The Roaring Twenties (1939)

Starring: James Cagney, Humphrey Bogart, Jeffrey Lynn, Priscilla Lane, and Gladys George
Grade: A+

Is it just me, or is the guy who plays Lefty a better-looking Edward G. Robinson?

Summary

The film opens with a foreword from author/screenwriter Mark Hellinger (who wrote the short story “The World Moves On” in which the movie is based on) talking about how the characters are composites of people he knew, the events really happened, and how he’s grateful for the experience.

During the final days of World War I in 1918, soldier Eddie Bartlett (Cagney) jumps into a foxhole on the battlefield, and he bumps into fellow soldier George Hally (Bogart), who was in the hole trying to light his cigarette. Though George is initially annoyed because he lost his cigarette, Eddie offers one from his pack and they befriend each other. As they try to light it, soldier Lloyd Hart (Lynn) jumps into the foxhole too and falls into the both of them. After apologizing, they start talking about how Lloyd is scared and how he just finished law school. George tries to give him shit, but Eddie comes to Lloyd’s defense by saying they’re all scared and how he doesn’t like “heroes”, getting tough with George. Once Eddie says he’s cool with Lloyd because he appreciates guys who are honest with themselves, all three men crawl out of the hole. Following this, all the soldiers are back at camp and get their mail. George is unimpressed with the woman who sent him a picture, but Eddie is excited to get his because the woman is much better looking. After he shows her off to George and Lloyd, Sgt. Pete Jones (Joe Sawyer) shows up and yells at everyone to get going. Eddie and George are slow to react, so Jones gets in George’s face. However, George doesn’t back down and he reminds Jones how he used to work for George’s father. Jones changes the subject, leaves, and yells for them to hurry up.

On the battlefield, Eddie and Lloyd talk about the armistice taking forever and how Eddie doesn’t think the war will ever end, though Lloyd tries to be optimistic. Lloyd asks George what he will do once the war is over. After George shoots an enemy soldier, he says he’ll get back into the saloon business, as he doesn’t think they’ll do a good job enforcing prohibition the following year. Eddie says he’ll go back to work in the garage and save up enough money to open a shop of his own. As they talk, Lloyd hesitates in shooting an enemy who’s around fifteen or so, George shoots the kid instead. The three are interrupted by a fellow soldier who tells them that the armistice has been signed and the war has ended. It is now 1919. The war is over, women’s attire has changed, Jack Dempsey is kicking ass, the cost of living is going up like crazy, prohibition is in full force, and the last of the soldiers are finally coming back home. Unfortunately, these soldiers are struggling because it’s as if they have been forgotten about. Being a part of the last group to get home, Eddie shows up to a complex for rented out furnished rooms and greets the landlady Mrs. Gray (Vera Lewis) who can’t believe Eddie isn’t dead. After she tells him the rent has gone up ($4 each weekly), Eddie goes into the room of his best friend Danny Green (Frank McHugh). Danny fell asleep at the kitchen table, so he makes them both some coffee and wakes Danny up. Once he realizes his best friend is back, Danny is ecstatic. The two catch each other up on their lives, but Danny admits the taxi business hasn’t been very good for him. During this conversation, Eddie gifts Danny a German trench helmet from the war as a souvenir.

Afterwards, Danny drives Eddie to the garage to get his job back. He talks with his old boss in Fletcher (Joseph Crehan), but he turns Eddie down because they don’t have any spots left open. On the way to his car, two other mechanics talk shit to Eddie, so he lays one out with a punch and that guy knocks the other over. Eddie continues his job search, but he can’t find a single one. Back at their place, Danny sees Eddie’s frustrations and offers him a spot as a taxi driver, splitting the car and general expenses with Danny. Each of them would work 12 hours a day. Eddie accepts because he doesn’t have any other option. Right after, he gets mail from Mrs. Gray. It’s another message from Jean Sherman (Lane), the girl who used to write him when he was at war. Jean lives in Mineola, Long Island, so Eddie asks Danny for a ride out there. Eddie and Danny meet Jean’s mother (Elisabeth Risdon) and are let in, as they wait for Jean’s arrival. Eventually, Jean arrives, but she looks suspiciously young. It turns out she’s still in high school and the picture she sent to Eddie through the mail was when she had her makeup done for a play that she was in. Very aware of the situation he’s in, Eddie leaves respectfully. When she asks when he’ll call, he tells her “Two or three years”. As they leave, Danny jokingly comments, “You should’ve stayed and helped her with her homework”, which was pretty funny.

