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T H E
P U B L I C
E N E M Y
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| Tom Powers: James Cagney | Director: William Wellman | |
| Matt Doyle: Edward Woods | Producer: Darryl Zanuck | |
| Gwen Allen: Jean Harlow | Writers: Kubec Glasmon, John Bright, Harvey Klew | |
| Mamie: Joan Blondell | Editor: Ed McCormick | |
| Ma Powers: Beryl Mercer | Art Director: Max Parker | |
| Mike Powers: Donald Cook | Costumes: Earl Luick, Edward Stevenson | |
| Kitty: Mae Clarke | Music Director: Ed Mendoza | |
| Putty Nose: Murray Kinnell | Makeup: Perc Westmore | |
| Nails Nathan: Leslie Fenton | ||
| Paddy Ryan: Robert Emmett O'Connor | ||
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| The
Public Enemy is the story of two young men who lead a life of crime
during the Prohibition era. Growing up in south Chicago, childhood friends
Tom Powers and Matt Doyle frequent a boy's club run by Putty Nose, a local
gangster, who gives them money for goods they steal on the street. When
the boys reach young adulthood, Putty Nose gives them guns and sends them
out on robberies. After narrowly escaping capture during one such robbery,
Tom and Matt return to the club to find that Putty Nose has skipped town.
Saloon owner Paddy Ryan takes Tom and Matt under his wing. He tells the men that Prohibition is coming into effect and people will want to buy the illegal liquor. Ryan organizes a mob to distribute the liquor to neighborhood stores. He sends Tom and Matt to rob a federal warehouse of impounded liquor and pays them a large sum of money afterwards. The men spend this money on new clothes and a new car. Tom also sends money home to his mother. Tom's brother Mike returns home from the war. At one family meal, Tom and Matt sit a keg of beer in the center of the table. Mike refuses to drink the beer because he is aware of, and disgusted by, Tom's gangster activities. The two get into an argument and Mike throws the keg against the wall. Meeting his new crime boss, Nails Nathan, at a nightclub one night, Tom spots Putty Nose. Tom and Matt follow him back to his apartment, and Tom kills him. Nails is later killed by a fall from a horse, leaving Tom and Matt, again, in the hands of Paddy Ryan. Tom learns that Putty Nose's mob wants to kill him. Paddy takes Tom and Matt's guns away and forces them to stay at a hotel for protection. They ignore his orders and leave the building. Two of Putty Nose's men fire shots from a warehouse across the street and kill Matt. Tom vows to avenge his friend's death. Tom robs a gun store and goes to a nightclub where Putty Nose's gang is having a party. He enters the club, fires several shots, and returns to the street with a gunshot wound to the head. He collapses on the sidewalk and is taken to a nearby hospital. Tom's
mother and brother Mike visit him at the hospital. Tom vows to give up
the gangster life and return home. But Putty Nose's gangsters want revenge.
They kidnap Tom from the hospital, kill him, and deliver his body to his
family's doorstep.
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| The
Public Enemy is an important film, not only for its documentation of
mob activity during the Prohibition
era, but for its gritty, realistic portrayal of gangster life. It was also
one of the first films of its time to look at the social influences on
a gangster's behavior. The content of this film, and others like it, caused
the film industry to initiate a production code in the 1930s that set strict
guidelines for violent or sexual content in films.
Tom Powers was likely based on mobster Charles Dion O'Bannion, who ruled the Chicago underworld in the 1920s. O'Bannion was murdered by agents of his rival, Al Capone. |
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| Print:
The Public Enemy, in Magill's Survey of Cinema Web:
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