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September 5, 2017 (XXXV:2) Mervyn LeRoy: LITTLE CAESAR (1930), 79 min.

(The online version of this handout has color images and hot url links.)

Selected in 2000 for the

Directed by Mervyn LeRoy Written by W.R. Burnett (novel), Robert N. Lee (continuity), Francis Edward Faragoh (screen version & dialogue), Robert Lord (uncredited), Darryl F. Zanuck (uncredited) Produced by Hal B. Wallis, Darryl F. Zanuck Cinematography Film Editing Ray Curtiss Art Direction Set Decoration Ray Moyer Costume Design by Earl Luick Ferike Boros…Mrs. Passa (uncredited) Music Erno Rapee (general director), Leo F. Forbstein Kernan Cripps…Detective (uncredited) (conductor: Orchestra (uncredited), David George Daly…Machine-Gunner (uncredited) Mendoza (composer: title music, uncredited) Adolph Faylauer…New Year's Celebrant (uncredited) Ben Hendricks Jr….Kid Bean (uncredited) Cast Al Hill…Rico's 'Butler' (uncredited) Edward G. Robinson…Little Caesar - Alias 'Rico' Lucille La Verne…Ma Magdalena (uncredited) Jr….Joe Massara Gladys Lloyd…McClure Guest (uncredited) …Olga Stassoff Noel Madison…Killer Peppi (uncredited) William Collier Jr….Tony Passa Tom McGuire…Detective on Phone (uncredited) …Big Boy Louis Natheaux…Hood (uncredited) …Pete Montana Henry Sedley…Scabby (uncredited) Thomas E. Jackson…Flaherty Gay Sheridan…Nightclub Patron (uncredited) Stanley Fields…Sam Vettori Larry Steers…McClure Guest (uncredited) Maurice Black…Little Arnie Lorch Landers Stevens…Alvin McClure - Crime Commissioner George E. Stone…Otero (uncredited) Armand Kaliz…De Voss Mike Tellegen…Bodyguard (uncredited) Nicholas Bela…Ritz Colonna Robert Walker…Lorch Henchman (uncredited) Ernie Adams…Cashier (uncredited) Elmer Ballard…Undetermined Role (uncredited) LeRoy—LITTLE CAESAR—2

MERVYN LE ROY (b. October 15, 1900 in San he’d held for years and moved to Chicago where he found Francisco, —d. , 1987 in Beverly a job as a night-clerk in a seedy hotel. There, he found Hills, California) quit school at 13 to become a newsboy. himself associating with a cornucopia of characters “I saw life in the raw on the streets of ,” he straight from the mean streets of Chicago—prize-fighters, said. “I met the cops and the whores and the reporters and hoodlums, hustlers, and hobos. They inspired Little the bartenders and the Chinese and the fishermen and the Caesar (novel and subsequent film)—the latter’s shopkeepers. . . .When it came time for me to make overnight success landed him a job as a Hollywood motion pictures, I made movies that were real, because I screenwriter. Thematically Burnett was similar to knew first-hand how real Hammett and James M. Cain people behaved.” His first but his contrasting of the film was No Place to Go in corruption and corrosion of 1927; his last was as the city with the better life his uncredited director of John characters yearned for, Wayne’s hyperbolic The represented by the paradise of Green Berets (1968). Le the pastoral, was fresh and Roy’s career in show original. He portrayed business began in ; characters who have, for one then his movie-mogul cousin reason or another, fallen into Jesse Lasky hired him at a life of crime. Once sucked Famous Player-Lasky where into this life they've been he worked in wardrobe; then unable to climb out. They get as a film tinter; and finally as one last shot at salvation but an actor in minor roles. He the oppressive system closes wrangled a directing job at another studio and made in and denies redemption. Burnett inspired numerous other profitable simple entertainments until Little Caesar writers and Hollywood filmmakers, created a new (1930), which invented the ’30s gangster genre and made subgenre, and helped make film legends of Edward G. him a major director. His is Robinson, , and . Public generally regarded as one of the classic film musicals of Enemy (1931), They Live by Night (1948), White Heat the ‘30s. It includes some of ’s most (1949), The Godfather (1972)—all are direct descendants spectacular production numbers. Some of the other 65 of Little Caesar, which was a lightly disguised biography films he directed were Mary, Mary (1963), Gypsy (1962), of (Al himself planted a spy on the set while The FBI Story (1959), (1958), The the film was being made). Edward G. Robinson said later Bad Seed (1956), Mister Roberts (1955), Rose Marie of his starring role that it “probably expressed a feeling (1954), (1952), ? that millions of people had about their lives.” The (1951), (1949), Depression had indeed made Capone a sort of underdog (1949), The House I Live In (1945), Thirty Seconds Over hero, a challenger of the establishment, a poor boy who Tokyo (1944), Madame Curie (1943), They Won't Forget made it big, an individualist who lived by his own rules. (1937)—a great social issue film, also notable for the first Burnett may hold the record for having his novels made film appearance by his discovery Judy Turner, whose into film again (and again and again). Some examples; name he changed to Lana—I Am a Fugitive from a Chain The Asphalt Jungle (4 times with 4 different titles), High Gang (1932), and (1931). He produced 28 Sierra (4 times, 4 titles), and Saint Johnson (4 times, 2 films, one of which was The Wizard of Oz (1939) hence titles). Late in his career, he achieved huge popularity in the inscription on his tombstone in the Garden of Honor in Europe where his anti-hero ideology was enthusiastically Glendale’s Forest Lawn Cemetery: “.” embraced. In addition to Judy/, he is credited with discovering , , and Robert TONY GAUDIO (b. Gaetano Antonio Gaudio on Mitchum. Le Roy wanted to cast Gable as Rico’s dancing November 20, 1883—d. August 10, 1951, age 67, in buddy in Little Caesar but the studio bosses said no: his Burlingame, California) was born into a photographic ears were too big for movies. family: both his brother and father were portrait photographers in Italy. While he started out in the family W.R. BURNETT (b. William Riley Burnett on November business, he quickly transitioned into film with Napoleon 25, 1899 in Springfield, Ohio—d. April 25, 1982, age 82, Crossing the Alps in 1903, and he eventually shot in Santa Monica, California) left Ohio in 1927 by which hundreds of short subjects for Italian film companies time he'd written over a hundred short stories and five before moving to the US in 1906. From 1910-12 he novels, all unpublished. At 28, he left a civil service job became the chief of cinematographers at Independent LeRoy—LITTLE CAESAR—3

