be better here now, not only here in New York, but all over the country." A box-office casualty of this hopefulness was Gabriel Over the White House , which entered production during the Hoover era malaise and sought to capitalize on it. By
3400-541: A feud with Capone. Aiello allied himself with several of Capone enemies, including Jack Zuta , who ran vice and gambling houses together. Aiello plotted to eliminate both Lombardo and Capone, and starting in the spring of 1927, made several attempts to assassinate Capone. On one occasion, Aiello offered money to the chef of Joseph "Diamond Joe" Esposito 's Bella Napoli Café, Capone's favorite restaurant, to put prussic acid in Capone's and Lombardo's soup; reports indicated he offered between $ 10,000 and $ 35,000. Instead,
3570-524: A few weeks of inpatient and outpatient care, on March 20, 1940, a very sickly Capone left Baltimore and travelled to his mansion in Palm Island, Florida . In 1942, after mass production of penicillin was started in the United States, Capone was one of the first American patients treated by the new drug. Though it was too late for him to reverse the damage to his brain, it did slow down the progression of
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#17328584905143740-480: A foreword and postscript moralizing on the gangster as a menace to the public welfare." A theatre in Times Square ran The Public Enemy 24 hours a day during its initial release. At the 4th Academy Awards , the film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Story , losing to The Dawn Patrol . In 1989, an animatronics version of a scene from The Public Enemy was incorporated into The Great Movie Ride at
3910-415: A fur warehouse robbery, assuring them he will take care of them if anything goes wrong. When Tom is startled by a stuffed bear, he shoots it, alerting the police, who kill gang member Larry Dalton. When they go to Putty Nose for help, they find he has fled. Tom's straitlaced older brother Mike Powers tries and fails to talk Tom into giving up crime. Tom keeps his activities secret from his doting mother. When
4080-423: A grapefruit for breakfast, he always wanted to put the grapefruit into her face just to get a reaction out of her, so she would show some emotion; he felt that this scene gave him the opportunity to rid himself of that temptation. Some, such as film critic Ben Mankiewicz , have asserted that Mae Clarke's surprised and seemingly somewhat angry reaction to the grapefruit was genuine, as she had not been told to expect
4250-496: A high and self-sufficing purpose. Hays and others, such as Samuel Goldwyn , obviously felt that motion pictures presented a form of escapism that served a palliative effect on American moviegoers. Goldwyn had coined the famous dictum, "If you want to send a message, call Western Union " in the pre-Code era. However, the MPPDA took the opposite stance when questioned about certain so-called "message" films before Congress in 1932, claiming
4420-407: A horse-riding accident, prompting Tom to buy the horse and shoot it. A rival gang headed by "Schemer" Burns takes advantage of the disarray resulting from Nathan's death, precipitating a gang war. Later, Matt is gunned down in public, with Tom narrowly escaping the same fate. Furious, Tom takes it upon himself to single-handedly settle scores with Burns and some of his men. Tom is seriously wounded in
4590-560: A knock on the door, Tom's tied-up body is propped against it, and he falls dead onto the floor. The film closes with Mike walking slowly towards the camera. Uncredited: The screenplay, which was written by Harvey F. Thew, was based on an unpublished novel, Beer and Blood , by John Bright and Kubec Glasmon . Bright and Glasmon based their novel on actual people, having witnessed some of Al Capone 's murderous gang rivalries in Chicago . Warner Bros. studio head Jack L. Warner bought
4760-416: A letter from a lawyer acting for Capone conceding his large taxable income for certain years he had paid no tax on. On March 13, 1931, Capone was charged with income tax evasion for 1924, in a secret grand jury. On June 5, 1931, Capone was indicted by a federal grand jury on 22 counts of income tax evasion from 1925 through 1929; he was released on $ 50,000 bail. Capone was then indicted on 5,000 violations of
4930-448: A lot further than more recent efforts such as Wall Street , and it's amazing how much plot and character are gracefully shoehorned into 75 minutes." The film featured pre-Code megastar Warren William (later dubbed "the king of Pre-Code" ), "at his magnetic worst", playing a particularly vile and heartless department store manager who, for example, terminates the jobs of two long-standing male employees, one of whom takes his own life as
5100-628: A memory." Although the liberalization of sexuality in American film had increased during the 1920s, the pre-Code era is either dated generally to the start of the sound film era, or more specifically to March 1930, when the Hays Code was first written. Over the protests of NAMPI, New York became the first state to take advantage of the Supreme Court's 1915 decision in Mutual Film vs. Ohio by instituting
5270-581: A multi-agency attack on Capone. Treasury and Justice Departments developed plans for income tax prosecutions against Chicago gangsters, and a small, elite squad of Prohibition Bureau agents (whose members included Eliot Ness ) were deployed against bootleggers. In a city used to corruption, these lawmen were incorruptible. Charles Schwarz, a writer for the Chicago Daily News , dubbed them Untouchables . To support Federal efforts, Strong secretly used his newspaper's resources to gather and share intelligence on
The Public Enemy - Misplaced Pages Continue
5440-565: A new type of anti-hero. Nine gangster films were released in 1930, 26 in 1931, 28 in 1932 and 15 in 1933, when the genre's popularity began to subside after the end of Prohibition . The backlash against gangster films was swift. In 1931, Jack Warner announced that his studio would stop making them and that he himself had never allowed his 15-year-old son to see them. Al Capone Alphonse Gabriel Capone ( / k ə ˈ p oʊ n / kə- POHN , Italian: [kaˈpoːne] ; January 17, 1899 – January 25, 1947), sometimes known by
5610-485: A night train to Cleveland , Omaha , Kansas City , Little Rock , or Hot Springs , Arkansas , where they would spend a week in luxury hotel suites under assumed names. In 1928, Capone paid $ 40,000 to Clarence Busch of the Anheuser-Busch brewing family for a 10,000 square foot (930 m ) home at 93 Palm Avenue on Palm Island , Florida , between Miami and Miami Beach . In November 1925, Antonio Lombardo , who
5780-536: A picture, to be titled Mad Dog of Europe , which was intended to be a full-scale attack on Hitler. Jaffe had quit his job at RKO Pictures to make the film. Hays summoned the pair to his office and told them to cease production as they were causing needless headaches for the studios. Germany had threatened to seize all the properties of the Hollywood producers in Germany and ban the import of any future American films. In
5950-448: A potential government takeover of film censorship and social research seeming to indicate that movies that were seen to be immoral could promote bad behavior, was enough pressure to force the studios to capitulate to greater oversight. In 1922, after some risqué films and a series of off-screen scandals involving Hollywood stars, the studios enlisted Presbyterian elder Will H. Hays to rehabilitate Hollywood's image. Hays, later nicknamed
6120-549: A product of the excesses of the previous decade. In looking back upon the 1920s, events were increasingly seen as occurring in prelude to the market crash. In Dance, Fools, Dance (1931), lurid party scenes featuring 1920s flappers are played to excess. Joan Crawford ultimately reforms her ways and is saved; less fortunate is William Bakewell , who continues on the careless path that leads to his ultimate self-destruction. For Rain or Shine (1930), Milton Ager and Jack Yellen composed " Happy Days Are Here Again ". The song
6290-514: A relatively slim margin. On the day of the Pineapple Primary on April 10, 1928, voting booths were targeted by Capone's bomber, James Belcastro , in wards where Thompson's opponents were thought to have support, causing the deaths of at least fifteen people. Belcastro was accused of murdering lawyer Octavius Granady, an African-American, who challenged Thompson's candidate for the Black vote, and
