The Public Enemy (Enemies of the Public in the UK) is a 1931 American pre-Code gangster film produced and distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures. 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.
Supporting actors include Beryl Mercer, Murray Kinnell, and Mae Clarke. The screenplay is based on an unpublished novel—Beer and Blood by two former newspapermen, John Bright and Kubec Glasmon—who had witnessed some of Al Capone's murderous gang rivalries in Chicago.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".
Plot
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 taxidermied 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 the United States enters World War I in 1917, Mike enlists in the Marines. Their mother pleads with Tom not to do the same, and he promises, staying behind.
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 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.
Paddy gets his members holed up in an apartment while he nervously leaves to work a deal with Burns, somehow, as they are outnumbered. He takes their guns and money away hoping this will keep them in hiding. But he is seen leaving the place by a Burns' gang member. Later in the night Paddy's girlfriend has her way with Tom, when he is drunk and helpless. In the morning Tom, disgusted, leaves with his loyal friend Matt following him. Matt is immediately gunned down in a barrage of Tommy gun fire but Tom escapes narrowly. Furious, Tom robs a pair of .38s and single-handedly goes to settle scores with Burns and some of his men but 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 drops at home later to warn Mike that Tom has been kidnapped by the Burns' mob from the hospital. He also gives Mike hope that he will bring Tom back somehow, with news that he has offered to quit and leave the racket to Burns, hoping that he would not kill Tom. Then during dinner, a gang member, presumably from Paddy's gang, telephones to tell an anxious Mike that 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 getting up and walking slowly towards the motionless camera that is still on the floor continuing to frame the lifeless Tom.
Cast
Uncredited
Production Development
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 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".
Casting
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 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 was 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 was the original choice for Gwen Allen, a woman with a 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".Paris (1989), p. 359 In 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 film. 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 that 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 was the only woman he loved besides his wife. Donald Cook played Tom's brother, Mike. Filming 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 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. 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.Watson, Teresa. (September 2008). "James Cagney - Star of the Month", midnightpalace.com; accessed October 9, 2015.
Grapefruit scene
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 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 the unscripted action.Turner Classic Movies (October 17, 2010). The Public Enemy 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.Clarke, Mae. Featured Player: An Oral Autobiography of Mae Clake, Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press, 1996
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. The scene was parodied 30 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.
Prologue and epilogue The film featured a prologue "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 "brief stage tableau, with sinuous green lighting, which shows a puppet gangster shooting another puppet gangster in the back."
Music The soundtrack included the following songs: "I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles" "Hesitation Blues" "Toot, Toot, Tootsie (Goo' Bye!)" "Maple Leaf Rag" "Brighten the Corner Where You Are" "Smiles" "I Surrender Dear" The music was performed by the Vitaphone Orchestra, led by conductor David Mendoza.
Reception Box office According to Warner Bros. figures the film earned $464,000 domestically and $93,000 internationally.
Critical response
Andre Sennwald, who reviewed the film for The New York Times on its April 1931 release, called it "just another gangster film at 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."