Moving Pictures, where he shot 's films for sensitive, quiet, artistic type when not performing. director Thomas H. Ince; he would later shoot The According to the March 31, 1941, issue of Time magazine, Gaucho (1927) for her husband, Douglas Fairbanks. Tony he and bid $3,200 for the fedora hat that was at the forefront of technical innovation in his craft; in Franklin D. Roosevelt had worn during his three 1922 he invented a viewfinder for the new Mitchell successful campaigns for the presidency. They acquired camera. Tony also was an expert—as were many early the hat at a special Hollywood auction to benefit the cameramen—in the development of film, as most Motion Picture Relief Fund. Both Robinson and Douglas cinematographers took a hands-on approach to were identified as “loyal Democrats.” Robinson would development to ensure not just the quality of their images, later be “grey-listed” during the McCarthy but to achieve effects in the lab. In the , he helped hysteria of the 1950s and have to make his living on stage. photograph Douglas Fairbanks’s The Mark of Although he almost made a comeback as he was (1920), pioneering the use of montage, and shot two-strip considered for the role of Don Vito Corleone in The scenes for On with the Show! (1929) and Godfather (1972) before Marlon Brando was cast. Some General Crack (1929). The opinionated Tony Gaudio was of his other nearly 100 films are Soylent Green (1973), prone to clash with his directors, and Oscar-winning The Cincinnati Kid (1965), Cheyenne Autumn (1964), The director Lewis Milestone—who won his first Oscar on a Outrage (1964), The Prize (1963), Two Weeks in Another film lensed by Gaudio, Two Arabian Knights (1927)— Town (1962), The Ten Commandments (1956), Hell on nearly fired him from The Front Page (1931). The studio Frisco Bay (1955), House of Strangers (1949), Key Largo tolerated his temperament as he was a master of black and (1948), All My Sons (1948), The Night Has a Thousand white cinematography, winning six Academy Award Eyes (1948), The Stranger (1946), Dr. Ehrlich’s Magic nominations and one Oscar from 1930 through 1946, Bullet (1940), The Last Gangster (1937), and The Man winning Best Cinematography for With Two Faces (1934). Incredibly, never nominated for (1936). Gaudio was also a regular cameraman for Bette an Academy Award. He was awarded an Honorary Oscar Davis, who became the studio's greatest star during the two months after his death in 1973. 1930s. The cameraman originally gave Davis the glamor treatment, but by the time he shot Bordertown (1935), he DOUGLAS FAIRBANKS, JR. (b. December 9, 1909 in didn't flinch when—shooting the film with a stark , New York—d. May 7, 2000, age 90, in realism—deglamorized Davis, as he would later in two New York City, New York) was talented both period films, Juarez (1939) and The Old Maid (1939). He academically and athletically (much like his father) and as won his last Oscar nomination in 1946 for A Song to a youth had no aspirations of becoming an actor. Very Remember (1945). early in his life he developed a taste for the arts as well and became a painter and sculptor. Not content to limiting EDWARD G. himself to just one field, he became involved in business, ROBINSON (b. in fields as varied as mining, hotel management, owning a Emanuel Goldenberg on chain of bowling alleys and a firm that manufactured December 12, 1893, popcorn. He also had a lifelong interest in international Bucharest, Romania— affairs. During World War II, he was President Franklin d. January 26, 1973, age D. Roosevelt's special envoy for the Special Mission to 79, in Hollywood, CA) South America in 1940 before becoming a lieutenant in had a small part in Arms the Navy and taking part in the Allies’ landing in Sicily and the Woman (1916), and Elba in 1943. For his service, he was awarded the then didn’t appear in British Distinguished Service Cross, the French Legion of another film until The Honor and Croix de Guerre with Palm. In fact, his Bright Shawl (1923). knowledge of French was so good that in the early talkie- His next film was The era he played in French-language films made in Hole in the Wall in Hollywood for French consumption. Even though he 1930. Maybe we can get an idea of where his career was shunned acting initially, he was signed by Paramount about that time by a short he made in 1930: How I Play Pictures at the ripe age of 13. He debuted in Stephen Steps Golf: Trouble Shots. But he also appeared in five features Out (1923) but the film flopped and his career stagnated in that same year and—Little Caesar—made him a star. despite a critically acclaimed role in Stella Dallas (1925). Ironically, he hated guns. During production of Little Things really picked up when he married Lucille Le Caesar, Robinson’s eyelids had to be taped open so he Sueur, a young starlet who was soon to become better wouldn't flinch when he fired his weapon. Although best known as . The young couple became the known for playing fierce, shady little men, Robinson was toast of the town and good parts and success followed, well liked by almost everyone off-screen, having been a such as the hapless partner in Little Caesar (1931) a LeRoy—LITTLE CAESAR—4 favorably reviewed turn as the villain in The Prisoner of 1950s he produced several television series in the US Zenda (1937) or more debonair characters in slapstick including Adventures of the Falcon (1954-1956), comedies or adventure yarns. The 1930s were a fruitful Crossroads (1955) and Mr. & Mrs. North (1953). Some of period for Fairbanks, his most memorable role probably his 87 films are The People's Enemy (1935), The Story of being that of the British soldier in Gunga Din (1939). Temple Drake (1933), Forgotten (1933), Exposed (1932), Fairbanks made a point of never imitating his father. After The Phantom Express (1932), The Big Gamble (1931), the World War II, his star waned and despite a moving Street Scene (1931), Little Caesar (1931), The Melody part in Ghost Story (1981), he did not appear in a major Man (1930), Lummox (1930), (1929), movie. He appeared in about 90 other films, among them The Bachelor Girl (1929), One Stolen Night (1929), The Sinbad the Sailor (1947), The Corsican Brothers (1941), Red Sword (1929), Women They Talk About (1928), So Angels Over (1940), Gunga Din (1939), The This Is Love (1928), The Desired Woman (1927), Stranded Prisoner of Zenda (1937), Catherine the Great (1934), (1927), Convoy (1927), The Lady of the Harem (1926), The Dawn Patrol (1930), The Jazz Age (1929), and Stella The Rainmaker (1926), The Lucky Lady (1926), Playing Dallas (1925). with Souls (1925), Eve's Secret (1925), Leave It to Gerry (1924), Pleasure Mad (1923), The Age of Desire (1923), GLENDA FARRELL (b. June 30, 1904 in Enid, 1923 Sinner or Saint (1923), Loyal Lives (1923), Enemies Oklahoma—d. May 1, 1971, age 66, in New York City, of Women (1923), Secrets of Paris (1922), The Good New York) was one of the Provider (1922), Cardigan (1922), At the hardest-working and best-liked Stage Door (1921), The Girl from stars at Warner Bros. during the Porcupine (1921), The Heart of