6460-456: A restaurant on the night of Matt's wedding reception to Mamie, Tom and Matt recognize Putty Nose and follow him home. Begging for his life, Putty plays a song on the piano that he had entertained Tom and Matt with when they were children. Tom shoots him in the back, while a dazed Matt watches. Tom gives his mother a large wad of money, but Mike rejects the gift. Tom tears up the banknotes and throws them in his brother's face. "Nails" Nathan dies in
6630-471: A result. He also threatens to fire Loretta Young 's character, who pretends to be single to stay employed, unless she sleeps with him, then attempts to ruin her husband after learning she is married. Films that stated a position about a social issue were usually labeled either "propaganda films" or "preachment yarns". In contrast to Goldwyn and MGM's definitively Republican stance on social issue films, Warner Brothers, led by New Deal advocate Jack L. Warner ,
6800-441: A settler of disputes. In a fateful step, Torrio arranged the murder of O'Banion at his flower shop on November 10, 1924. This placed Hymie Weiss at the head of the gang, backed by Vincent Drucci and Bugs Moran . Weiss had been a close friend of O'Banion, and the North Siders made it a priority to get revenge on his killers. During Prohibition , Capone was involved with Canadian bootleggers who helped him smuggle liquor into
6970-510: A stroke. Alphonse Gabriel Capone was born in Brooklyn , a borough of New York City , on January 17, 1899. His parents were Italian immigrants Teresa ( née Raiola ; 1867–1952) and Gabriele Capone (1865–1920), both born in Angri , a small municipality outside of Naples in the province of Salerno . His father was a barber and his mother was a seamstress . Capone's family had immigrated to
The Public Enemy - Misplaced Pages Continue
7140-410: A taxicab, a gunman in a second-floor window across the street started firing at Aiello with a submachine gun. Aiello was said to have been shot at least 13 times before he toppled off the building steps and moved around the corner, attempting to move out of the line of fire. Instead, he moved directly into the range of a second submachine gun positioned on the third floor of another apartment block, and
7310-427: A ticket just before that scene went onscreen, go enjoy the scene, leave, then come back during the next show just in time to see only that scene again. The scene was parodied years later in the 1961 Cagney movie One, Two, Three when Cagney threatens Otto ( Horst Buchholz ) with a half grapefruit but then decides against doing so. The film featured a prologue "apprising the audience that the hoodlums and terrorists of
7480-463: A total income of $ 1,038,654, during the five-year period. Capone was convicted on five counts of income tax evasion on October 17, 1931, and was sentenced a week later to 11 years in federal prison, fined $ 50,000 plus $ 7,692 for court costs, and was held liable for $ 215,000 plus interest due on his back taxes. The contempt of court sentence was served concurrently. New lawyers hired to represent Capone were Washington-based tax experts. They filed
7650-412: A two-week trial over which Wilkerson presided. Seeking to avoid the same fate, Capone ordered his lawyer to regularize his tax position, and although it was not done, his lawyer made crucial admissions when stating the income that Capone was willing to pay tax on for various years, admitting income of $ 100,000 for 1928 and 1929, for instance; hence, without any investigation, the government had been given
7820-415: A way that might arouse passion or be made to seem right and permissible. All criminal action had to be punished, and neither the crime nor the criminal could elicit sympathy from the audience. Authority figures had to be treated respectfully, and the clergy could not be portrayed as comic characters or villains. Under some circumstances, politicians, police officers and judges could be villains, as long as it
7990-490: A writ of habeas corpus based on a Supreme Court ruling that tax evasion was not fraud, which apparently meant that Capone had been convicted on charges relating to years that were actually outside the time limit for prosecution; however, a judge interpreted the law so that the time that Capone had spent in Miami was subtracted from the age of the offences, thereby denying the appeal of both Capone's conviction and sentence. Capone
8160-572: A written prologue added before the opening credits, advising that gangsters such as Tom Powers and Caesar "Rico" Bandello, the title character in Little Caesar (played by Edward G. Robinson ), are a menace that the public must confront. As with many a Warner/First National pre-code talkie , a print has been in the Library of Congress since the 1970s. The film has been available to the public for several decades, due to several video and DVD releases. In
8330-533: Is again enlisted, this time to get an imbecile, who is accidentally in the running for Governor, elected. The candidate wins the election despite his incessant, embarrassing mishaps. Washington Merry-Go-Round portrayed the state of a political system stuck in neutral. Columbia Pictures considered releasing the film with a scene of the public execution of a politician as the climax before deciding to cut it. Cecil B. DeMille released This Day and Age in 1933, and it stands in stark contrast to his other films of
8500-721: Is based on an unpublished novel— Beer and Blood by two former newspapermen, John Bright and Kubec Glasmon —who had witnessed some of Al Capone 's murderous gang rivalries in Chicago. In 1998, The Public Enemy was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". As youngsters in 1900s Chicago, Irish-Americans Tom Powers and his lifelong friend Matt Doyle engage in petty theft, selling stolen items to "Putty Nose". Putty Nose persuades them to join his gang on
8670-410: Is based on nothing more than "beer and blood". Tom retorts in disgust: "Your hands ain't so clean. You killed and liked it. You didn't get them medals for holding hands with them Germans." Tom and Matt acquire girlfriends, Kitty and Mamie, respectively. Tom eventually tires of Kitty; when she complains once too often, he angrily pushes half a grapefruit into her face. He then drops her for Gwen Allen. At
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#17328584905148840-466: Is decidedly anti-capitalist; however, its preface claims otherwise: In many parts of the South today, there exists an endless dispute between rich land-owners, known as planters, and the poor cotton pickers, known as "peckerwoods". The planters supply the tenants with the simple requirements of everyday life and; in return, the tenants work the land year in and year out. A hundred volumes could be written on
9010-414: Is generally seen as having an appreciable effect in bringing about the victory of Republican mayoral candidate William Hale Thompson , who had campaigned on a platform of not enforcing Prohibition and at one time hinted that he'd reopen illegal saloons. Thompson allegedly accepted a contribution of $ 250,000 from Capone. Thompson beat Democratic candidate William Emmett Dever in the 1927 mayoral race by
9180-477: Is inhabited by the archangel Gabriel upon being knocked unconscious. The spirit's behavior is similar to that of Abraham Lincoln . The president solves the nation's unemployment crisis and executes an Al Capone -type criminal who has continually flouted the law. Dictators were not just glorified in fiction. Columbia's Mussolini Speaks (1933) was a 76-minute paean to the fascist leader, narrated by NBC radio commentator Lowell Thomas . After showing some of
9350-404: Is not a Hugoesque fable of gangsters fighting among themselves, but a documentary drama of the bandit standing against society. It carries to its ultimate absurdity the fashion for romanticizing gangsters, for even in defeat the public enemy is endowed with grandeur." Variety called it "low-brow material given such workmanship as to make it high-brow" which attempts to "square everything [with]
9520-401: Is to ENTERTAIN. ... This we must keep before us at all times and we must realize constantly the fatality of ever permitting our concern with social values to lead us into the realm of propaganda ... the American motion picture ... owes no civic obligation greater than the honest presentment of clean entertainment and maintains that in supplying effective entertainment, free of propaganda, we serve
9690-592: The Disney-MGM Studios theme park in Orlando, Florida . In 1998, The Public Enemy was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". In 2001, the Sopranos episode " Proshai, Livushka " featured title character Tony Soprano watching scenes from the film, becoming overwhelmed with emotion. In 2003
