Phoenix101
Sophomore
@angryjoeshow
Posts: 597
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Post by Phoenix101 on Aug 23, 2017 3:37:49 GMT
 "What was his business?"
"He used to be a big shot."The Roaring Twenties is an incredibly underrated film, yet it's one of the greatest of the gangster genre. I first heard about this film from Martin Scorsese's documentary, A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies, when talking about the highlights of the gangster genre. James Cagney, Humphrey Bogart and Jeffrey Lynn play three war comrades who find their lives inextricably entwined as they all become involved in lives of crime in different ways. Bogart was still toiling away as one of Warner’s stock villains when The Roaring Twenties was made and he’s far from the finished article, although his performance as the double-crossing rat who pays allegiance to no-one and thinks nothing of killing anyone who stands in his way, is still convincing. Cagney was at the top of his game, at the front end of a near unbroken string of box office hits which would only come to an end when he left Warners in the early forties because of contractual disputes. He plays Eddie Bartlett, an everyman soldier with both good and bad in him (unlike Bogart, who is evil to the core, and Lynn who is unfalteringly good) who finds himself spearheading gangland’s prohibition racketeering when he hooks up with nightclub owner Panama Smith (Gladys George). The direction by Raoul Walsh is tight and economic, and Mark Hellinger’s story is punctuated with news montage sequences told in the stentorian tones of a March of Time newsreel. There’s an almost nostalgic feel to it all and an almost sweeping grandeur to the story as it chronicles not just Bartlett’s descent into a life of crime (as glamorously as it possibly can), but the entire nation’s as it embraced a drinking culture inspired by the government’s ill-advised prohibition laws. It’s all delivered with Warners’ typical no-nonsense approach, and topped with one of the most memorable death scenes in movie history. The imagery and symbolism of Cagney’s fatally wounded anti-hero careering into a mail box before woozily ascending the stairs to Josiah Weir’s impressive church only to come crashing down as his life comes to an end is daring and effective. This is one of those classic films that everybody likes and, unlike some other Cagney classics such as Angels With Dirty Faces and Public Enemy, the passage of time has done little to dim its impact. Be sure to catch it if you get the chance. 9.5/10 |
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Post by mikef6 on Aug 23, 2017 3:47:46 GMT
Saw this just last year on the Big Screen at a revival house. Here is what I said at that time:
A rollicking crime film with social critique from Warner Bros. about soldiers returning from hardships in The Great War to a society high in unemployment. Some of them turned to crime. After the start of Prohibition (1920), Eddie Bartlett (James Cagney) and his buddy Danny (Frank McHugh) find a way to get rich: bootlegging. He joins forces with two other Army pals, Lloyd (Jeffrey Lynn) who has become a lawyer and George (Humphrey Bogart) who becomes his right hand man and main muscle. Eddie falls in love with chanteuse Jean Sherman (Pricilla Lane) but she is more attracted to Lloyd. Director Raoul Walsh takes us on a tour of the 1920s as Eddie Bartlett’s crime career peaks and plummets, ending with a flamboyant scene on New Year’s Eve of 1929 that, as one biographer put it, only Cagney could have played without causing laughter in the audience. Another stand-out in the supporting cast is Gladys George as saloon owner Panama Smith who carries a torch for Eddie even while he tries to marry Jean. Panama shares that famous final scene with Cagney and delivers the devastating last line of the film. Just two years later, Gladys George would again share the screen with Humphrey Bogart as Iva Archer in Bogie’s breakout role in “The Maltese Falcon.”
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Post by BATouttaheck on Aug 23, 2017 3:56:00 GMT
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Post by BATouttaheck on Aug 23, 2017 4:00:41 GMT
Gladys George and Cagney _04.jpg) |
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Post by BATouttaheck on Aug 23, 2017 4:05:13 GMT
.  Tough guy bigshots get tired too. |
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Post by telegonus on Aug 23, 2017 8:54:28 GMT
I love The Roaring 20s. A great movie from Raoul Walsh, courtesy of Warner Brothers. It should be better known, more of a classic but for some reason many Warners films from the period don't get the respect they deserve, and didn't even in their day.
It wasn't till after 1940 that Warners seemed to pull up close to industry leader MGM in terms if prestige; and even then they had plenty of competition from Fox, Paramount and indie producers like Selznick and Goldwyn.
