The era of American film production from the early sound era to the enforcement of the Hays Code in 1934 is denoted as Pre-Code Hollywood. The era contained violence and crime in pictures which would not be seen again until decades later. Although the Hays office had specifically recommended removing profanity, the drug trade, and prostitution from pictures, it had never officially recommended against depictions of violence in any form in the 1920s. State censor boards, however, created their own guidelines, and New York in particular developed a list of violent material which had to be removed for a picture to be shown in the state. Two main types of crime films were released during the period: the gangster picture and the prison film.
A triumvirate of gangster pictures were released in the early 1930s—Little Caesar (1931), The Public Enemy (1931), and Scarface (1932)—which were built on the template created by the first gangster movie, 1927's Underworld. All featured the rise and eventual fall of an organized criminal. As described by crime film scholar Jack Shadoian the maxim became, "If the films insist that one can't win, under that given it's how you lose that counts."Shadoian. pg. 29 Scarface was the most controversial and violent; the film took nearly a year to reach theaters due to battles with censors. Obviously based on the life of Al Capone, Scarface and others like it outraged civic leaders who felt that movies were glorifying the lifestyles of criminals.
Stirred into action by the 1930 Ohio penitentiary fire, which resulted in 300 deaths when guards refused to let inmates out of their cells, Hollywood produced movies which depicted the harsh conditions in prisons at the time. The prototype of the prison genre was 1930's The Big House. The picture features future genre staples such as solitary confinement, informers, riots, an escape, and the codes of prison life. Never box office hits, prison pictures failed to attract the female audiences they needed to achieve financial success.
Chain gang films were produced in a similar response to the callous inhumanity of the chain gang system which was prevalent among states in the southern US. The 1932 film I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang is considered the seminal movie of the genre, and was based on the autobiography of Robert E. Burns who was himself a fugitive at the time of the picture's release.
Early crime films
In the early 1900s America was still primarily a rural country, especially in terms of self-identity.Siegel & Siegel. pg. 165 D. W. Griffith's 1912 film The Musketeers of Pig Alley is one of the earliest American films to feature urban organized crime. Prohibition's arrival in 1920 created an environment where anyone who wanted to drink had to interact with criminals,Leitch. pg. 22 especially in urban areas. Nonetheless, the urban crime genre was ignored until 1927 when the film Underworld, which is recognized as the first gangster movie,Kehr, Dave. Underworld, Chicago Reader, accessed October 11, 2010. became a surprise hit. According to the Encyclopedia of Hollywood'''s 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."Siegel & Siegel. pg. 178 Other gangster films such as Thunderbolt, Lights of New York, The Racket, and The Doorway to Hell were released to capitalize on Underworld's popularity,Izod. pg. 70 with Thunderbolt later described as "a virtual remake" of the film.Leitch pg. 23 Motivated by financial gain in an increasingly competitive film market, and motivated by the fact that provocative pictures sold tickets, these movies pushed the boundaries of film violence. Other late 1920s crime films depicted organized crime on Broadway, and investigated the connection between mobsters and Broadway productions in films such as 1929's Tenderloin and Broadway.Hughes. pg. xii
The Hays Office had never recommended banning violence in any form in the 1920s—unlike profanity, the drug trade or prostitution—but advised that it be dealt with carefully.Prince. pg. 20 New York's censor board was the most active board of any state, reviewing around all but 50 of the country's 1,000–1,300 annual releases.Prince. pg. 23
In 1927–8 the violent scenes they most removed were all instances where the gun was pointed at the camera, some instances where guns were pointed "at or into the body of another character", many shots where machine guns were featured, scenes where criminals shot at law enforcement officers, some scenes involving stabbing or knife brandishing (stabbings were considered more disturbing than shootings by audiences), most whippings, several involving choking, torture, or electrocution, and scenes which could be considered educational in their depiction of crime methods.Prince. pgs. 23–8 Sadistic violence, and reaction shots showing the faces of individuals on the receiving end of violence were considered especially sensitive areas.Prince. pgs. 27–8 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.Prince. pg. 30
Westerns Justus D. Barnes starred as "Bronco Billy Anderson", leader of an outlaw gang from the silent film, The Great Train Robbery (1903), the first "Western" ever filmed. The Western was a subgenre of crime films. Scenes where criminals aimed guns at the camera were considered inappropriate by many state censor boards in the pre-Code and Code era, and were removed from public viewing.