In 1920, men are still drinking regularly because the law isn’t really being taken seriously. However, the Volstead Act changes everything, so speakeasies start popping up everywhere.

Working as a taxi driver, Eddie drops some guy off, but he offers Eddie $12 to take a bag of liquor into the Henderson Club because he has to run the other bags across the street. He’s told to ask for Panama Smith (George). Upon entering the club, he finds her but asks her about his payment in front of the other patrons, so a couple of undercover detectives immediately arrest the both of them for bootlegging. For the trial, Eddie enlists Lloyd to be his lawyer. Panama is found not guilty, but Eddie is found guilty of violating the Volstead Act and is given a sentence of 60 days in jail or to pay a $100 fine. Panama thanks Eddie and leaves immediately after, without offering to pay his fine. Since Eddie doesn’t have any money, he’s forced to go to jail. Talking to his suicidal cellmate who’s also a veteran, Eddie is saved by Danny, who paid his fine. They get outside but run right into Panama. It turns out that she actually paid his fine. The only reason she left the courthouse so early was to gather the money. Panama takes Eddie to a speakeasy she frequents to talk. She gets gin, and he gets a glass of milk. A cop enters the room, and Eddie assumes they’re busted. However, he’s surprised to see the cop go to a customer to tell him his car is parked by a fire hydrant, and he has to move it. He’s just not giving him a ticket because he has Vermont plates. Then, the cop asks for a drink. Eddie and Panama sit down at a table, and Panama tells Eddie she wants to help him out by having him work with her in the bootlegging business. She appreciates him taking the rap for her, and she knew of a solider who went to France and never came back, so she feels for him. Eddie takes the job as a delivery man in the bootlegging business and starts making some money, even bringing in Danny on it.

One day, he’s told there’s a price hike, so he starts making the liquor himself in his bathtub. In 1922, the evasion of prohibition is taking center stage, the flask is getting very popular in everyday life, and the increasing demand for good alcohol forces bootleggers to rush production. By this time, Eddie’s underground bootlegging business is even more successful, and he’s been buying cabs for his drivers to deliver. Plus, it’s a good front. Three men come into Eddie’s cab place looking for jobs as bootleggers, but he only hires the two who have spent time in jail. Now working as Eddie’s regular attorney, Lloyd goes with Eddie to his office to collect his payment. He gets more than what he’s expecting, but Eddie gives it to him because Lloyd has saved him a lot of money. Even so, Lloyd doesn’t really like the illegal business Eddie has involved himself in. One of Eddie’s workers interrupts to say they can’t find Harold Masters (George Meeker) to collect what he owes, so Eddie goes out himself to find him. Masters has been producing high-end musical comedies, so he has the money. Eddie shows up to a stage performance Masters is presenting and demands his $700 right away offstage. Masters agrees to give it to him as he watches the performance. As they talk, Eddie looks over at the stage and notices one of the dancers is a now grown-up Jean. Following their number, he tries to ask her out, but she turns him down. Changing up his focus a bit, he tells Masters that he’ll be back tomorrow to pick up the check.