Maryland 1930s. Farrell embodied the (1921), Everybody's Sweetheart (1920), brassy blonde character of the The Soul of Youth (1920) and The Servant early talkies. Like her good friend Question (1920). and frequent costar , Farrell was a hard-boiled, wise- SIDNEY BLACKMER (b. July 13, 1895 cracking type who usually played in Salisbury, North Carolina—d. October chorines, gold-diggers or working 6, 1973, age 78, in New York City, New girls. Farrell made her mark in the York), the Tony-award winning actor who movies opposite Edward G. played Teddy Roosevelt in seven movies, Robinson in Little Caesar (1931), in I Am a is best remembered by today's movie audiences for his Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932) and Lionel Atwill in turn as the warlock/coven-leader Roman Castevet in Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933). She starred with 's Rosemary’s Baby (1968). Initially intent Blondell and in (1936). on becoming an attorney, Blackmer left the law behind to Among her other successes was a series of films in which pursue his dreams of becoming an actor in New York she played “girl reporter” , beginning with City. Blackmer made his Broadway debut on February 13, (1937). Rumor has it the fast-talking 1917, in The Morris Dance, Harley Granville-Barker's reporter was the inspiration for . She appeared in adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson's novel The Wrong almost 80 films over a long career, the last of them Tiger Box. He was not to appear again on the Broadway stage by the Tail (1968). for almost exactly three years as he left to become an officer in the military during World War I. After the war, WILLIAM “BUSTER” COLLIER JR. (b. February 12, he returned to the theater, making his second Broadway 1902 in New York City, New York—d. February 5, 1987, appearance in Trimmed in Scarlet in 1920. His appearance age 84, in San Francisco, California) was born Charles F. in Clare Kummer’s comedy The Mountain Man in 1921 Gall Jr. in New York and got his show-business start at the made him a star. He was a pioneer in the new medium of age of seven, his mother being an actress and his father radio, on which he sang during the 1920s. (Blackmer later being a theater manager. His parents later divorced and his participated in the first experimental dramas on Allen B. mother married actor William Collier Sr., who adopted the DuMont’s television network.) But it was the movies that boy and gave him his new name, William Collier Jr., increasingly attracted Blackmer’s professional attention, nicknamed “Buster”. Collier's stage experience got him in which he typically was cast as a smooth villain from his first film role, The Bugle Call (1916) at age 14. He High Society, although he did also play sympathetic roles. soon became one of the most popular actors of the 1920s, He was one of the Broadway stars who headed West, easily making the transition from child actor to young appearing in his first talkie, The Love Racket in 1929. He romantic lead. In 1935 he retired from acting to become a starred in other early sound films, including Kismet producer, first in the US and then in England, where he (1930), which is considered a . He was moved in 1937 and stayed until the late 1940s. In the memorable as Big Boy in support of Edward G. Robinson LeRoy—LITTLE CAESAR—5 in Little Caesar (1931). Blackmer was a workhorse in directing. However, this was cut short when film went to 1937 starring in five films: Heidi, , Charlie ‘talkies’ and Jackson found his voice in high demand. The Chan at Monte Carlo and Thank You, Mr. Moto and again 43-year old actor left for Hollywood and never looked with Robinson in The Last Gangster. In the late ‘30s, the back. He used his well-honed detective persona into the actor began making a side-line out of portraying role of Thomas Flaherety in tonight’s film as Robinson's ‘’, appearing as the wild ‘n’ woolly nemesis. His career as a detective continued in Fritz bully Bull Moose himself in (1937), The Lang’s The Woman in the Window (1944), as his various Monroe Doctrine (1939), and the Academy Award- character roles also translated into the age of television, winning two-reel short Teddy the Rough Rider (1940). He where he found an increasing amount of work in the mid- followed these up with the patriotic short March On, 1950’s. He was recently seen (for the first time in over 50 America! (1942), in ’s western In Old years) in the re-release version of the The Big Sleep (1946) Oklahoma (1943), in Buffalo Bill (1944), and in the in which he had previously been cut out. The reliable nostalgic My Girl Tisa (1948). Blackmer lost out on a veteran actor continued to work practically until the end of plum film role to Ed Begely Sr. who won an Oscar for his his life appearing in over 180 films and television roles. portrayal of Boss Finely in ’ film Sweet Some of these include Camp Runamuck (1966, TV Bird of Youth (1962) based on the Tennessee Williams’ Series), The Loner (1965, TV Series), Temple Houston play, a role that Blackmer had originated on Broadway. (1965, TV Series), The Tall Man (1960-1962, TV Series), After Blackmer’s death, his widow became entangled in a 77 Sunset Strip (1962, TV Series),The Deputy (1961, TV battle with Donald Trump. Trump wanted to sell the Series), Shotgun Slade (1961, TV Series), Have Gun - Will apartment she rented under New York City's Senior Travel (1960, TV Series), Lawman (1958, TV Series), Citizen Rent Increase Exemption Program and wanted her Attack of the 50 Foot Woman (1958, uncredited), to sell the apartment. Eventually, in 1998, Trump could Adventures of (1957, TV Series), It Conquered turn the apartment into condos, subject, however, to her the World (1956), Dragnet (1956, TV Series), and The tenancy. Mrs. Blackmer did not receive any money as a Naked Street (1955). result of the legal battle with Trump. Trump was enjoined from all attempts to evict her from the 100 Central Park [ from Wikipedia] Alphonse Gabriel Capone (January South Apartment where she remained until her death in 17, 1899 – January 25, 1947), sometimes known by the August 2004. nickname Scarface, was an American gangster and businessman who attained fame during the Prohibition RALPH INCE (b. January 16, 1887 in Boston, era as the co-founder and boss of the Chicago Outfit. His Massachusetts—d. April 10, 1937 in London, England) seven-year reign as was the youngest of three filmmaking brothers (the others crime boss ended were and Thomas H. Ince), Ralph’s career when he was 33 mirrored that of his brother John: he went from acting in years old. silents to directing, and with the advent of sound he turned Capone was born character actor. Unlike John, however, he would in Brooklyn in New eventually resume directing and was successful in UK York City to