9860-564: The Great Depression of the 1930s motivated studios to produce films with racy and violent content, which boosted ticket sales. Soon, the flouting of the code became an open secret. In 1931, The Hollywood Reporter mocked the code, and Variety followed suit in 1933. In the same year as the Variety article, a noted screenwriter stated that "the Hays moral code is not even a joke any more; it's just
10030-524: The Strand , weaker than most in its story, stronger than most in its acting, and, like most, maintaining a certain level of interest through the last burst of machine-gun fire"; Woods and Cagney give "remarkably lifelike portraits of young hoodlums" and "Beryl Mercer as Tom's mother, Robert Emmett O'Connor as a gang chief, and Donald Cook as Tom's brother, do splendidly." Time magazine called The Public Enemy "well-told" and noted, "Unlike City Streets , this
10200-454: The Tribune erroneously reported the date as May 7, 1923. In the early years of the decade, Capone's name began appearing in newspaper sports pages where he was described as a boxing promoter. Torrio took over Colosimo's criminal empire after the latter's murder on May 11, 1920, in which Capone was suspected of being involved. Torrio headed an essentially Italian organized crime group that
10370-672: The Victorian era was sometimes ridiculed as being naïve and backward. When the Code was announced, The Nation , a liberal periodical, attacked it. The publication stated that if crime were never presented in a sympathetic light, then, taken literally, "law" and "justice" would become the same. Therefore, events such as the Boston Tea Party could not be portrayed. And if clergy were always to be presented positively, then hypocrisy could not be examined either. The Outlook agreed. Additionally,
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#173285849051410540-534: The Volstead Act (Prohibition laws). On June 16, 1931, at the Chicago Federal Building in the courtroom of Wilkerson, Capone pleaded guilty to income tax evasion and the 5,000 Volstead Act violations as part of a 2 + 1 ⁄ 2 -year prison sentence plea bargain . On July 30, 1931, Wilkerson refused to honor the plea bargain, and Capone's counsel rescinded the guilty pleas. On the second day of
10710-475: The "Match King", who attempts to corner the global market on matches. William's vile character, Paul Kroll, commits robbery, fraud, and murder on his way from a janitor to a captain of industry. When the market collapses in the 1929 crash, Kroll is ruined and chooses suicide over imprisonment. William played another unscrupulous businessman in Skyscraper Souls (1932): David Dwight, a wealthy banker who owns
10880-515: The "screen Landis". In 1924, Hays introduced a set of recommendations dubbed "The Formula", which the studios were advised to heed, and asked filmmakers to describe to his office the plots of films they were planning. The Supreme Court had already decided unanimously in 1915 in Mutual Film Corporation v. Industrial Commission of Ohio that free speech did not extend to motion pictures, and while there had been token attempts to clean up
11050-519: The 1920s. "After two years the Jazz Age seems as far away as the days before the war", F. Scott Fitzgerald commented in 1931. In the sense noted by Fitzgerald, understanding the moral climate of the early 1930s is complex. Although films experienced an unprecedented level of freedom and dared to portray things that would be kept hidden for several decades, many in America looked upon the stock market crash as
11220-421: The 1920s. Rivals saw Capone as responsible for the proliferation of brothels in the city. Capone often enlisted the help of local members of the black community into his operations; jazz musicians Milt Hinton and Lionel Hampton had uncles who worked for Capone on Chicago's South Side. A fan of jazz as well, Capone once asked clarinetist Johnny Dodds to play a number that Dodds did not know; Capone split
11390-531: The 90's and early 2000's wrestlers Rocco Rock and Johnny Grunge would used the title of the movie when they formed the tag team in places like WWE , WCW , and ECW and they would both be in the Hardcore Wrestling Hall of Fame . Pre-Code Hollywood Pre-Code Hollywood was an era in the American film industry that occurred between the widespread adoption of sound in film in the late 1920s and
11560-474: The Capone outfit. On March 27, 1929, Capone was arrested by FBI agents as he left a Chicago courtroom after testifying to a grand jury that was investigating violations of federal prohibition laws. He was charged with contempt of court for feigning illness to avoid an earlier appearance. On May 16, 1929, Capone was arrested in Philadelphia , Pennsylvania, for carrying a concealed weapon. On May 17, 1929, Capone
11730-555: The Chicago Outfit. Later on, Capone beat the men with a baseball bat and then ordered his bodyguards to shoot them, a scene that was included in the 1987 film The Untouchables . Deirdre Bair, along with writers and historians such as William Elliot Hazelgrove, have questioned the veracity of the claim. Bair questioned why "three trained killers could sit quietly and let this happen", while Hazelgrove stated that Capone would have been "hard pressed to beat three men to death with
11900-490: The Chicago police, but at a lower level and without the open violence that had marked Capone's rule. Organized crime in the city had a lower profile once Prohibition was repealed, already wary of attention after seeing Capone's notoriety bring him down, to the extent that there is a lack of consensus among writers about who was actually in control and who was a figurehead "front boss". Prostitution, labor union racketeering, and gambling became moneymakers for organized crime in
12070-463: The Harvard Inn. Capone inadvertently insulted a woman while working the door , and he was slashed with a knife three times on the left side of his face by her brother, Frank Galluccio; the wounds led to the nickname "Scarface", which Capone loathed. The date when this occurred has been reported with inconsistencies. When Capone was photographed, he hid the scarred left side of his face, saying that
12240-565: The October 29, 1929, market crash) highlighted Bow's sexual attractiveness. 1920s stars such as Bow, Gloria Swanson , and Norma Talmadge freely displayed their sexuality in a straightforward fashion. The Great Depression presented a unique time for film-making in the United States. The economic disaster brought on by the stock market crash of 1929 changed American values and beliefs in various ways. Themes of American exceptionalism and traditional concepts of personal achievement, self-reliance, and
12410-483: The Pre-Code era was more incendiary than the gangster film; neither preachment yarns nor vice films so outraged the moral guardians or unnerved the city fathers as the high caliber scenarios that made screen heroes out of stone killers. In the early 1930s, several real-life criminals became celebrities. Two in particular captured the American imagination: Al Capone and John Dillinger . Gangsters like Capone had transformed
12580-535: The President. In Hoover's 1952 Memoir, the former President reported that Strong argued "Chicago was in the hands of the gangsters, that the police and magistrates were completely under their control, …that the Federal government was the only force by which the city's ability to govern itself could be restored. At once I directed that all the Federal agencies concentrate upon Mr. Capone and his allies." That meeting launched
12750-537: The Rock Islanders, which gave regular Sunday concerts for other inmates. Capone also transcribed the song " Madonna Mia " creating his own arrangement as a tribute to his wife Mae. At Alcatraz, Capone's decline became increasingly evident, as neurosyphilis progressively eroded his mental faculties; his formal diagnosis of syphilis of the brain was made in February 1938. He spent the last year of his Alcatraz sentence in
12920-485: The South Clark Street police station. Upon learning of the arrest, Capone dispatched nearly two dozen gunmen to stand guard outside the station and await Aiello's release. The men made no attempt to conceal their purpose there, and reporters and photographers rushed to the scene to observe Aiello's expected murder. When released, Aiello was given a police escort out of the station to safety. He later failed to make
13090-649: The U.S. When Capone was asked if he knew Rocco Perri , billed as Canada's "King of the Bootleggers", he replied: "Why, I don't even know which street Canada is on." Other sources claim that Capone had certainly visited Canada, where he maintained some hideaways, although the Royal Canadian Mounted Police states that there is no "evidence that he ever set foot on Canadian soil". An ambush in January 1925 left Capone shaken, but unhurt. Twelve days later, Torrio