Also, Cagney vehicles didn't get the same respect as those of Gable and Cooper. They did tend to be more genre, geared to crime, and mostly urban in setting, but at their best, in this one and the previous year's Angels With Dirty Faces the movies were on a par, as to quality, with what any major star was doing at the time.
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Post by mattgarth on Aug 23, 2017 11:08:18 GMT
Producer Mark Hellinger proclaimed in the prologue that some episodes and persons depicted in THE ROARING TWENTIES were based on his observations and experiences as a New York journalist. Gladys George's character of 'Panama Smith' was based on flamboyant nightclub hostess Texas Guinan (Betty Hutton played her for real in the 1945 Paramount picture INCENDIARY BLONDE).
Cagney's 'Eddie Bartlett' was a composite of several gangsters from the bootleg era, including Larry Fay (Guinan was hostess at his nightclub) and Hymie Weiss -- a Chicago gangster who was shot down on the steps of a cathedral. Most interesting was Marty Snyder, who used his muscle to promote the career of singer Ruth Etting (as Cagney does for Priscilla Lane), only to lose her affection to another.
In 1955, Cagney would portray that same character for real (and earn his third Oscar nomination) in LOVE ME OR LEAVE ME opposite Doris Day as Etting.
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Post by teleadm on Aug 23, 2017 17:59:46 GMT
I liked this movie too. I thought an interesting aspect of James Cagney's role is that he actually doesn't think he's doing anything wrong, and treats everyone fair. Even if he offcourse is breaking the law.
I agree with the way Warners treated James Cagney's movies (Errol Flynn's too by the way) not as their prestige movies, for that they had Paul Muni ("every time Paul Muni looked into a microscope we lost a million dollars"). While it was actually Cagney and Flynn among their male stars that made the millions so they could afford Paul Muni movies that lost millions.
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Post by petrolino on Aug 25, 2017 21:47:04 GMT
Nice review, thanks. I love this movie.
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Post by marianne48 on Aug 25, 2017 23:12:16 GMT
I'd watch just about anything with Jimmy Cagney, and this is one of the all-time best Warner Bros. gangster classics--Jimmy
chews up the screen, there's a lot of melodrama, the music is great--all this and Frank McHugh. And Bogart's line, "There's 10,000
shell holes around here, and everybody's gotta come diving into this one," foreshadows his "Of all the gin joints" line in Casablanca.
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Post by them1ghtyhumph on Aug 28, 2017 1:09:52 GMT
'He used to be a big shot'
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Post by london777 on Aug 28, 2017 14:25:37 GMT
Gladys George's character of 'Panama Smith' was based on flamboyant nightclub hostess Texas Guinan (Betty Hutton played her for real in the 1945 Paramount picture INCENDIARY BLONDE). I had never heard of Texas Guinan until a few days ago. I was watching "Splendor in the Grass" (1961) and thought that the nightclub hostess was so idiosyncratic that she must have been based on a real person. Incidentally, I think this picture shows that the girl who was supposedly a dead ringer for Natalie Wood was not also played by Wood as some have rumored. So that is three movies Guinan "appeared" in, including by proxy. Any others, you mavens? Picture: Texas Guinan |
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Post by teleadm on Aug 28, 2017 17:18:36 GMT
 The real Texas Guinnan. |
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Post by telegonus on Aug 28, 2017 18:52:28 GMT
Tex Guinan was quite a name in her day. For some reason she's more forgotten,--or maybe a better way to put it is less written about--figures from the Jazz Age. She was quite the celebrity in her day.
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Post by BATouttaheck on Aug 28, 2017 21:55:20 GMT
More on Texas Guinan : Filmography Excerpt from Trivia : The character "Guinan", bartender of the Ten Forward lounge on Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987) played by Whoopi Goldberg, was named after Texas Guinan. Notorious in the eyes of the feds, who wanted to stop her flagrant violations of Prohibition laws, she fervently denied that her joints sold liquor despite abundant evidence to the contrary. She avoided lengthy time behind bars and had all charges subsequently dropped because the feds couldn't prove she owned the routinely raided clubs. The Depression took a real bite out of her profits and she died in 1933, not the wealthy gal she used to be.
Was future journalist/producer Lowell Thomas's Sunday school teacher when Thomas was a boy in Victor, Colorado. They remained lifelong friends even after her latter-day notoriety. QUOTES: I like noise, rhinestone heels, customers, plenty of attention and red velvet bathing suits. I smoke like a five-alarm fire and I call every man I don't know Fred, and they love it. A politician is a fellow who will lay down your life for his country. |
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