Italian productions from 1934 until his death. He moved to immigrants. He was England in 1934 to work for Warner Brother’s and was considered a Five instrumental in signing the young to a Points Gang member who became a bouncer in organized Warner’s contract. He acted in over 100 films and directed crime premises such as brothels. In his early twenties, he 172, the bulk of which spanned only 25 years from 1912- moved to Chicago and became bodyguard and trusted 1937. His most famous directorial productions are all factotum for Johnny Torrio, head of a criminal syndicate while he was in the UK: Side Street Angel (1937), The that illegally supplied alcohol—the forerunner of the Perfect Crime (1937), The Vulture (1937), The Man Who Outfit—and that was politically protected through Made Diamonds (1937), It’s Not Cricket (1937), Fair the Unione Siciliana. A conflict with the North Side Exchange (1936), It’s You I Want (1936), Hail and Gang was instrumental in Capone's rise and fall. Torrio Farewell (1936), (1936) and Jury’s went into retirement after North Side gunmen almost Evidence (1936). killed him, handing control to Capone. Capone expanded the bootlegging business through increasingly violent THOMAS E. JACKSON (b. July 4, 1886 in New York means, but his mutually profitable relationships with City, New York—d. September 7, 1967, age 81, in mayor William Hale Thompson and the city's police Hollywood, Los Angeles, California) was mostly a theater meant that Capone seemed safe from law enforcement. star having begun as a child actor in 1889 and continued Capone apparently reveled in attention, such as the cheers up until 1928. After this, the actor began to take interest in from spectators when he appeared at ball games. He made LeRoy—LITTLE CAESAR—6 donations to various charities and was viewed by many to department store in the city. Both parents came from be a "modern-day ". However, the Saint Jewish families that, as LeRoy says in his autobiography, Valentine's Day Massacre of gang rivals, resulting in the “had been in San Francisco for a couple of generations” killing of seven men in broad daylight, damaged Chicago's and had become “assimilated to the point of complete image—as well as Capone's—leading influential citizens absorption.” to demand governmental action and newspapers to dub LeRoy had two older cousins, Jesse and Blanche him "Public Enemy No. 1". Lasky, who were vaudevillians, a circumstance that The federal authorities became intent on jailing Capone, “helped kindle my interest in show business.” His mother and they prosecuted him for tax evasion in 1931, a federal was also devoted to vaudeville and the theatre, though crime and a novel strategy during the era. During the only as a spectator. Thanks to her contacts, LeRoy made highly publicized case, the judge admitted as evidence his stage debut at six months, carried on at the Alcazar Capone's admissions of his income and unpaid taxes Theatre as the papoose in The Squaw Man. … during prior (and ultimately abortive) negotiations to pay When LeRoy was five, his mother went off with the the government any back taxes he owed. Capone was man who subsequently became her second husband, Percy convicted and sentenced to 11 years in federal prison. Temple. They moved no further than Oakland, where After conviction, he replaced his old defense team with LeRoy and his father frequently visited them, but the experts in tax law, and his grounds for appeal were event was the first trauma of the boy’s childhood. The strengthened by a Supreme Court ruling, but his appeal second followed within a year—the San Francisco ultimately failed. earthquake of 1906. It ruined LeRoy’s father, destroying He was already showing signs of syphilitic dementia early both the family home and Harry LeRoy’s beloved store. in his sentence, and he became increasingly debilitated He subsequently found work as a salesman, but “he was a before being released after eight years. On January 25, beaten man.” 1947, Capone died of cardiac arrest after suffering a LeRoy never went hungry, but he wanted more than stroke. bare subsistence and, at the age of twelve or thirteen, quit school to become a newsboy. “I saw life in the raw in the streets of San Francisco,” he says. I met the cops and the whores and the reporters and the bartenders and the Chinese and the fishermen and the shopkeepers….When it came time for me to make motion pictures, I made movies that were real, because I knew firsthand how real people behaved.” “Newsboys had to battle it out for choice corners” and LeRoy, who was small but wiry, fought his way from a corner in Oakland to the two pitches he most desired, “the lucrative corner at the St. Francis Hotel in the morning, and the exciting corner in front of the Alcazar Theatre in the evening.” When he was fourteen, hawking his papers outside the Alcazar, the actor noticed him and gave him a one-line role in a play called Barbara Frietchie. After that, he says, “The stage bug had bitten and the itch would never leave me.” He began to compete in amateur talent contests as “the Singing Newsboy,” before long promoting himself to “Mervyn LeRoy, the Boy Tenor of the Generation.” According to some accounts, he appeared around this time as a child actor in one or more of Bronco Billy Anderson’s films. In 1916, LeRoy met another would-be vaudevillian, Clyde Cooper, and teamed up with him as “LeRoy and Cooper, Two Kids and a Piano.” After a while they were Mervyn LeRoy from World Film Directors, Vol. I. Ed. signed by one of the vaudeville circuits and toured all over John Wakeman. The H.W.Wilson Co., NY, 1987 the country with growing success. LeRoy says: “I learned show business from the bottom up. I learned the value of American director and producer, LeRoy was born in dialogue, the value of music, the value of timing. After San Francisco, the only child of Harry LeRoy and the three years the act broke up. Stranded in New York and former Edna Armer. His father owned the Fair, a small penniless LeRoy swallowed his pride and went to see his LeRoy—LITTLE CAESAR—7 cousin Jesse Lasky, who had quit vaudeville and risen to policy as might be supposed); and the equally thorough power and wealth as one of the first movie moguls, chief advance working-out of camera angles. Shot in five weeks of Famous Players-Lasky. Jesse gave him his train fare to at a cost of about $70,000, No Place To Go made a Los Angeles and a note to the studio. modest profit—another useful precedent. LeRoy claimed LeRoy arrived in Hollywood in 1919 (not in 1923 that “all my pictures—and I made seventy-five of them— as for some reason he states in his autobiography). He have been money-makers.” found that he had a menial job in the wardrobe department His second film, (1928), certainly was. at $12.50 a week. Whenever