Following the show, Eddie waits for Jean and flirts with her. She says she has to make her train, so Eddie goes with her to continue talking to her. They take the train all the way back to Mineola where they discuss Jean’s dreams of being a musical comedy star and how she still takes singing lessons to improve her skills. Eddie walks Jean all the way back to her house and is able to talk himself inside. Unfortunately, Eddie kills the mood before he walks in after mentioning Jean’s mother, not knowing she died a year ago. Since then, Jean’s been living by herself and plans to continue until she gets a break or sells the house. She’s only been with the current show for three weeks, but it’ll close at the end of the following week, and she’ll have to search for another job to make her dreams come true. With the wheels spinning in his head, he decides to take a rain check but their relationship has just begun, as Eddie will work diligently to help her achieve the next phase in her life by getting her hired as a performer at Henderson’s Club. However, Eddie’s bootlegging business will only complicate the details and will stall things before they get too deep. Once George reenters the picture, things get much more dangerous, and Eddie will find himself in some troubling situations that may affect the rest of his life.

My Thoughts:

Cagney and Bogart did it again. Whether they were together or separate, these two were virtually unstoppable for a majority of their careers. When it came to the crime genre with one or both, it wasn’t even a question. Magic was almost a guarantee. In a decade overflowing with gangster movies, Raoul Walsh’s The Roaring Twenties still manages to set itself apart when it could’ve easily been forgotten because of a perfect storm of magnificent writing, acting, and directing.

James Cagney by himself has been in some of the most important gangster movies of all time, but he never did it just because the role was available. With every movie offer, he still chose the right one’s because the script was worth it. Plus, each gangster character gave him a different challenge as an actor. This is what makes Cagney’s Eddie Bartlett so different. This character is a stark contrast from other antagonistic gangsters Cagney has a tendency to play. Eddie is a good person and a soldier. Right from the beginning, we see him at war and like many, he doesn’t want to be there. Though he’s tough, you can tell his heart is always in the right place too. After befriending the hardnosed, somewhat bloodthirsty George and the good-natured Lloyd, we see the foreshadowing of what is to come. Lloyd isn’t about violence and is only doing his duties as a soldier because he’s in the position he’s in. Eddie is doing the same, but he has more of an edge to him and is willing to take it a bit further for personal gain. George is twisted to begin with however and that’s why Eddie and Lloyd maintain a friendship without him until he reenters the picture because a coincidence allows for an opportunity. When they get back to regular society, George jumps right into the bootlegging business, as he always had it planned. As expected, he takes his violent attributes with him and uses it to move up in the criminal underworld. In a way, this 1939 gangster throwback is The Good (Lloyd), The Bad (George), and The Ugly (Eddie) for the classic Hollywood period, years before Sergio Leone did the same with his epic western in the 1970s.

Only this time around, “The Ugly” is the star.

What makes The Roaring Twenties dynamic in its presentation is that it’s not a set-in-stone gangster story filled with one-dimensional characters whose roles are clearly defined to make the heroes and villains on-the-nose obvious, a key problem with a lot of films from this era. This isn’t that at all. Out of these three male characters and their differing personalities and motivations, they all lean in different directions and offer a certain level of depth not seen from a lot of movies during this time period. This is what makes the movie so compelling when the action gets more eventful, the drama gets deeper because of the women in their lives, the working relationships they attempt, and they move more into their societal roles and start to figure out their goals. Though Lloyd is the unquestioned “Good” of the group and regularly expresses his disappointment with Eddie’s dealings in bootlegging, he still works with Eddie and accepts the paychecks willingly as his lawyer. He’s a good friend and shows a great deal of loyalty to Eddie because he got him a job when he needed it in the first place. This is probably why he doesn’t try anything with him or decide to rat on him, even when he quits. However, Lloyd still betrays Eddie by taking Jean from behind his back. This becomes the tipping point in Eddie’s life as he turns to alcoholism, leading to the end of his run at the top. Though Lloyd is “Good” because he’s not a gangster, he’s still flawed enough that you can’t take his side wholeheartedly. If anything, it pushes you more into the direction of the conflicted but well-intentioned Eddie.

