“Let 'Em Have It”

In the 1930s, the major Hollywood studios produced approximately 400 films per year. The vast majority of these faded from public memory almost immediately after their initial period of exhibition, but a small number have continued to resonate in the public imagination to the present day. Prominent amongst these is a spate of “gangster” films, including Little Caesar (Warner Bros., 1930), The Public Enemy (Warner Bros., 1931), and Scarface: The Shame of a Nation (Caddo, 1932), the majority of which were made in the production season of 1930/1931, when a grand total of 23 films revolving around “gang” themes were produced. This amounted to less than 6 percent of the industry's total annual output and from 1932 onwards the numbers of these movies dwindled, but the notoriety of a handful of the early films was perpetuated, particularly at Warner Bros., by the recirculation and reformulation of elements of the original gangster formula. This essay considers some of the factors that, while contributing to the popularity of the unreconstructed screen gangster in the early 1930s, also insured that he made an early exit from Hollywood's production schedules. It traces his subsequent reincarnations throughout the decade in forms that, while being engineered to constitute more socially benign entertainment, were nevertheless characterized by an increasingly complex, nuanced, and contradictory relationship with their audiences.