he could, he would “visit the Based on Carl Ed’s popular comic strip, and starring stages and watch them make movies,” and , it soon deciding that “the director apparently grossed a million dollars. seemed to be at the center of the By the end of 1928, LeRoy was artistic universe” there. making a thousand dollars a week. A Tired of the smell of mothballs, string of comedies and romances LeRoy talked himself into a job in the followed in 1928-1930 from First lab as a film tinter, at the same time National and its successor, Warner trading on his extraordinarily youthful Brothers. Le Roy’s first appearance to secure juvenile roles in was the backstage romance Broadway two or three forgotten movies. One Babies (1929), in which the heroine day, William DeMille was directing a (Alice White), is briefly infatuated movie that called for the effect of with a gangster. A similar situation is moonlight shining on water. No one central in , made in knew how to achieve this, but that night LeRoy stayed late 1930 and also starring Alice White, while in Numbered at the lab and rigged the shot with a black box full of Men (1930), the hero (Raymond Hackett) is a convict, distilled water and a spotlight. This coup brought LeRoy a jailed for counterfeiting. back-breaking job as assistant cameraman. Responsible But LeRoy’s most important contribution to the for loading the camera and pulling focus. That advance burgeoning gangster genre was Little Caesar (1930, was short-lived, ending when LeRoy ruined the first scripted by Francis Faragoh from the novel by W.R. footage he handled. Burnett. It traces the rise and fall of Rico Randelli, a Deciding that his movie career was finished, he Chicago mobster modeled on Al Capone, ending with his returned to vaudeville. Within a year he was back in death in a back alley and the famous last words: “Mother Hollywood, intent on a new career as an actor. LeRoy of Mercy, is this the end of Rico?” LeRoy had to fight for played a ghost in Alfred E. Green’s The Ghost Breaker permission to film Burnett’s rawly realistic novel, the (1922), a crooked jockey in and Johnny Warners’ front office then being of the opinion that Hines’ Little Johnny Jones (1923), a bellboy in Lloyd Depression audiences wanted only light relief. The Ingraham’s Going Up (1923), and three or four other director lost a lesser battle with his employers—to cast as small roles in 1923-1924. He was evidently only Rico’s crony Joe Masara an unknown actor he had moderately talented as an actor, but had impressed Alfred discovered in a play called The Last Mile. He was told that E. Green with his gifts as a gagman during the filming of he had wasted a screen test on a man whose ears were too The Ghost Breaker. In 1924, when Green offered him a big for screen career, so the part went to Douglas job as gagwriter, he moved behind the camera “with no Fairbanks Jr and Clark Gable joined MGM. regrets.” Rico Bandello is a primitive in pursuit of the American LeRoy worked with Green and others as a “comedy Dream, self-righteously convinced that hard work, clean constructor” on a series of films…. The majority of these living, and murder are the poor man’s way to the top. The pictures starred , who became a close psychological complexity and brutal vitality of Edward G. friend. It was through her influence at First National that Robinson’s performance made him a star overnight. LeRoy secured his first directorial assignment, No Place Equally admired was the almost documentary realism with To Go (1928), starring as a banker’s daughter which the film portrays the criminal milieu and, as who sails to the South Seas in search of romance and finds Kingsley Canham writes, “the ethnic and family-oriented more than she bargained for. customs and loyalties that it openly portrayed became No Place To Go was adapted from a Saturday iconographical features of the genre.” William Wolf Evening Post story that LeRoy had found himself. In his suggests that it was also the “landmark film” in its use of first film he initiated a number of policies that he was to the new sound medium: “The incessant noise of the follow throughout his career–wide and constant reading in machine guns, the chilling scream of search of stories with “heart”; insistence that the script be brakes…dramatically impressed upon the public the complete before shooting began (by no means as general a blessings of sound,” LeRoy—LITTLE CAESAR—8

Richard Watts Jr. called Little Caesar “the truest, most with adulatory reviews everywhere except , whose ambitious and most distinguished” of the contemporary state government brought a libel suit against Warner rash of gangster movies, “pushing into the background the Brothers. LeRoy was warned never to set foot in the state. usual romantic conventions of theme and concentrating on Nevertheless, as a direct result of the film and the public characterization rather than on plot.” Dwight Macdonald outrage it caused, various reforms were instituted in the went so far as to call it “the most successful talkie that has state’s penal system including (eventually) the abolition of yet been made in this country,” with “a dynamic driving shackles and leg irons. pace which carried through to the very end”; LeRoy had Le Roy had another hit with his next movie, Hard “adroitly modulated the tone from tense drama (as in the to Handle (1933), starring James Cagney as a heartless gangsters’ inner sanctum scenes) to satire (as in the superb con man who believes that “the public’s like a cow banquet episode) to the bleakest realism (as in the last bellowing to be milked.”… reel).” Forty years later Peter Waymark found it “still as After a couple of minor pieces came the “ebullient fast and abrasive as when it was made.” Though there was and witty” Gold Diggers of 1933, generally regarded as a good deal of criticism of the film’s callousness and one of the classic film musicals of the 1930s. The “gold violence, it was an overwhelming box-office success. diggers” are , , Joan Blondell, LeRoy made six films in 1931, two of them vehicles and Aline MacMahon---showgirls looking for work. Ned for the rubber-mouthed comedian Joe. E. Brown. The Sparks plays a producer looking for an “angel,” and Dick most notable of the year’s output Powell is the playboy songsmith who writes, was , a tough subsidizes, and stars in the show that makes newspaper story in the tradition of all their dreams come true. The movie Front Page, scripted by Robert features some of Busby Berkeley’s most Lord from a play by Louis spectacular production numbers, including Weitzenkorn. Edward G. the stunning opening with Ginger Rogers Robinson stars again as Randall, a garbed in gold dollars and the Depression- cynical city editor who stuck for a conscious finale, “My Forgotten Man.”