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Angels with Dirty Faces (1938), set in early 1920s Hell’s Kitchen on New York City’s Lower East Side, is a classic Warner Bros. anti-hero, trailblazing gangster film directed by Michael Curtiz, scored by Max Steiner.
The gangster, Rocky Sullivan, played by James Cagney, whose mantra is “Don’t Be a Sucker,” is finally felled, but not before cooperating with grace to steer the “Dead End Kids” who worshiped him, emulating his life of crime, toward goodness and virtue. (After the Dead End Kids starred in Broadway’s Dead End in 1935, Sam Goldwyn transformed them into cinematic gold in Little Tough Guys, East Side Kids, and The Bowery Boys.)
Editor's note: First time viewers of Angels with Dirty Faces are warned that there are major spoilers below.
On the streets of old New York
The thrice-Oscar-nominated film (director, actor, story), running 97 minutes, opens up with the summer 1920 headline “Harding Nominated for President,” quickly cutting to a bustling tenement street scene teaming with immigrants — cleaning, selling their wares, ambling along in horsedrawn milk and meat trucks, working their way through and up in the world, most by dint of hard work, many by chicanery, as the music box plays “The Sidewalks of New York.”
A boy named Rocky and his pal Jerry Connolly are partners in petty theft early on. Hanging out on the fire escape, cashless and smoking, they nix going to see the latest silent film, Covered Wagon (1923), and tease and flirt with the passing girls — “Beat it, pigtails” Rocky says to one he likes, Laury Martin — before swatting her hat down. She vows to get him back one day as they head for the railroad tracks and the cargo trains where they are intent on stealing a stash of pens to sell on the street.
The police hurry in, catching Rocky but not Jerry who, more fleet of foot, escapes, albeit not before falling on the track, nearly crushed to death by the oncoming train. Rocky rescues him just in the nick of time, revealing his essential goodness.
In prison, Rocky tells Jerry not to worry about the fact he was the only one caught; but clearly his conscience bothers him.
The felon and the priest
As the story moves quickly forward, Rocky, now played by Cagney, is in the reformatory then the penitentiary. Once out, he immediately runs afoul of the law, but is acquitted, headlines screaming he beat a liquor rap. He briefly enjoys the glittering night life only to be nabbed for armed robbery. Back in jail, his dishonest lawyer Frasier, played by Humphrey “Bogie” Bogart, a supporting role on the heels of his breakout in The Petrified Forest (1936), convinces Rocky to take the blame, promising he will keep his share safe and sound.
Meanwhile, Jerry has become a Catholic priest.
After Rocky gets out — newspapers announcing “flyer circles the world,” i.e., Wiley Post, the first pilot to fly solo in 1933 — it’s back to the old tenement street scene with big band music blaring from a radio. There's a quick cut to the exterior of a Catholic church. Inside, angelic voices are singing “Hosanna in Excelsis.” It's the Dead End Kids. Meanwhile, a devout Catholic prays at a side altar replete with burning candles lit with petitions.
"What do you hear, what do you say?"
Father Jerry, played by Pat O’Brien, is guiding these kids along the straight and narrow through choir and basketball. As the singing ends, Rocky appears, surprising Fr. Jerry with the old greeting, “What do you hear, what do you say?” (Supposedly 15 years have passed, but it's technically 10 years since the attempted pen heist, according to historic markers -- but that's good enough for Hollywood.)
“What finally decided you” to become a priest? asks Rocky. “I was riding along atop of a bus… passing the cathedral…,” Fr. Jerry says, to which Rocky replies that he also “got an idea atop of a bus” and it earned him six years.
Fr. Jerry believes Rocky can go straight and urges him to get a place “in the old parish,” asking, “See you at Mass Sunday?” Yeah, Rocky says, he’ll help with the collection!
A girl named Laury, played by the lovely Ann Sheridan, shows Rocky a room for rent. Turns out it's the same girl that he swatted years ago. Now she's a social worker. When Laury realizes who Rocky is, she first slaps him, then keeps a wary but hopeful eye on him.
Crime doesn't pay
Back at the church, Rocky initially helps steer the kids toward a life of honest pursuits, urging them to pour their energies into basketball. But his life of crime is too enticing for them, and they, too, are heading that way under his influence. Eventually the kids cover for him and conceal the hundred grand he absconded with after killing Frazier and his boss in revenge for their dishonest dealings.
Rocky stealthily avoids the authorities but is finally caught and sentenced to death. Fr. Jerry visits him in prison and implores him to show remorse lest the Dead End Kids mythologize him. Before heading to the electric chair, Rocky, emotionless, shakes hands with Fr. Jerry and wishes him well.
On his way to be electrocuted, following Fr. Jerry’s counsel, Rocky breaks down, begging loudly for mercy, his cowardly whimper requiring guards to subdue him before dragging him to his death. The Dead End Kids, reading in the papers that Rocky “turned yellow,” are stunned and ask Fr. Jerry if it’s true. He confirms it, then asks them to join him in prayer for “a boy who couldn’t run as fast as I could.” A boy who had saved his friend when he was nearly killed on the tracks, and who is now saving the kids from a life of crime. Goosebumps.