Birth of the Hollywood gangster
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 the perception of entire towns.Doherty. pg. 139 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 was even offered seven figure sums by two major Hollywood studios to appear in a film but declined.Doherty. pg. 140 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.Doherty. pg. 137 His father appeared in a popular series of newsreels giving police homespun advice on how to catch his son. Dillinger's popularity rose so fast that Variety joked "if Dillinger remains at large much longer and more such interviews are obtained, there may be some petitions circulated to make him our president."Doherty. pg. 142 Hays wrote a cablegram to all the studios in March 1934 decreeing that Dillinger should not be portrayed in any motion picture.Doherty. pgs. 137-8
In April 1931, the same month as the release of The Public Enemy, Hays recruited former police chief August Vollmer to conduct a study on the effect gangster pictures had on children. After he had finished his work, Vollmer stated that gangster films were innocuous and actually too favorable in their depiction of the police.Black. pg. 123 Although Hays used the results to defend the film industry, the New York State censorship board was not impressed and from 1930 to 1932 removed 2,200 crime scenes from pictures.Smith. pg. 51
One of the factors that made gangster pictures so subversive was that in the difficult economic times of the Depression there already existed the viewpoint that the only way to get financial success was through crime.Doherty. pg. 151 Many were convinced they would lead to higher rates of juvenile delinquency.Springhall. pg. 100 The Kansas City Times argued that while adults may not be affected by these films, they were "misleading, contaminating, and often demoralizing to children and youth."Black. pg. 109 Exacerbating the problem, local theater owners advertised gangster pictures with a singular irresponsibility.Doherty. 153 Theaters displayed tommy guns and blackjacks and real-life murders were tied into promotions. The situation reached such a nexus that the studios had to ask exhibitors to tone down the gimmickry in their promotions.
The genre entered a new level following the 1931 release of Little Caesar. The film featured Edward G. Robinson in a career defining performance as gangster Rico Bandello.Siegel & Siegel. pg. 359 Caesar, along with The Public Enemy starring James Cagney, and Scarface featuring Paul Muni, were incredibly violent films that created a new type of anti-hero. Driven by the performance of one protagonist, they were considered "actors' vehicles".Shadoian. pg. 31 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.Black. pg. 110 The backlash against gangster pictures was swift. In 1931 Jack L. Warner announced that his studio would stop making them, and that he had never let his 15-year-old son see one.Leitch. pg. 24
Little Caesar
Warner Brothers 28‑year‑old head of production Darryl F. Zanuck decided to make a gangster picture in 1930 after one of his close friends was killed by a bootlegger. He purchased the rights to the novel Little Caesar by Chicago reporter W. R. Burnett for $15,000. Burnett had penned the gangster story after seeing the aftermath of the Capone ordered Saint Valentine's Day massacre.Vieira. pg. 30 Generally considered the grandfather of gangster films,Dirks, Tim. Little Caesar, filmsite.org, accessed October 15, 2010. in Caesar, Robinson as Rico, and his close friend Joe Massara (played by Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.), move to Chicago. Joe wants to go straight and meets a woman. Rico, however, seeks a life of crime and joins the gang of Sam Vettori, rising to the rank of boss in the crime family. After becoming concerned his friend will betray him, he threatens him, at which point Joe's girlfriend goes to the police. Unable to bring himself to kill Joe and thus eliminate the witness against him, Rico goes into hiding. He is coaxed out by the police who publish that he is a coward to the press, and Rico is shot and killed by the police. As he is dying, he says "Mother of mercy, is this the end of Rico?"Canby, Vincent. FILM VIEW; Annual Report On the Mob, The New York Times, December 4, 1988, accessed October 15, 2010.
The film is characterized by its tight, lean narrative,Shadoian. pg. 37 and runs at a brisk pace for its 79 minutes. The Rico character is not portrayed as admirable, and is shown to possess little intelligence.Shadoian. pgs. 40–2 The picture has a simple, obvious storyline and is filmed in brighter images during Rico's triumphant rise, and at night and darkly shot during his fall.Shadoian. pg. 46 Among later film critics, Robinson's performances is frequently cited as the film's saving grace.Null, Christopher. Little Caesar , accessed November 1, 2010.