… story dredges up a twenty-year- A musical comedy, old one involving a woman who (1934) was followed by Oil for the Lamps of had killed her lover…. China (1935) from the novel by Alice Five Star Final was chosen was Tisdale Hobart. The book deals with the chosen as one of the year’s best movies by Film Daily, activities of a ruthless American oil company in China, and nominated for an Oscar, William K. Everson, centering on an executive (Pat O’Brien) whose devotion to discussing a recent revival of the film, wrote that “of all the company costs him the love of his wife and the life of the gangster, newspaper, and ‘social’ melodramas of the his child. The novel’s indictment of the methods and early 1930sthat together form a kind of loose genre of morals of big business is considerably softened in Laird their own, Five Star Final is far and away still one of the Doyle’s screenplay, but the picture has nevertheless been best—and least dated.”…Despite a preponderance of much admired for the quality of its direction and acting dialogue, one hardly ever thinks of…[it] as having come and for Tony Gaudio’s photography. calls it from the stage…What must have been a difficult and “one of the few films of the Thirties to deal exclusively possibly tedious scene on stage (the mother trying with the problems of work,” and “a brave attempt to desperately to get the managing editor on the phone) generalise about the conflict between individuality and becomes simultaneously poignant and exciting thanks to social allegiance.”… some of the best utilization of a split screen ever seen.” One of the finest movies of LeRoy’s career Two Seconds (1931), one of the most original of the followed in 1937, They Won’t Forget, adapted by Robert Warners low-life dramas…was followed by Big City Rossen and from a novel by Ward Greene. Blues (1932), a relatively lightweight but highly efficient plays an unscrupulous Southern district entertainment…. attorney ambitious for the governorship who sees his wrote Three on a Match (1932), a chance when a coed is found murdered. (The coed, in a fast-paced melodrama following the fortunes of three old tight sweater, is Lana Turner, one of LeRoy’s school friends after a reunion. Joan Blondell has become a discoveries.)...The poisonous claustrophobia and showgirl, , a hard-working stenographer, and demoralizing heat of small-town Southern life are An Dvorak a wealthy but dissatisfied socialite. … powerfully conveyed in a film that Frank S. Nugent called The picture that follows remains the most admired “a brilliant sociological drama and a trenchant film of all LeRoy’s films, I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang editorial against intolerance and hatred.”... (1932). [It] broke box-office records and shared an Oscar LeRoy also acted as producer of ’s The as best picture with Forty Second Street. It was received Great Garrick in 1937 and the following year he directed LeRoy—LITTLE CAESAR—9 his last film for Warners, a comedy called Fools for of defeat and unemployment. In dramatizing one man’s Scandal. After that he moved to MGM, succeeding Irving ruthless desire to “make it” in America, Little Caesar both Thalberg as supervisor of production at the phenomenal appeals and repels. Sympathy for the protagonist as salary of $6,000 a week. He produced four films, someone prepared to battle the Depression is mixed with including the hugely successful The Wizard of Oz (1939), distaste for his methods. Rising and falling, the gangster but found himself increasingly frustrated in the role of passes ironic comment on the violent and corrupting terms executive. In the end, MGM gave way and let him return of once sacrosanct beliefs in individualism and capitalist to directing. At the MGM “glamor factory,” LeRoy success. Such themes had become increasingly definitive became a very different kind of filmmaker from the of the late 1920s gangster film, and it is clear that the socially conscious realist he had been at Warners…. circumstances of the Crash lent even more sanction to the LeRoy had been finding life at MGM increasingly cycle’s skepticism about the American Dream. difficult after the enthronement of Dore Shary, and in What make Little Caesar different, however, is not 1955 he returned to Warners…. just the coincidence that the gangster’s story is narrated in Raymond Rohauer suggests that LeRoy’s “range the aftermath of the Crash. Rather, this gangster is and diversity have seldom been equaled by any other significant because he speaks. After all, Little Caesar was producer-director,” but the same could be said about the more than just a fine gangster film; it as the first great unevenness of his work. His worst films, as John Baxter gangster talkie. And this gangster spoke Italian-American remarks, are “impossible to watch.” But, working for (actually the situation is more complicated—we have a Warners in the 1930s, he made eight or nine movies that Jewish-Americsn actor imitating an Italian-American). fully justify Peter Waymark’s description of him as “one The gangster’s voice adds a layer of signification that of the great Hollywood craftsmen,” and John Baxter’s further complicates the nature of the gangster’s relation to claim that he was, at his best, “an artist of ideas.” Le Roy established success mythology. It is not just that Little was first married to ’s daughter Doris, by Caesar is a dark allegory of Algerism, whenever the whom he had a son and a daughter. After their divorce in gangster speaks he reveals that this American’s story is 1943, LeRoy made a second marriage to Kitty Spiegel. delivered from a very specific cultural space. His accent frames his desire for success within a history of struggle over national identity. When civic pressure groups responded to the gangster film, they couched their objections in terms of a moral paradigm (e.g. how such films glorified the criminal and would adversely influence the young). This moral dressing, however, ultimately disguised a more complex fear of “otherness” for gangsters gained popularity not simply because of stories they told, but how they told them. It wasn’t some abstract notion of the criminal that was celebrated, but the gangster as Robinson (or Cagney or Muni) portrayed them. Robinson, for example, cold never shake off his characterization of Little Caesar, precisely because the role and the actor were inseparable. It wasn’t just anyone who would play the gangster most from Public Enemies Public Heroes Screening the effectively; he had to be from a very specific part of Gangster from Little Caesar to Touch of Evil. American society. Thus what gangster films popularized Jonathan Munby. University of Chicago Press, was not only a critical disposition toward the law but Chicago/London, 1999 . national identification with an ethnic urban