The Public Enemy movie storyline. A definitive, brutal gangster film from the early 1930s with James Cagney’s effective portrayal of the rise and fall of a prohibition-era criminal. Two young punks who grew up on the South Side of Chicago – Tom Powers (James Cagney) and Matt Doyle (Eoward Woods) – move from petty crimes to armed robbery and bootlegging. They lead violent and lethal lives, slap their blonde girlfriends around, and retaliate against rival hoodlums.
The film is most notable for its scene in which Tom pushes his breakfast grapefruit into the face of his moll girlfriend Kitty (Make Clarke).) They become associates of mobster Nails Nathan (Leslie Fenton), self-destructively engage in gang warfares, and Tom takes a new girlfriend Gwen Allen (Harlow). The final image of the delivery of Tom’s ‘mummified’ bullet-ridden body at his estranged family’s door is bone-chilling.
The Public Enemy (Enemies of the Public in the UK) is a 1931 American all-talking pre-Code gangster film produced and distributed by Warner Bros. The film was directed by William A. Wellman and stars 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. The supporting players include Beryl Mercer, Murray Kinnell, and Mae Clarke. The screenplay is based on an unpublished novel by two former street thugs — Beer and Blood by John Bright and Kubec Glasmon — who had witnessed some of Al Capone’s murderous gang rivalries in Chicago.
The Public Enemy (1931)
Directed by: William A. Wellman
Starring: James Cagney, Jean Harlow, Edward Woods, Joan Blondell, Leslie Fenton, Donald Cook, Beryl Mercer, Robert Emmett O’Connor, Murray Kinnell, Murray Kinnell, Mae Clarke, Snitz Edwards
Screenplay by: Harvey F. Thew
Cinematography by: Devereaux Jennings
Film Editing by: Edward M. McDermott
Costume Design by: Edward Stevenson
Art Direction by: Max Parker
Makeup Department: Perc Westmore
Distributed by: Warner Bros. Pictures
Release Date: April 23, 1931
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