 | This articleneeds additional citations forverification. Please helpimprove this article byadding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "The Public Enemy" – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR(July 2011) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
| The Public Enemy | |
|---|---|
 Theatrical release poster | |
| Directed by | William A. Wellman |
| Written by | |
| Screenplay by | Harvey F. Thew[1] |
| Based on | Beer and Blood by |
| Produced by | Darryl F. Zanuck |
| Starring | |
| Cinematography | Devereaux Jennings |
| Edited by | Edward Michael McDermott |
| Distributed by | Warner Bros. Pictures |
Release date |
|
Running time | 83 minutes[2][3] |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $151,000[4] or $230,000[5] |
| Box office | $557,000[5] |
The Public Enemy (Enemies of the Public in the UK)[6] is a 1931 Americanpre-Codegangster film produced and distributed byWarner Bros. The film was directed byWilliam A. Wellman, and starringJames Cagney,Jean Harlow,Edward Woods,Donald Cook andJoan Blondell. The film relates the story of a young man's rise in thecriminal underworld inProhibition-era urban America. The supporting players includeBeryl Mercer,Murray Kinnell, andMae Clarke. The screenplay is based on an unpublished novel—Beer and Blood by two former newspapermen,John Bright andKubec Glasmon—who had witnessed some ofAl Capone's murderous gang rivalries in Chicago.[7][8]
In 1998,The Public Enemy was selected for preservation in the United StatesNational Film Registry by theLibrary 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 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. Whenthe United States enters World War I in 1917, Mike enlists in the Marines.
In 1920, withProhibition about to go into effect, Paddy Ryan recruits Tom and Matt as beer "salesmen" (enforcers) in hisbootlegging 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 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 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 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 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 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:
|
| This sectionneeds additional citations forverification. Please helpimprove this article byadding citations to reliable sources in this section. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "The Public Enemy" – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR(May 2023) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
The screenplay, which was written by Harvey F. Thew, was based on an unpublished novel,Beer and Blood, byJohn Bright andKubec Glasmon.[9][10] Bright and Glasmon based their novel on actual people, having witnessed some ofAl Capone's murderous gang rivalries inChicago.Warner Bros. studio headJack L. Warner bought the rights to the novel and assigned directorWilliam 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 andJames Cagney was cast as Tom's best friend Matt Doyle, until director Wellman decided Cagney would be more effective in the part and switched the two actors[4] 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 inThe 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.[citation needed]
Louise Brooks 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 inBeggars of Life (1928)) by saying that she hated making pictures because she simply "hatedHollywood".[11] In the opinion of Brooks's biographerBarry Paris, "turning downPublic Enemy marked the real end of Louise Brooks's film career".[11]
Tom's first girlfriend Kitty was played byMae 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 inSinners' Holiday (1930) and would work with him on two films which also came out this year:Other Men's Women andBlonde Crazy. Other films that they worked together on wereThe Crowd Roars (1932),Footlight Parade (1933) andHe Was Her Man (1934). Cagney once said that Blondell 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.[12] During filming, Cagney also madeSmart Money, co-starringEdward G. Robinson, who had finished his breakthrough filmLittle 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 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.[citation needed] 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; the use of live ammunition was common practice at the time.[citation needed] The bullets struck the wall of the building at the position where Cagney's head had been just a moment before.[13]
In a 1973 interview featured in theTurner Classic Movies documentaryThe 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 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.[14][15]
Some, such as film criticBen 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 the unscripted action.[16] 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.[17]
According to Cagney, Clarke's ex-husband had the grapefruit scene timed, and would buy 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.[18] The scene was parodied years later in the 1961 Cagney movieOne, Two, Three when Cagney threatens Otto (Horst Buchholz) with a half grapefruit but then decides against doing so.
The film featured a prologue[6] "apprising the audience that the hoodlums and terrorists of 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 "briefstage tableau, with sinuous green lighting, which shows a puppet gangster shooting another puppet gangster in the back."[2]
The soundtrack included the following songs:[19]
The music was performed by theVitaphone Orchestra, led by conductor David Mendoza.[1]
According to Warner Bros records the film earned $464,000 domestically and $93,000 internationally.[5]
On thereview aggregator websiteRotten Tomatoes,100% of 33 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 8.3/10.[20]
Andre Sennwald, who reviewed the film forThe New York Times on its April 1931 release, called it "just another gangster film at theStrand, 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."[2]
Time magazine calledThe Public Enemy "well-told" and noted, "UnlikeCity Streets, this is not aHugoesque 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."[21]Variety called it "low-brow material given such workmanship as to make it high-brow" which attempts to "square everything [with] a foreword and postscript moralizing on the gangster as a menace to the public welfare."[6]
A theatre inTimes Square ranThe Public Enemy 24 hours a day during its initial release.[18] At the4th Academy Awards, the film was nominated for anAcademy Award for Best Story, losing toThe Dawn Patrol.
In 1989, ananimatronics version of a scene fromThe Public Enemy was incorporated intoThe Great Movie Ride at theDisney-MGM Studios theme park inOrlando, Florida.
In 1998,The Public Enemy was selected for preservation in the United StatesNational Film Registry by theLibrary of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
In 2001, theSopranos episode "Proshai, Livushka" featured title characterTony Soprano watching scenes from the film, becoming overwhelmed with emotion.
In 2003 the character of Tom Powers was among theAFI's 100 Years...100 Heroes and Villains, placing 42nd in the villain list. In 2008, the film appeared on one of theAFI'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 thegangster film genre.[22]
The film was re-released in 1941 after theProduction Code was put into effect. Three scenes from the film were cut because of the Code. One is of a markedlyeffeminate 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.[23] These three scenes were later restored for allDVD andBlu-ray releases, and onTurner Classic Movies.
The film was also re-released in 1954, with a written prologue added before the opening credits, advising that gangsters such as Tom Powers and Caesar "Rico" Bandello, the title character inLittle Caesar (played byEdward G. Robinson), are a menace that the public must confront.[23]
As with many a Warner/First National pre-codetalkie, 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.[24]
In the 90's and early 2000's wrestlersRocco Rock andJohnny Grunge would used the title of the movie when they formed the tag team in places likeWWE,WCW, andECW and they would both be in theHardcore Wrestling Hall of Fame.
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