type. In the case of Little Caesar the irreverence for law Little Caesar: “It's an Italian Picture” becomes bound up with a complicated relationship with the language of officialdom and the dominant old-stock As the first of its kind to gain public renown, Little Caesar culture. The quest to be “legitimate” for the gangster is not occupies a significant place as a watershed gangster film. simply a question of building a front to disguise the Little Caesar has been interpreted primarily as a parody essentially immoral nature of capitalist enterprise. No, it is of the success mythology typified in the popular Horatio this and more: it is simultaneously a quest to gain cultural Alger rags-to-riches stories. And there is much that is acceptance into the upper echelons of “society.” compelling about attributing the success of this film to its Little Caesar tells the story of a hoodlum seeking to desperate invocation of ambition in a Depression climate make it in the big time—“to be somebody.” This somewhat abstract quest taps into a more general LeRoy—LITTLE CAESAR—10 collective desire for upward mobility fostered in age-old Petrified Forest (1936), both of whom represented a American myths (such as that inscribed in the Horatio completely different kind of gangster than Robinson’s Alger rags-to-riches narratives). Little Caesar. As Burnett confirms: “You see there’s a Little Caesar’s dreams are fostered by a newspaper confusion here: Dillinger and Roy Earle, such men are not exposé of a famous big-city gangster, Legs Diamond. Out gangsters, organized crime, Mafioso There were a in the countryside (of small-town “burgs”), Little Caesar reversion to the western bandit. They had nothing in sees no future in small-time gas station heists and sets his common with the Italian, Irish or Polish hoodlums in sights on the city. He moves then from the country to the Chicago. An entirely different breed, and Roy Earle was a city, a symbolic passage from innocence into corruption, a perfect example.” foreshadowing as it were, of his fall from grace. Again, In response to the question “What are [these this narrative configuration echoes a constant gangster types] symbolic of?” Burnett’s answer is telling: preoccupation in American mythology, that of the loss of “Old America, rural America, and a simpler time.” a “virgin state” or Eden out of which we have been cast. This is a critical distinction, for it points back to The rise of the machine, of the big city, represents particulars in Little Caesar that belie its being read simply some kind of deviation from a truer path back to the as a general allegory for the corrosive features of garden, This ur-narrative patterning of American thought capitalism and modernity…. has been named as the “American Jeremiad” by Sacvan Bercovich, who sees it as an informing structure pervasive As Burnet emphasizes about Little Caesar’s in much of nineteenth-century American literature…. dialogue…”I wanted to develop a style of writing based To some extent, we can read Little Caesar in this on the way American people spoke—not literary English, light. W.R. Burnett, upon whose novel the film is based, Of course, that the Chicago sang was all around me made prefaced his book and the movie it easy to pick up.” with a quotation from Machiavelli: This stress on veracity of “The first law of every being is to language was designed to transform the preserve itself and live. You sow conventional view of crime and the hemlock and expect corn to ripen.” criminal: In an interview Burnett described Ultimately what made Little Caesar the his use of the quotation as follows: smack in the face it was, was the fact “It meant, if you have this type of that It was the world seen through the society, it will produce such men.” eyes of the gangster. It’s a commonplace He described Little Caesar as “a now, but it hade never been done before gutter Macbeth—a composite then. You had crime stories but always figure that would indicate how men seen through the eyes of society. The could rise to prominence or money criminal was just some son-of-a-bitch under the most hazardous of who’d killed somebody and then you go conditions, but not more hazardous get ‘em. I treated them as human than the Renaissance.” At this abstract or universal level beings.” Burnett was looking for a “type” who could embody the “tragic flaw” of over riding ambition.” Little Caesar According to Burnett, to provide a picture of the criminal indeed tells the story of a man who rises ruthlessly to the as a human being (rather than reducing him to a literary top from nothing, only to die in the gutter. And in this device or cipher), the writer had to see the world through sense Little Caesar is indeed a critique of the corrosive the social “other’s” eyes. And this had radical features of modern capitalist society and its (lack of) consequences for the gangster myth. No longer was the mores, a critique that shares much with the paradigm of underworld story to be told exclusively from the socially the jeremiad. reforming nativist perspective. As Burnett emphasizes This is actually much clearer in Burnett’s later about Little Caesar: “It’s an Italian picture. It is this filling gangster narrative, High Sierra (1941), which starred out of the ethnic point of view that made Little Caesar Humphrey Bogart as Roy Earle, a figure modeled on one significantly new. The coupling of ethnic vernacular of America’s most celebrated gangsters, (a identity with the underworld is important, not so much as hero of dust bowl Depression America, not a figure drawn a consolidation of the cycle’s rules but as something that from the 1920s city). Compared to Robinson, Bogart was ruptured older conventions. a star without strong ethnic markings, who could more Caesar Enrico Bandello enters the big city and the easily fit into a nativist version of American history. Club Palermo. He rises through the ranks of the gang, Bogart’s Roy Earle was reminiscent of his earlier role as assumes its leadership, and eventually gets to control a the anachronistic gangster fugitive, Duke Mantee, in The huge urban territory. As he rises, his material LeRoy—LITTLE CAESAR—11 circumstances improve. He moves out of the dingy Club positioned low on the sociocultural ladder, they were, Palermo into more baroque surroundings. He adorns from the outset, included within the dynamic himself with the signifiers of social success: smart suits, industrialized and modern centers of the economy. As cigars, diamond rings, marble tables, classical realist Stephen Steinberg puts it, even though European ethnic paintings, cars. Yet the running joke is that he and his immigrant groups initially started at the bottom of the companions of Italian extraction, while they can economic and social pyramid and “were