In another excellent performance by James Cagney, Eddie is a character screwed by life. From the beginning, he was an honorable soldier and a tough guy. Coming back from war, all he wanted to do was go back to the job he originally worked at (which was said to be waiting for him upon his return) and work enough to open up his own shop. This seems simple enough, right? This is all he wanted, a quiet life and a job. Coming out of war, he should be allotted this at the very least. We’re not saying it’s owed to him, but it shouldn’t be controversial in saying that he should be cut a little slack for defending the country during a world war, right? Well, this takes place in the 1920s. Whether you’re a soldier or a bum, everyone is given the same opportunities, or lack thereof. Because of this, soldiers were at a disadvantage because they didn’t have an education or any experience. Despite a willingness to work hard and learn, Eddie is slapped across the face with reality. Sadly, no one cares about the sacrifices he made and the life he missed out on. It’s a sad reality but an accurate one at that. He can’t find a job and won’t be able to stay with his friend Danny Green without some type of weekly income. After driving a taxi, a job he was only able to get because of Danny, he is offered to bring alcohol to the Henderson Club for instant cash. It’s only a delivery. This is all he would have to do. How could he turn it down considering his financial situation? Though it’s a criminal act during the timeframe, we know Eddie is only doing what he needs to do.

As expected, society screws him again, a common theme you will notice in the tragedy that is The Roaring Twenties.

Despite never doing this before in his life, he’s arrested for the delivery. He takes the rap for Panama Smith, who he was delivering to, and is sent to jail because he couldn’t pay the $100 fine. Can you imagine how bitter you would be in this situation? Talk about getting screwed! Act high and mighty and blame him because he shouldn’t have gone bootlegging all you want, but you have to consider the context and life circumstances in which Eddie has been put in. As a viewer, we have sympathy for the man because we know what he’s been through. This isn’t the “I want power and the success drives me” of Tom Powers in The Public Enemy nor is this insane criminal Cody Jarrett, who just loves the art of the game in White Heat. Eddie Bartlett is a veteran who got shafted by the country who he defended overseas. After not getting help or any opportunities worthwhile, he was forced to make his own decisions and was pushed over the edge once he got sent to jail, as he started to see the potential for quick money and a lot of it. With his introduction to Panama and the offer coming with her, he saw a way to get out of the trenches and took it. He got out of the literal trenches in World War I but found himself in the metaphorical trenches of life after the war. Unfortunately, there’s no armistice to help him out this time around. He was stuck all on his own and reacted to what was in front of him.

This is how you write a multifaceted, sympathetic criminal character. Sure, he gets more violent and destructive as time moves on, but this is part of the territory once you get deeper into the business. If he stayed the same, he wouldn’t have achieved nearly the same success. Again, he had to do this. They made him do it. What saves him from losing the audience’s love is that he never goes over the deep end. He defends Lloyd because he knows he’s a good man. It’s a feeling he internalizes throughout the rest of his life and into the absorbing third act when he uses this as his redemption in the explosive and heartfelt finale. As early as the war in the beginning of the film, he makes it known how he appreciates Lloyd’s honesty about being scared. Despite everything that happens throughout the course of this film and the highs and lows of Eddie’s life, he never tries to kill Lloyd. He defends him to George when they’re all soldiers, and he stops George from killing him when Lloyd quits working for them in a tension-filled scene. Even when Eddie punches Lloyd after finding out about him and Jean, he stops himself from going any further. This scene in particular was riveting and the most important one of the film, mostly because of how much is said in a few carefully chosen lines and purely from Cagney’s powerful reacting in the moment. With everything falling apart around him with Danny, this feud with Nick Brown, and George waiting to turn on him, the buildup to the inevitable breakup between Eddie and Jean is an anxiety-riddled one because you can’t predict how he’s going to react to the news. The pairing of Lloyd and Jean just makes more sense, as Jean is just as pure as he is and never seemed interested in Eddie’s business interests.