13260-563: The United States enters World War I in 1917, Mike enlists in the Marines. In 1920, with Prohibition about to go into effect, Paddy Ryan recruits Tom and Matt as beer "salesmen" (enforcers) in his bootlegging business. He allies himself with noted gangster Samuel "Nails" Nathan. As the bootlegging business becomes ever more lucrative, Tom and Matt flaunt their wealth. Mike finds out that his brother's money comes not from politics, as Tom claims, but from bootlegging, and declares that Tom's success
13430-533: The United States in 1893 by ship, first going through the port city of Fiume , Austria-Hungary (modern-day Rijeka , Croatia). The family settled at 95 Navy Street, in the Brooklyn Navy Yard . When Capone was aged 11, he and his family moved to 38 Garfield Place in Park Slope , Brooklyn. Capone's parents had eight other children: James Vincenzo Capone , who later changed his name to Richard Hart and became
13600-418: The actor to really hit Cagney. Cook played his part a bit too well, and he struck Cagney in the mouth with such force, he actually broke one of Cagney's teeth. Yet in spite of his genuine shock and pain, Cagney stayed in character and played out the rest of the scene. In another incident, live ammunition was used in a scene where Tom Powers ducks around the corner of a building to take cover from machine gun fire;
13770-410: The approach was legally sound: illegally earned income was subject to income tax. The key to Capone's conviction on tax charges was not his spending, but proving his income, and the most valuable evidence in that regard originated in his offer to pay tax. Ralph, his brother and a gangster in his own right, was tried for tax evasion in 1930. Ralph spent the next 18 months in prison after being convicted in
13940-458: The audience as to how to commit crime. Sadistic violence and reaction shots showing the faces of individuals on the receiving end of violence were considered especially sensitive areas. The Code later recommended against scenes showing robbery, theft, safe-cracking, arson, "the use of firearms", "dynamiting of trains, machines, and buildings" and "brutal killings", on the basis that they would be rejected by local censors. No motion picture genre of
14110-593: The audience feels sure that evil is wrong and good is right." The Code contained an addendum, commonly referred to as the Advertising Code, that regulated film advertising copy and imagery. On February 19, 1930, Variety published the entire contents of the Code. Soon the men obligated to enforce the code – Jason Joy, who was the head of the Committee until 1932, and his successor, Dr. James Wingate – would be seen as generally ineffective. The first film
14280-425: The audiences' desire for realism led to certain unsavory social, legal, and political issues being portrayed in film. The length of pre-Code films was usually comparatively short, but that running time often required tighter material and did not affect the impact of message films. Employees' Entrance (1933) received the following 1985 review from Jonathan Rosenbaum : "As an attack on ruthless capitalism, it goes
14450-399: The authority to order studios to remove material from a film in 1930, but instead worked by reasoning and sometimes pleading with them. Complicating matters, the appeals process ultimately put the responsibility for making the final decision in the hands of the studios themselves. One factor in ignoring the Code was the fact that some found such censorship prudish. This was a period in which
14620-529: The ban on homosexuality or the use of specific curse words, were never directly mentioned but were assumed to be understood without clear demarcation. Miscegenation, the mixing of the races, was forbidden. The Code stated that the notion of an "adults-only policy" would be a dubious, ineffective strategy that would be difficult to enforce. However, it did allow that "maturer minds may easily understand and accept without harm subject matter in plots which does younger people positive harm." If children were supervised and
14790-640: The bootlegging business through increasingly violent means, his mutually profitable relationships with Mayor William Hale Thompson and the Chicago Police Department meant he seemed safe from law enforcement. Capone apparently reveled in attention, such as the cheers from spectators when he appeared at baseball games. He made donations to various charities and was viewed by many as a "modern-day Robin Hood ". The Saint Valentine's Day Massacre , in which seven gang rivals were murdered in broad daylight, damaged
14960-460: The breaking point. These economic circumstances led to a loss of nearly half of the weekly attendance numbers and closure of almost a third of the country's theaters in the first few years of the depression. Even so, 60 million Americans went to the cinema weekly. Apart from the economic realities of the conversion to sound, were the artistic considerations. Early sound films were often noted for being too verbose. In 1930, Carl Laemmle criticized
15130-526: The character of Tom Powers was among the AFI's 100 Years...100 Heroes and Villains , placing 42nd in the villain list. In 2008, the film appeared on one of the AFI's 10 Top 10 lists—the best ten films in ten "classic" American film genres. The Public Enemy was listed as the eighth best in the gangster film genre . The film was re-released in 1941 after the Production Code was put into effect. Three scenes from
15300-514: The chef exposed the plot to Capone, who responded by dispatching men to destroy Aiello's bakery on West Division Street with machine-gun fire. More than 200 bullets were fired into the bakery on May 28, 1927, wounding Aiello's brother Antonio. During the summer and autumn of 1927, a number of hitmen Aiello hired to kill Capone were themselves slain. Among them were Anthony Russo and Vincent Spicuzza, each of whom had been offered $ 25,000 by Aiello to kill Capone and Lombardo. Aiello eventually offered
15470-457: The city without incurring serious investigation. In the late 1950s, FBI agents discovered an organization led by Capone's former lieutenants reigning supreme over the Chicago underworld. Some historians have speculated that Capone ordered the 1939 murder of Edward J. O'Hare a week before his release, for helping federal prosecutors convict Capone of tax evasion, though there are other theories for O'Hare's death. Due to his failing health, Capone
15640-439: The connection between mobsters and Broadway productions in movies such as Lights of New York (1928), Tenderloin (1928), and Broadway (1929). The Hays Office had never officially recommended banning violence in any form in the 1920s—unlike profanity, the drug trade or prostitution—but advised that it be handled carefully. New York's censor board was more thorough than that of any other state, missing only around 50 of
15810-502: The country's 1,000 to 1,300 annual releases. From 1927 to 1928, violent scenes removed included those in which a gun was pointed at the camera or "at or into the body of another character". Also subject to potential censorship were scenes involving machine guns, criminals shooting at law enforcement officers, stabbing or knife brandishing (audiences considered stabbings more disturbing than shootings), whippings, choking, torture and electrocution, as well as scenes perceived as instructive to
15980-503: The crime. Collins and Schwartz suggest that similarities among reported versions of the story indicate a basis in truth and that the Outfit deliberately spread the tale to enhance Capone's fearsome reputation. George Meyer, an associate of Capone's, also claimed to have witnessed both the planning of the murders and the event itself. In 1930, upon learning of Aiello's continued plotting against him, Capone resolved to finally eliminate him. In
16150-402: The disease. In 1946, his physician and a Baltimore psychiatrist examined him and concluded that Capone had the mentality of a 12-year-old child. He spent the last years of his life at his Palm Island mansion, spending time with his wife and grandchildren. On January 21, 1947, Capone had a stroke . He regained consciousness and started to improve, but contracted bronchopneumonia . He suffered
16320-410: The early 1900s, the United States was still primarily a rural country, especially in self-identity. D. W. Griffith 's The Musketeers of Pig Alley (1912) is one of the earliest American films to feature urban organized crime. Prohibition 's arrival in 1920 created an environment in which those who wished to consume alcohol often had to consort with criminals, especially in urban areas. Nonetheless,
