The Roaring Twenties (1939): A Classic Classic (and Cagney’s Best?)

James Cagney started out in Vaudeville as a song and dance man. Through his thirty year career in movies he played all kinds of roles, from George M. Cohan in Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942) to Lon Chaney in  Man of a Thousand Faces (1957). He’s been a boxer, a soldier, a taxi driver, a Coca Cola executive, and a spymaster; but he is most remembered as a tough guy gangster. That image was distilled in a score of pictures, including his breakout role as Tom Powers in The Public Enemy (1931) in which he famously shoves a half grapefruit into the face of Mae Clark, and his memorable portrayal of the psychopath Cody Jarrett in the amazing White Heat (1949), going out in a blaze of gangster glory (“Top of the World, Ma!”). Yet his best, most nuanced picture, might just be director Raoul Walsh’s The Roaring Twenties (1939).

The Roaring Twenties, like most of the other gangster pictures of the 1930’s, is about bootleggers, speakeasies, and organized crime. The picture follows three World War I vets - George (Humphrey Bogart), Lloyd (Jeffrey Lynn) and  Eddie Bartlett (Cagney) -   who meet in a shell crater in the midst of battle, and become buddies of sorts. After the war, prohibition sets in, and bathtub gin and organized crime follow in short order.

Cagney's character returns from the war to find that his job as an auto mechanic has been filled by a civilian, and nobody else is hiring either. He makes the acquaintance of a tough gal saloon keeper named Panama Smith, who helps him get started in the underground liquor business, and pretty soon Eddie Bartlett is doing pretty well for himself.  His war buddy Lloyd, an honest guy,  has gone to law school, and (holding his nose)  goes to work for Eddie. By contrast, George (Bogart) has no regard for the law; in fact, he has little regard for anyone or anything besides himself. When Eddie accepts him as a business partner,  we’re pretty sure  bad things will follow. Eddie is basically a decent guy, caught up in the circumstances of the times.  He's not so straight or idealistic as Lloyd, nor as mean and self-centered as George.  Eddie sees himself as a realist, and he  likes being a big shot. But he’s also a dreamer, aspiring to be a good guy. These qualities make him a great protagonist.

Cagney is brilliant as Eddie Bartlett, smart, brash,  funny, clever, tough, quick-witted, and, when circumstances warrant, wistful, loyal, thoughtful, and sympathetic. He is mercurial, sure, but never mean-spirited. Whether he’s wooing or fighting, he’s believable, and sincere. He just gives a great, nuanced, charismatic performance. Bogart had played the role of the dark, amoral, ultimately spineless bad guy for most of the thirties, and is quite good at it.  His breakout roles in High Sierra and The Maltese Falcon (1941) are still a couple years away. Priscilla Lane, a star for a few years but now largely forgotten,  is fine as the sweet, pure girl for whom Cagney carries a torch; and Gladys George is terrific as Panama Smith, who carries a torch for Cagney.

Raoul Walsh had been directing films for nearly twenty-five years at this point (and would go on for another twenty-five years) and he knew how to keep the story and the action moving along. The screenplay is intelligent, sensitive, and  loaded with great lines.  Like when George says ( after laying a trap for a rival): “I always say, when you got a job to do, get somebody else to do it.” It was based on an original story by Mark Hellinger (himself a fascinating character), with the feel of a newsreel, complete with a terse, melodramatic voiceover setting the scene.  The movie was made ten years after the devastation of “Black Tuesday”,  and six years after the end of prohibition, at a time when those bootlegging  speakeasy days seemed long gone, and it’s structured as a kind of retrospective of that bygone era. This rich film winds up being the story about a time as well as about a character.

 The cinematography by the estimable Ernie Haller (Dark Victory, Gone With the Wind, Mildred Pearce, Rebel Without A Cause) couldn’t be better ; it includes a great, iconic final scene,  not to be missed.

When the proverbial lights came on, I didn’t want this movie to be over. I felt enriched, exhilarated.  I wanted to devour the extras on the dvd immediately (rare for me). But then, the Roaring Twenties is a rare treat.

Available on DVD, including from Netflix, or streaming from Amazon Instant Video or Xfinity OnDemand