Despite how hard he tried, their chemistry never clicked, and she never truly loved Eddie.

Eddie wasn’t stupid though. Every day in which he gained ground in bootlegging, he lost ground with Jean. You can start to see it in his eyes when he speaks to her. He can tell something is off with her demeanor, and his subconscious starts connecting the dots when he notices Lloyd leering at her during one of her performances at the Henderson Club. George also instigates the situation by mentioning the fact early on and how it’s going to happen between Lloyd and Jean purely because of the age difference. Even so, Eddie never says anything out loud. It’s as if he doesn’t want to believe it and tries to shake the idea off. Of course, Panama breaks the news to him by saying, “Everyone knew but you”, and it sets off the rage within him. He storms out to his car but sees Jean walking with Lloyd. Any fan of Cagney can tell you that in this very moment, he’s going to explode. Walking over with purpose, he knocks Lloyd to the ground with a punch. This is a man he entrusted with everything and someone he has defended from the very first day he met him. Regardless, Eddie still got screwed by him. However, even though he punched him, it still felt like he held back on what he could have done. After Eddie does it, he’s almost in shock himself. He still sees the good in Lloyd. This is when Lloyd hits him with immediate and moving response of, “What are you trying to prove?”. This was a head-turner, as it put almost the entire movie and Eddie’s life trajectory in perspective. What is punching Lloyd going to prove? Jean doesn’t love him, and nothing will change that. What if he kills Lloyd? What will this accomplish? He has done everything he can to help them both, but it just wasn’t good enough.

It’s over.

This is the moment where Eddie realizes this part of his life is effectively finished, and he has no choice but to move on. His saddened response to Lloyd’s question sets the tone for the third act with a heavy handed, “Nothing kid. I’m sorry…I’m sorry”. Right after, he starts drinking for the first time in his life, the Wall Street Crash of 1929 ruins him to the point where he has to sell his cab company to George at a loss to pay off his $200,000 debt, and he loses his police protection because he can’t pay anyone off anymore, resulting in him going in and out of jail to the point where everything he built comes apart. Just like that, society takes down a good man once again, and they hit the poor bastard at all angles. Obviously, he’s not completely innocent in the matter, but the sympathy is earned because of how well the story is told and how well Cagney conveys the issues of the character.

Humphrey Bogart was exceptional as the bastard George. From coldly shooting people on the battlefield and practically enjoying it to the on-the-nose response to the armistice being that he may take his gun with him because he likes it, George is one ruthless son of a bitch. He’s able to go as far as he does because of his lack of a moral compass. If he has to kill, he will do it. Even if it can be avoided or it may not be necessary, he will be the one to do it anyway, just in case. Upon running into Sgt. Jones at the government warehouse when they steal $250,000 worth of seized alcohol from Nick Brown’s shipment, George takes the opportunity as divine intervention, killing Jones without a second thought after telling him he would when Jones was his commanding officer in war. He wished for the opportunity to see him outside of the war, and he was lucky enough to get it. In George’s mind, he had to do it even though it could have been avoided. This the switch George has that makes him the true villain and not the sympathetic gangster Eddie is. Eddie is even frustrated with George’s actions, and they disagree on a lot of stuff once George is brought in, which only foreshadows things further for our protagonist. When Eddie agrees to work with George after storming Nick Brown’s boat disguised as members of the Coast Guard in an awesome sequence, Eddie straight up says to his face, “I don’t trust you George”. George’s tendencies are well-known by everyone, but his talent and knowledge of the business are second to none. Plus, you need to have someone willing to strong-arm people in the bootlegging business to get ahead. It’s just the law of the land. Though we have it on pretty good authority that he will play a role in Eddie’s downfall, George is a high-risk, high reward investment that is worth it, given the goals of Eddie wanting to get into the big money and high-end clients Nick Brown is involved with.