16490-483: The early 1930s. Complicating matters for the studios, the advent of sound film in 1927 required an immense expenditure in sound stages, recording booths, cameras, and movie-theater sound systems, not to mention the new-found artistic complications of producing in a radically altered medium. The studios were in a difficult financial position even before the market crash as the sound conversion process and some risky purchases of theater chains had pushed their finances near
16660-562: The economic realities of a country struggling to find its next meal. In Blonde Venus (1932), Marlene Dietrich 's character resorts to prostitution to feed her child, and Claudette Colbert 's character in It Happened One Night (1934) gets her comeuppance for throwing a tray of food onto the floor by later finding herself without food or financial resources. Joan Blondell 's character in Big City Blues (1932) reflects that, as
16830-704: The enforcement of the Motion Picture Production Code censorship guidelines (popularly known as the Hays Code ) in 1934. Although the Hays Code was adopted in 1930, oversight was poor, and it did not become rigorously enforced until July 1, 1934, with the establishment of the Production Code Administration . Before that date, film content was restricted more by local laws, negotiations between the Studio Relations Committee (SRC) and
17000-450: The era. Other stars who excelled during this period, however, like Ruth Chatterton (who decamped to England) and Warren William (the so-called "king of pre-Code", who died in 1948), would be largely forgotten by the general public within a generation. Beginning in late 1933 and escalating throughout the first half of 1934, American Catholics launched a campaign against what they deemed the immorality of American cinema. This, along with
17170-399: The events implied elliptically, the code allowed what Brandeis University cultural historian Thomas Doherty called "the possibility of a cinematically inspired thought crime ". The Code sought not only to determine what could be portrayed on screen, but also to promote traditional values. Sexual relations outside of marriage could not be portrayed as attractive and beautiful, presented in
17340-424: The film were cut because of the Code. One is of a markedly effeminate tailor measuring Tom for a suit, another where Mamie serves Matt breakfast in bed, and the third showing Tom being taken advantage of by Paddy Ryan's girlfriend while hiding out in her apartment. These three scenes were later restored for all DVD and Blu-ray releases, and on Turner Classic Movies . The film was also re-released in 1954, with
17510-490: The film's message. The Jazz Age prelude was almost singularly used to cast shame on the boisterous behavior of the 1920s. Cabin in the Cotton (1932) is a Warner Bros. message film about the evils of capitalism. The film takes place in an unspecified southern state where workers are given barely enough to survive and taken advantage of by being charged exorbitant interest rates and high prices by unscrupulous landowners. The film
17680-540: The following songs: The music was performed by the Vitaphone Orchestra, led by conductor David Mendoza. According to Warner Bros records the film earned $ 464,000 domestically and $ 93,000 internationally. On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes , 100% of 33 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 8.3/10. Andre Sennwald, who reviewed the film for The New York Times on its April 1931 release, called it "just another gangster film at
17850-494: The government taxes he owed. He was convicted and sentenced to eleven years in federal prison . After conviction, he replaced his defense team with experts in tax law , and his grounds for appeal were strengthened by a U.S. Supreme Court ruling, although his appeal ultimately failed. Capone showed signs of neurosyphilis early in his sentence and became increasingly debilitated before being released after almost eight years of incarceration. In 1947, he died of cardiac arrest after
18020-597: The hospital section, confused and disoriented. Capone completed his term in Alcatraz on January 6, 1939, and was transferred to the Federal Correctional Institution at Terminal Island in California to serve out his sentence for contempt of court . He was paroled on November 16, 1939, after his wife Mae appealed to the court, based on his reduced mental capabilities. The main effect of Capone's conviction
18190-598: The infection, but he apparently never sought treatment. In 1923, Capone purchased a small house at 7244 South Prairie Avenue in the Park Manor neighborhood in Chicago's South Side for $ 5,500 . As originally reported in the Chicago Tribune , hijacker Joe Howard was killed on May 8, 1924, after he tried to interfere with the Capone-Torrio bootlegging business. In a 1936 article highlighting Capone's criminal career,
18360-490: The injuries were war wounds. He was called "Snorky" by his closest friends, a term for a sharp dresser. In 1919, Capone left New York City for Chicago at the invitation of Torrio, who was imported by crime boss James "Big Jim" Colosimo as an enforcer. Capone began in Chicago as a bouncer in a brothel , which is thought to be most likely where he contracted syphilis . Capone was aware of being infected at an early stage and timely use of Salvarsan probably could have cured
18530-439: The legal system turns innocent characters into criminals. The life of Joan Crawford 's character is ruined and her romantic interest is executed so that she may live free, although she is innocent of the crime for which the district attorney wants to convict her. Religious hypocrisy was addressed in such films as The Miracle Woman (1931), starring Barbara Stanwyck and directed by Frank Capra . Many pre-Code films dealt with
18700-570: The list, and Hays created the Studio Relations Committee (SRC) to oversee its implementation. However, there was still no way to enforce these tenets. The controversy surrounding film standards came to a head in 1929. Director Cecil B. DeMille was responsible for the increasing discussion of sex in cinema in the 1920s. Starting with Male and Female (1919), he made a series of films that examined sex and were highly successful. Films featuring Hollywood's original " It girl " Clara Bow such as The Saturday Night Kid (released four days before
18870-1047: The major studios, and popular opinion than by strict adherence to the Hays Code, which was often ignored by Hollywood filmmakers. As a result, some films in the late 1920s and early 1930s depicted or implied sexual innuendo , romantic and sexual relationships between white and black people, mild profanity , illegal drug use , promiscuity , prostitution , infidelity , abortion , intense violence , and homosexuality . Nefarious characters were seen to profit from their deeds, in some cases without significant repercussions. For example, gangsters in films such as The Public Enemy , Little Caesar , and Scarface were seen by many as heroic rather than evil. Strong female characters were ubiquitous in such pre-Code films as Female , Baby Face or Red-Headed Woman , among many others, which featured independent, sexually liberated women. Many of Hollywood's biggest stars, such as Clark Gable , Bette Davis , James Cagney , Barbara Stanwyck , Joan Blondell , and Edward G. Robinson , got their start in
19040-661: The marriage. By all accounts, the two had a happy marriage. Capone initially became involved with small-time gangs that included the Junior Forty Thieves and the Bowery Boys. He then joined the Brooklyn Rippers, and then the powerful Five Points Gang based in Lower Manhattan . During this time he was employed and mentored by fellow racketeer Frankie Yale , a bartender in a Coney Island dance hall and saloon called
19210-608: The massacre. The massacre was an attempt to eliminate Bugs Moran , head of the North Side Gang , and the motivation for the plan may have been the fact that some expensive whisky that was illegally imported from Canada via the Detroit River had been hijacked while it was being transported to Cook County, Illinois. Moran was the last survivor of the North Side gunmen; his succession had come about because his similarly aggressive predecessors, Weiss and Vincent Drucci , had been killed in
19380-542: The motion picture "Czar", was paid the then-lavish sum of $ 100,000 a year (equivalent to more than $ 1.7 million in 2022 dollars). Hays had previously served as U.S. Postmaster General under president Warren G. Harding and as the head of the Republican National Committee . At the time of his hiring, he was president of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA); he held
