Angels with Dirty Faces ***** (1938, James Cagney, Pat O’Brien, Humphrey Bogart, Ann Sheridan, Billy Halop, Leo Gorcey, Huntz Hall) – Classic Movie Review 295

Oscar-nominated James Cagney sizzles in one of his most archetypal performances as William ‘Rocky’ Sullivan, a poor New York Lower East Side kid who grows up to be a gangster admired by a gang of street urchins (the Dead End Kids).

Just out of jail, Cagney’s ‘Rocky’ looks up his old partners in crime, but then Humphrey Bogart as James Frazier, the gangsters’ attorney, and George Bancroft, as the crime boss Mac Keefer, plot to kill ‘Rocky’.

[Spoiler alert] Eventually, thanks to his lifelong buddy, priest Father Jerome ‘Jerry’ Connolly (Pat O’Brien), ‘Rocky’ goes to the electric chair pretending to be a coward so that the group of street urchins won’t grow up to be bad kids on the block.

Ann Sheridan provides the hard-nosed glamour as Cagney’s girlfriend, Laury Ferguson, and there’s a huge support cast doing fine work, notably Frankie Burke and William Tracey as the young versions of Cagney and O’Brien. But the film really motors on the relationship between Rocky and the Father, and Cagney and O’Brien handle it to perfection.

Michael (Casablanca) Curtiz directs the 1938 Angels with Dirty Faces excitingly with an attentive eye to atmosphere, tension and pace, Sol Polito’s noirish black and white cinematography catches the eye, Max Steiner’s score is ideal, and there is a typical high-grade Thirties Warner Bros production, with smart art direction by Robert M Haas.

Billy Halop (Soapy), Leo Gorcey (Bim), Huntz Hall (Crab), Gabriel Dell (Pasty), Bobby Jordan (Swing) and Bernard Punsly] Punsley (Hunky) are the Dead End Kids, who made their first appearance in the 1937 Dead End. The St Brendan’s Church Choir also appear.

Also in the cast are George Bancroft, Frankie Burke, William Tracey, Marilyn Knowlden, Joe Downing, Adrian Morris, Oscar O’Shea, Edward Pawley, William Pawley, Charles Sullivan, Theodore Rand, John Hamilton, Earl Dwire, Jack Perrin, Mary Gordon, Vera Lewis, William Worthington, James Farley, Chuck Stubbs, Ed Syracuse, Robert E Homans, Harris Berger, Harry Hayden, Dick Rich, Stevan Darrell, Joe Devlin, William Edmunds, Charles Wilson, Frank Coghlan Jr, David Durrand, Charles Trowbridge, Sidney Bracey, George Taylor, Oscar G ‘Dutch’ Hendrian, Dan Wolheim, Brian Burke, William Crowell, Belle Mitchell, Eddie Brian, J Pat O’Malley, Jack C Smith and George Sorel.

It is amazing the film was made at all, let alone that it’s so great. Producer Samuel Bischoff’s initial verdict on the script by John Wexley and Warren Duff was: ‘It’s about the worst thing I have ever read.’ The American censorship Hays Office, run by Joseph Breen, wrote to the Warner studio that it regarded the film as ‘the gravest problem that has confronted us in years’, excising a wide assortment of words such as ‘snotty’, ‘lousy’, ‘sissy’, ‘punks’, ‘hellova’, ‘stink’, ‘nigger’ and ‘shyster’ from the script.

Gunfire had to be kept to a minimum, the Hays Office ordered. No money could be seen passing hands in the gambling scenes, all killings had to be off screen, and so did the execution. Jokey references to God and priests were to be avoided.

Cagney said he modelled his performance on ‘a fella I used to see when I was a kid. He was a hophead and a pimp, with four girls in his string, a tall dude with an expensive straw hat and an electric-blue suit. I recalled this fella and his mannerisms and gave them to ‘Rocky’ Sullivan just to bring some modicum of difference to this roughneck.’

The original story was dreamed up by Rowland Brown, and the screenplay is by John Wexley and Warren Duff, with uncredited work by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur. Wexley and Duff revised Brown’s insubstantial story several times but the screenplay was still flawed at the time of shooting. Cagney recalled: ‘The actors had to patch up [the script] here and there by improvising right on the set.’

Angels with Dirty Faces was nominated for three Oscars – Best Actor in a Leading Role (Cagney), Best Director (Curtiz) and Best Writing, Original Story (Rowland Brown), but no wins. Cagney finally won his single Oscar for Yankee Doodle Dandy in 1943. His only other Oscar nomination is for Love Me or Leave Me (1955).

http://derekwinnert.com/white-heat-classic-film-review-147/

© Derek Winnert 2013 Classic Movie Review 295

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com/