Even so, if George was willing to turn on a more powerful gangster like Nick Brown, nothing will stop him in taking down Eddie. This divide and increased tension between Eddie, George, and the threat of Brown is the most underrated section of the film. The mini-summit they have at the Henderson Club when Brown tries to approach the both of them, and it turns into a shootout was spectacular. There’s no other way to put it. You can feel the tension as soon as we cut to Jean singing and Eddie eyeing Lloyd. When Brown walks in with his boys and George tells Eddie they’re here, you can feel the water boiling and we wait on the edge of our seat in anticipation for someone to make a move.

*For all those “Classic Hollywood” fans, there’s also a callback to the infamous “grapefruit” scene from The Public Enemy in which Eddie smashes Henderson’s cigar against his face after he makes a disparaging comment towards him.*

Though I loved how they tied Eddie’s fall and redemption directly to the grown-up relationship between Lloyd and Jean and how he’s the only one who can help because he’s the bridge between Lloyd and George, I was not a fan of Panama’s argument to try and convince him to help. How can she have the audacity to say he “owes” it to them because they have something to look forward to in life compared to herself, Eddie, and George? He doesn’t owe them shit! They got together and moved on without him. If anything, he did them a favor by not killing both of them for fucking him over when he needed them the most! They did absolutely nothing to help him in the years after either. When he fell on hard times, they never reached out! Keep in mind that when Eddie was on top, he made sure he got them both jobs and did everything in his power to ensure they were making money and working towards their goals. For Panama to say he “owes” them is absolute bullshit. If he was offered this to do it out of the kindness of his heart and because he still cares deeply for the two in different ways, this would be acceptable. However, for Panama to say that because she failed at life and how Eddie has no chance to fix his future is downright infuriating. Who the fuck is she? I don’t know if things were written like this to send a message to career criminals in real-life during this timeframe, as was the case with earlier gangster movies from the 1930s, but they went about things in the wrong way here to the point of annoyance. The dialogue in this scene was one of the three key problems I had with an otherwise superb screenplay.

The other issue was following the scene when George set up Eddie by letting Nick Brown know Eddie was heading to his place to enact revenge for what they did to Danny. Right after Eddie gets back, he storms in his office to interrupt a celebrating George to say he can’t prove George set him up but once he does, he’s going to kill him. This doesn’t make any sense at all. First of all, he’s killed for less. Considering the mental state that he was in at this point and just coming back from a shootout and killing several people, no one would bat an eye if he came back and gunned down George, Lefty, and the women they were with in the room. Second of all, why does he need to prove it? He’s not a cop. He doesn’t need to prove anything. From a character standpoint, it doesn’t seem logical that he would just let George be and never follow up on it. He knows how George is, George didn’t deny it when accused, he looked shook as hell when confronted by it, and he was clearly celebrating what he thought would be Eddie’s death. All the evidence he needs is right there in front of him. Logically, Eddie wouldn’t let this go with his adrenaline through the roof following a shootout and what he knows about George already. The last key problem was the missed opportunity of Panama in general. She liked Eddie, right? There was something more there. Eddie just never saw it. She was jealous of the attention Eddie was giving Jean compared to her and seemed emotionally affected by anything he would do for her. They should have played with this more. Maybe giving Panama a bigger role would have affected the wonderful pace the film seemed to move at, but the character seemed to be begging for more to do regarding her role in Eddie’s life.

Action-packed, well-written, complex and very in-depth for a gangster movie from the time period, Raoul Walsh’s The Roaring Twenties takes a deep dive into a pivotal decade in America’s history and takes what could have been an elongated epic into a well-paced, eventful, compelling, and tragic character study of a war veteran’s rags-to-riches-to-rags story in the bootlegging business during the Prohibition Era and all the lives he affects along with way (and vice versa). With a wonderful James Cagney, a seething Humphrey Bogart, and some sprinkled in humor, the saga that is The Roaring Twenties stakes its claim as one of the best gangster movies of the decade.