19550-577: The movies before, such as when the studios formed the National Association of the Motion Picture Industry (NAMPI) in 1916, little had come of the efforts. In 1929, Catholic layman Martin Quigley , editor of the prominent trade paper Motion Picture Herald , and Father Daniel A. Lord , a Jesuit priest, created a code of standards (of which Hays strongly approved) and submitted it to
19720-575: The nickname " Scarface ", was an American gangster and businessman who attained notoriety during the Prohibition era as the co-founder and boss of the Chicago Outfit from 1925 to 1931. His seven-year reign as a crime boss ended when he went to prison at the age of 33. Capone was born in New York City in 1899 to Italian immigrants . He joined the Five Points Gang as a teenager and became
19890-434: The office reviewed, The Blue Angel , which was passed by Joy without revision, was considered indecent by a California censor. Although there were several instances where Joy negotiated cuts from films, and there were indeed definite, albeit loose, constraints, a significant amount of lurid material made it to the screen. Joy had to review 500 films a year using a small staff and little power. The Hays office did not have
20060-777: The opinion of Brooks's biographer Barry Paris , "turning down Public Enemy marked the real end of Louise Brooks's film career". Tom's first girlfriend Kitty was played by Mae Clarke , who was uncredited. Kitty is eventually dumped by Tom for Gwen after he pushes half a grapefruit into her face, the most famous scene in the movie. Joan Blondell played Mamie, Matt's girlfriend. She had already worked with Cagney in Sinners' Holiday (1930) and would work with him on two films which also came out this year: Other Men's Women and Blonde Crazy . Other films that they worked together on were The Crowd Roars (1932), Footlight Parade (1933) and He Was Her Man (1934). Cagney once said that Blondell
20230-432: The overcoming of odds lost great currency. Due to the constant empty economic reassurances from politicians in the early years of the Depression, the American public developed an increasingly jaded attitude. The cynicism, challenging of traditional beliefs, and political controversy of Hollywood films during this period mirrored the attitudes of many of their patrons. Also gone was the carefree and adventurous lifestyle of
20400-517: The part and switched the two actors but never reshot the sequences with the characters as children, which is why the child playing Cagney's role looks like Woods while the one playing Woods' role looks like Cagney. Another reason for the switch is that the sound technology used in The Public Enemy was superior to that used in earlier films, making it no longer imperative to have an actor in the lead role who had impeccable enunciation. Louise Brooks
20570-413: The perception of entire cities. Capone gave Chicago its "reputation as the locus classicus of American gangsterdom, a cityscape where bullet-proof roadsters with tommygun-toting hoodlums on running boards careened around State Street spraying fusillades of slugs into flower shop windows and mowing down the competition in blood-spattered garages". Capone appeared on the cover of Time magazine in 1930. He
20740-476: The period. Filmed shortly after DeMille had completed a five-month tour of the Soviet Union , This Day and Age takes place in America and features several children torturing a gangster who got away with the murder of a popular local shopkeeper. The youngsters are seen lowering the gangster into a vat of rats when the police arrive, and their response is to encourage the youths to continue this. The film ends with
20910-610: The plea bargain Wilkerson refused to honor, therefore had mere hours to prepare for the trial, ran a weak defense focused on claiming that essentially all his income was lost to gambling. This would have been irrelevant regardless, since gambling losses can only be subtracted from gambling winnings, but it was further undercut by Capone's expenses, which were well beyond what his claimed income could support; Wilkerson allowed Capone's spending to be presented at very great length. The government charged Capone with evasion of $ 215,000 in taxes on
21080-485: The position for 25 years and "defended the industry from attacks, recited soothing nostrums , and negotiated treaties to cease hostilities". Hollywood mimicked the decision Major League Baseball had made in hiring judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis as League Commissioner the previous year to quell questions about the integrity of baseball in the wake of the 1919 World Series gambling scandal ; The New York Times called Hays
21250-536: The progress Italy has made during Mussolini 's 10-year reign, Thomas opines, "This is a time when a dictator comes in handy!" The film was viewed by over 175,000 jubilant people during its first two weeks at the cavernous Palace Theater in Albany, New York . The election of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) in 1932 quelled the public affection for dictators. As the country became increasingly enthraled with FDR, who
21420-479: The public image of Chicago and Capone, leading influential citizens to demand government action and newspapers to dub Capone " Public Enemy No. 1". Federal authorities became intent on jailing Capone and charged him with twenty-two counts of tax evasion . He was convicted of five counts in 1931. During a highly publicized case, the judge admitted as evidence Capone's admissions of his income and unpaid taxes, made during prior and ultimately abortive negotiations to pay
21590-455: The publicity to run against Thompson in the Republican primary. In February 1931, Capone was tried on the contempt of court charge. In court, Judge James Herbert Wilkerson , intervened to reinforce questioning of Capone's doctor by the prosecutor. Wilkerson sentenced Capone to six months, but he remained free while on appeal of the contempt conviction. In February 1930, Capone's organization
21760-527: The rights and wrongs of both parties, but it is not the object of the producers of Cabin in the Cotton to take sides. We are only concerned with the effort to picture these conditions. In the end, however, the planters admit their wrongdoing and agree to a more equitable distribution of capital. The avaricious businessman remained a recurring character in pre-Code cinema. In The Match King (1932), Warren William played an industrialist based on real-life Swedish entrepreneur Ivar Kreuger , himself nicknamed
21930-496: The rights to the novel and assigned director William A. Wellman to direct the film. Wellman, who had served in World War I, like the brother of the main character, told Warner: "I'll bring you the toughest, most violent picture you ever did see". Edward Woods was originally cast in the lead role of Tom Powers and James Cagney was cast as Tom's best friend Matt Doyle, until director Wellman decided Cagney would be more effective in
22100-506: The shootout and ends up in the hospital. When his mother, brother, and Matt's sister Molly come to see him, he reconciles with Mike and agrees to reform. However, Paddy warns Mike that Tom has been kidnapped by the Burns mob from the hospital. A member of the Paddy gang telephones Mike to say Tom is returning from the hospital; their mother is overjoyed and begins preparing Tom's bedroom. When Mike answers
22270-631: The streets in protest became a prevalent sight during the Great Depression. The Bonus Army protests of World War I veterans on the capital in Washington, D.C., on which Hoover unleashed a brutal crackdown, prompted many of the Hollywood depictions. Although social issues were examined more directly in the pre-Code era, Hollywood still largely ignored the Great Depression, as many films sought to ameliorate patrons' anxieties rather than incite them. Hays remarked in 1932: The function of motion pictures
22440-565: The studios wanted to appease the German government. The ban on Jews and negative portrayals of Germany by Hitler's government even led to a significant reduction in work for Jews in Hollywood until after the end of World War II. As a result, only two social problem films released by independent film companies addressed the mania in Germany during the pre-Code era ( Are We Civilized? and Hitler's Reign of Terror ). In 1933, Herman J. Mankiewicz and producer Sam Jaffe announced they were working on