disparaged for accumulate outward signs of “making it,” have no way to their cultural peculiarities…the implied message was ‘You actually appreciate the artifacts they have collected, For will become like us whether you want or not.’” Yet Little example, the only value Little Caesar can attribute to a Caesar reveals the way in which the rewards for painting he sees in Big Boy’s office is a financial one. He assimilation (simulation/aping) are ultimately withheld. judges this not on the basis of The project of the painting itself but on the assimilation encourages a fact that it has a huge gold splitting of identity among frame. This lack of “culture” groups targeted for top-down emphasizes the continual gap “Americanization.” Ethnic between legitimate and immigrants certainly had a illegitimate social realms. At sense of ethnic origin. As a the same time, Little Caesar’s transplanted popular class, desires for the signs of however, subjected to the official society signify his forces of modernization and yearning for cultural Americanization, they found inclusion and acceptance. little beyond the ghetto itself This vernacular view that would support and of the sociocultural elite solidify any old-world sense invites contradictory of roots. Rather, the interpretation and is a experience of deracination common theme in all three of the gangster films [Little might be a better way to conceptualize the immigrant Caesar (1930), Public Enemy (1931) and Scarface (1932)] ethnic experience—that is alienation from both roots in I want to deal with here. When Little Caesar is given a the old world and the projected future in the new. Little party by his gang to honor his rise to prominence, we are Caesar, as an urban production coming in the wake of the provided with a parodic simulation of a high-society Crash and designed for metropolitan audiences, plugged banquet. The gang is appropriately dressed but has no straight into this realm of contradiction. The question it sense of the protocol or language that is appropriate to raised on behalf of the disenfranchised was “Why haven’t such an occasion. No one can give an eloquent speech, the we been granted access to power?” Rico plays out the role banquet disintegrates into a food fight, and the gift the of the entrepreneur but is condemned to do so from the gang gives Rico turns out to be stolen: seemingly, those wrong side of the tracks. He wants “in” to the official who can only ape “society” are really only apes after all. culture (a promise that is held out to all ethnic immigrants) A patronizing view of the ethnic underworld, one but ultimately is only allowed to mimic legitimacy. that “naturalizes” the ethnics’ second-class citizen status, In the context of 1930 the “legitimate” culture was certainly seems to be encouraged. Their poverty, as it itself under duress. Through its direct association with were, becomes equated with cultural inadequacy. The economic catastrophe and the enforcement of the grounds for ethnic disenfranchisement thus shift away unpopular Volstead Act, “official” society became from iniquitous societal causes and onto the groups increasingly susceptible to a “bottom-up” critique. Little themselves. Several elements, however, undermine the Caesar’s box-office success has to be understood in this seductiveness of this reading. Once we relocate Little context: as a film that, in light of the Crash and the Caesar in the context of 1930, and once we look at how repressive order of Prohibition, dramatizes the deferment Robinson plays out his role, we can recover a competing of capitalism’s promises from the perspective of the version of ethnic portrayal that would have been available vernacular American subject. Little Caesar, Tommy (and probably more persuasive) for contemporary Powers, and Tony Camonte all attempt to execute those audiences. otherwise deferred promises of upward mobility and Little Caesar played on the hyphenated American’s cultural inclusion within the existing social structure. As frustrated desire for cultural and economic inclusion. The films that found their audiences in the Depression possibility for upward mobility within the social structure metropolis they testified to the polyglot American reality was implicit to the immigrant’s position in American that was increasingly at odds with the rarified discourse of society. While southern European immigrants were official society. LeRoy—LITTLE CAESAR—12

Little Caesar’s Italian people. In 1930 (a post-Crash and fraternal gang represents ethnic pre-Prohibition repeal context), an community as the “real” realm audience composed largely of lower- of social relations, which is class to lower-middle-class urbanites condemned only to mimic the would have laughed at the ridiculous rarified rules of the legal norm. insistence that Americans should The gang and the urban territory kowtow to such an artificial social it rules are ultimately code. A “banquet” replete with simulations of an “idealized” alcohol would have not only normative America. The fact signified iniquitous class division but that Rico speaks a street slang drawn attention to the hypocrisy of ties him to a “real” world Anglo-American elitism. Given the against which norms and ideals film’s overall thematic pre- are measured as ultimately unattainable. As the banquet occupation with cultural exclusion from the point of view scene reveals, the protocol of apparently “normative” of the ethnic, this scene could only have delivered an society is absurdly detached from the realm of ordinary ambivalent message about class and ethnic distinctions.

COMING UP IN THE FALL 2017 BUFFALO FILM SEMINARS XXXV

September 12: Leni Riefenstahl Triumph of the Will 1935 September 19: Luchino Visconti Rocco and His Brothers 1960 September 26: Jacques Demy The Umbrellas of Cherbourg 1964 October 3: M*A*S*H 1970 October 10 Alan J. Pakula All The President’s Men 1976 October 17: Andrei Tarkovsky Nostalghia 1983 October 24: Wim Wenders Wings of Desire 1987 October 31: Mike Nichols Postcards from the Edge 1990 November 7: Tran Anh Hung The Scent of Green Papayas 1993 November 14: Hayeo Miyazaki The Wind Rises 2013 November 21: Andrey Zvyagintsev Leviathan 2014 November 28: Pedro Almodóvar Julieta 2016 December 5: Some Like it Hot 1959

CONTACTS:...email Diane Christian: [email protected]…email Bruce Jackson [email protected] the series schedule, annotations, links and updates: http://buffalofilmseminars.com...to subscribe to the weekly email informational notes, send an email to addto [email protected] cast and crew info on any film: http://imdb.com/ The Buffalo Film Seminars are presented by the State University of New York at Buffalo and the Dipson Amherst Theatre, with support from the Robert and Patricia Colby Foundation and the Buffalo News.