22610-447: The studios. Lord's concerns centered on the effects sound film had on children, whom he considered especially susceptible to the medium's allure. Several studio heads, including Irving Thalberg of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), met with Lord and Quigley in February 1930. After some revisions, they agreed to the stipulations of the Code. One of the main motivating factors in adopting the Code was to avoid direct government intervention. It
22780-450: The surface of American life in the Depression was the fear of the angry mob, portrayed in panicked hysteria in films such as Gabriel Over the White House (1933), The Mayor of Hell (1933), and American Madness (1932). Massive wide shots of angry hordes, comprising sometimes hundreds of men, rush into action in terrifyingly efficient uniformity. Groups of agitated men either standing in breadlines, loitering in hobo camps, or marching
22950-426: The time the film was released on March 31, 1933, FDR's election had produced a level of hopefulness in America that rendered the film's message obsolete. Adolf Hitler 's rise to power in Germany and his regime's anti-Semitic policies significantly affected American pre-Code filmmaking. Although Hitler had become unpopular in many parts of the United States, Germany was still a voluminous importer of American films and
23120-546: The trial, Wilkerson deemed that the 1930 letter to federal authorities could be admitted into evidence, overruling objections that a lawyer could not confess for his client. Wilkerson later tried Capone only on the income tax evasion charges as he determined they took precedence over the Volstead Act charges. Much was later made of other evidence, such as witnesses and ledgers, but these strongly implied Capone's control rather than stating it. Capone's lawyers, who had relied on
23290-417: The underworld must be exposed and the glamour ripped from them" and an epilogue "pointing the moral that civilization is on her knees and inquiring loudly as to what is to be done." At the film's premiere in New York City, the film's prologue was preceded by a "brief stage tableau , with sinuous green lighting, which shows a puppet gangster shooting another puppet gangster in the back." The soundtrack included
23460-429: The unscripted action. However, in her autobiography, Clarke stated that Cagney had told her prior to that take what he planned to do. She said that her only genuine surprise came later, when she saw the grapefruit scene appear in the final film, as it had been her understanding that they were shooting it only as a joke to amuse the crew. According to Cagney, Clarke's ex-husband had the grapefruit scene timed, and would buy
23630-728: The urban-crime genre was mostly ignored until 1927 when Underworld , which is recognized as the first gangster movie, became a surprise hit. According to the Encyclopedia of Hollywood entry on Underworld , "The film established the fundamental elements of the gangster movie: a hoodlum hero; ominous, night-shrouded city streets; floozies; and a blazing finale in which the cops cut down the protagonist." Gangster films such as Thunderbolt (1929) and Doorway to Hell (1930) were released to capitalize on Underworld ' s popularity, with Thunderbolt being described as "a virtual remake" of Underworld . Other late-1920s crime films investigated
23800-546: The use of live ammunition was common practice at the time. The bullets struck the wall of the building at the position where Cagney's head had been just a moment before. In a 1973 interview featured in the Turner Classic Movies documentary The Men Who Made The Movies: William Wellman , Wellman said he added the grapefruit "hitting" to the scene, because when he and his wife at the time would get into fights, she would never talk or give any expression. Since she always had
23970-401: The violence that followed the murder of original leader Dean O'Banion . To monitor their targets' habits and movements, Capone's men rented an apartment across from the trucking warehouse and garage at 2122 North Clark Street, which served as Moran's headquarters. On the morning of Thursday, February 14, 1929, Capone's lookouts signaled four gunmen, disguised as police officers, to initiate
24140-557: The wall-to-wall banter of sound pictures, and director Ernst Lubitsch wondered what the camera was intended for if characters were going to narrate all the onscreen action. The film industry also withstood competition from the home radio, and often characters in films went to great lengths to belittle other media. The film industry was not above using the new medium to broadcast commercials for its projects however, and occasionally turned radio stars into short feature performers to take advantage of their built-in following. Seething beneath
24310-556: The weeks before Aiello's death, Capone's men tracked him to Rochester, New York , where he had connections through Buffalo crime family boss Stefano Magaddino , and plotted to kill him there, but Aiello returned to Chicago before the plot could be executed. Aiello, angst-ridden from the constant need to hide out and the killings of several of his men, set up residence in the Chicago apartment of Unione Siciliana treasurer Pasquale "Patsy Presto" Prestogiacomo at 205 N. Kolmar Ave. On October 23, upon exiting Prestogiacomo's building to enter
24480-496: The youngsters taking the gangster to a local judge and forcing the magistrate to conduct a trial in which the outcome is never in doubt. The need for strong leaders who could take charge and steer America out of its crisis is seen in Gabriel Over the White House (1933), about a benevolent dictator who takes control of the United States. Walter Huston stars as a weak-willed, ineffectual president (likely modeled after Hoover) who
24650-479: Was Capone's consigliere , was named head of the Unione Siciliana , a Sicilian-American benevolent society that had been corrupted by gangsters. An infuriated Joe Aiello , who had wanted the position himself, believed Capone was responsible for Lombardo's ascension and resented the non-Sicilian's attempts to manipulate affairs within the Unione. Aiello severed all personal and business ties with Lombardo and entered into
24820-486: Was also the front man for the Chicago Outfit until he was imprisoned for tax evasion in 1932. Capone showed promise as a student but had trouble with the rules at his strict parochial Catholic school . His schooling ended at the age of 14 after he was expelled for hitting a female teacher in the face. Capone worked at odd jobs around Brooklyn, including a candy store and a bowling alley. From 1916 to 1918, he played semi-professional baseball . Following this, Capone
24990-549: Was an attempt on Weiss' life in the Chicago Loop . On September 20, 1926, the North Siders used a ploy outside Capone's headquarters at the Hawthorne Inn aimed at drawing him to the windows. Gunmen in several cars then opened fire with Thompson submachine guns and shotguns at the windows of the first-floor restaurant. Capone was unhurt and called for a truce, but the negotiations fell flat. Three weeks later, on October 11, Weiss
25160-400: Was an independent operator. A 1929 report by The New York Times connected Capone to the 1926 murder of Assistant State Attorney William H. McSwiggin, the 1928 murders of chief investigator Ben Newmark, and former mentor Frankie Yale. Capone was widely assumed to have been responsible for ordering the 1929 Saint Valentine's Day Massacre, despite being at his Florida home at the time of
25330-487: Was arrested on vagrancy charges when visiting Miami Beach; the governor had ordered sheriffs to run him out of the state. Capone claimed that Miami police had refused him food and water and threatened to arrest his family. He was charged with perjury for making these statements, but was acquitted after a three-day trial in July. In September, a Chicago judge issued a warrant for Capone's arrest on charges of vagrancy and then used
25500-421: Was chased through the streets on polling day by cars of gunmen before being shot dead. Four policemen were among those charged along with Belcastro, but all charges were dropped after key witnesses recanted their statements. An indication of the attitude of local law enforcement toward Capone's organization came in 1931 when Belcastro was wounded in a shooting; police suggested to skeptical journalists that Belcastro
25670-463: Was clear that they were the exception to the rule. The entire document contained Catholic undertones and stated that art must be handled carefully because it could be "morally evil in its effects" and because its "deep moral significance" was unquestionable. The Catholic influence on the Code was initially kept secret, owing to the Anti-Catholic bias of the time. A recurring theme was "throughout,
25840-622: Was even offered seven-figure sums by two major Hollywood studios to appear in a film, but he declined. Dillinger became a national celebrity as a bank robber who eluded arrest and escaped confinement several times. He had become the most celebrated public outlaw since Jesse James . His father appeared in a popular series of newsreels giving police homespun advice on how to catch his son. Dillinger's popularity rose so quickly that Variety joked that "if Dillinger remains at large much longer and more such interviews are obtained, there may be some petitions circulated to make him our president." Hays wrote
26010-404: Was featured in countless newsreels , it exhibited less desire for alternative forms of government. Many Hollywood films reflected this new optimism. Heroes for Sale , despite being a tremendously bleak and at times anti-American film, ends on a positive note as the New Deal appears as a sign of optimism. When Wild Boys of the Road (1933), directed by William Wellman , reaches its conclusion,
26180-460: Was indicted by a grand jury and a trial was held before Philadelphia Municipal Court Judge John E Walsh. Entering a guilty plea by his attorney, Capone was sentenced to a prison term of one year. On August 8, 1929, Capone was transferred to Philadelphia's Eastern State Penitentiary . A week after his release in March 1930, Capone was listed as "Public Enemy #1" on the unofficial Chicago Crime Commission's widely publicized list. In April 1930, Capone
26350-410: Was influenced by gangster Johnny Torrio , whom he came to regard as a mentor. Capone married Mae Josephine Coughlin at age 19, on December 30, 1918. She was Irish Catholic and earlier that month had given birth to their son Albert Francis "Sonny" Capone (1918–2004). Albert lost most of his hearing in his left ear as a child. Capone was under the age of 21, and his parents had to consent in writing to
26520-454: Was killed outside the North Siders' headquarters at O'Banion's former flower shop. The owner of Hawthorne's restaurant was a friend of Capone's, and he was kidnapped and killed by Moran and Drucci in January 1927. Capone became increasingly security-minded and desirous of getting away from Chicago. As a precaution, he and his entourage would often show up suddenly at one of Chicago's train depots and buy up an entire Pullman sleeper car on
26690-462: Was linked to the murder of Julius Rosenheim, who served as a police informant in the Chicago Outfit for 20 years. U.S. Assistant Attorney General Mabel Walker Willebrandt is said to have originated the tactic of charging obviously wealthy crime figures with federal tax evasion on the basis of their luxurious lifestyles. In 1927, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in United States v. Sullivan that
26860-471: Was receiving special treatment. No solid evidence ever emerged, but it formed part of the rationale for moving Capone to the recently opened Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary off the coast of San Francisco, in August 1934. On June 23, 1936, Capone was stabbed and superficially wounded by fellow Alcatraz inmate James C. Lucas . Due to his good behavior, Capone was permitted to play banjo in the Alcatraz prison band,
27030-470: Was released from prison on November 16, 1939, and referred to Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore for the treatment of syphilitic paresis . Because of his unsavory reputation, Johns Hopkins refused to treat him, but Baltimore's Union Memorial Hospital did. Capone was grateful for the compassionate care that he received and donated two Japanese weeping cherry trees to Union Memorial Hospital in 1939. After
27200-573: Was repeated sarcastically by characters in several films such as Under Eighteen (1931) and 20,000 Years in Sing Sing (1933). Less comical was the picture of the United States' future presented in Heroes for Sale that same year (1933), in which a hobo looks into a depressing night and proclaims, "It's the end of America". Heroes for Sale was directed by prolific pre-Code director William Wellman and featured silent film star Richard Barthelmess as
27370-537: Was returning from a shopping trip when he was shot several times. After recovering, he effectively resigned and handed control over to Capone, aged 26, who became the new boss of an organization that took in illegal breweries and a transportation network that reached to Canada, with political and law-enforcement protection . In turn, he was able to use more violence to increase revenue. Any establishment that refused to purchase liquor from Capone often got blown up, and as many as 100 people were killed in such bombings during
27540-468: Was seen as a weak personality, and so out of his depth dealing with bullying at the hands of fellow inmates that his cellmate, seasoned convict Red Rudensky , feared that Capone would have a breakdown. Rudensky was formerly a small-time criminal associated with the Capone gang and found himself becoming a protector for Capone. The conspicuous protection by Rudensky and other prisoners drew accusations from less friendly inmates and fueled suspicion that Capone
27710-451: Was sent to Atlanta U.S. Penitentiary in May 1932, aged 33. Upon his arrival at Atlanta, Capone was officially diagnosed with syphilis and gonorrhea . He was also experiencing withdrawal symptoms from cocaine addiction, the use of which had perforated his nasal septum. Capone was competent at his prison job of stitching soles on shoes for eight hours a day, but his letters were barely coherent. He
27880-645: Was subsequently gunned down. In the wake of the Saint Valentine's Day Massacre, Walter A. Strong , publisher of the Chicago Daily News , asked his friend President Herbert Hoover for federal intervention to stem Chicago's lawlessness. He arranged a secret meeting at the White House, just two weeks after Hoover's inauguration. On March 19, 1929, Strong, joined by Frank Loesch of the Chicago Crime Commission , and Laird Bell , made their case to
28050-433: Was that he ceased to be boss immediately on his imprisonment, but those involved in the jailing of Capone portrayed it as a considerable undermining of the city's organized crime syndicate. Capone's underboss , Frank Nitti , took over as boss of the Outfit after he was released from prison in March 1932, having also been convicted of tax evasion charges. Far from being smashed, the Outfit continued without being troubled by
28220-513: Was the biggest in Chicago, with Capone as his right-hand man. Torrio was wary of being drawn into gang wars and tried to negotiate agreements over territory between rival crime groups. The smaller North Side Gang , led by Dean O'Banion , came under pressure from the Genna brothers who were allied with Torrio. O'Banion found that Torrio was unhelpful with the Gennas' encroachment, despite his pretensions to be
28390-423: Was the most prominent maker of these types of films and preferred they be called "Americanism stories". Pre-Code historian Thomas Doherty has written that two recurring elements marked the so-called preachment yarns. "The first is the exculpatory preface; the second is the Jazz Age prelude." The preface was essentially a softened version of a disclaimer that intended to calm any in the audience who disagreed with
28560-528: Was the only woman he loved besides his wife. Donald Cook played Tom's brother, Mike. Filming took place in January and February 1931, with a small budget of $ 151,000. During filming, Cagney also made Smart Money , co-starring Edward G. Robinson , who had finished his breakthrough film Little Caesar . In the scene where Mike Powers punches his brother Tom, Wellman privately took Donald Cook aside and, explaining his desire for authenticity in Tom's reaction, asked
28730-512: Was the original choice for Gwen Allen, a woman with self-confessed weakness for bad men. She refused the role, which went to a younger actress, Jean Harlow . Brooks' name was in studio records/casting call lists playing "Bess" in this movie, but she and her character did not appear. Brooks later explained herself to Wellman (who had directed her in Beggars of Life (1928)) by saying that she hated making pictures because she simply "hated Hollywood ". In
28900-426: Was the responsibility of the Studio Relations Committee, headed by Colonel Jason S. Joy, to supervise film production and advise the studios when changes or cuts were required. The Code was divided into two parts. The first was a set of "general principles" that mostly concerned morality. The second was a set of "particular applications", an exacting list of items that could not be depicted. Some restrictions, such as
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