The Public Enemy

The screenplay which was written by Harvey F. Thew was based on a novel which was never published called Beer and Blood, by John Bright and Kubec Glasmon.[9][10] Bright and Glasmon based their novel on actual people, having witnessed some of Al Capone's murderous gang rivalries in Chicago. Warner Bros. studio head Jack L. Warner bought the rights to the novel and assigned director William A. Wellman to direct the film. Wellman, who had served in World War I like the brother of the main character, told Warner: "I'll bring you the toughest, most violent picture you ever did see".

Edward Woods was originally cast in the lead role of Tom Powers and James Cagney was cast as Tom's best friend Matt Doyle, until director Wellman decided Cagney would be more effective in the part and switched the two actors[4] but never reshot the sequences with the characters as children, which is why the child playing Cagney's role looks like Woods while the one playing Woods' role looks like Cagney. Another reason for the switch is that the sound technology used in The Public Enemy was superior to that used in earlier films, making it no longer imperative to have an actor in the lead role who had impeccable enunciation.

Louise Brooks was the original choice for Gwen Allen, a woman with self-confessed weakness for bad men. She refused the role, which went to a younger actress, Jean Harlow. Brooks' name was in studio records/casting call lists playing "Bess" in this movie, but she and her character did not appear. Brooks later explained herself to Wellman (who had directed her in Beggars of Life (1928)) by saying that she hated making pictures because she simply "hated Hollywood".[11] In the opinion of Brooks's biographer Barry Paris, "turning down Public Enemy marked the real end of Louise Brooks's film career".[11]

Tom's first girlfriend Kitty was played by Mae Clarke, who was uncredited. Kitty is eventually dropped off by Tom for Gwen after he pushes half a grapefruit into her face, the most famous scene in the movie. Joan Blondell played Mamie, Matt's girlfriend. She had already worked with Cagney in Sinners' Holiday (1930) and would work with him on two films which also came out this year: Other Men's Women and Blonde Crazy. Other films that they worked together on were The Crowd Roars (1932), Footlight Parade (1933) and He Was Her Man (1934). Cagney once said that Blondell was the only woman he loved besides his wife. Donald Cook played Tom's brother, Mike.

Filming took place in January and February 1931, with a small budget of $151,000.[12] During filming, Cagney also made Smart Money, co-starring Edward G. Robinson, who had finished his breakthrough film Little Caesar.

In the scene where Mike Powers punches his brother Tom, Wellman privately took Donald Cook aside and, explaining his desire for authenticity in Tom's reaction, asked the actor to really hit Cagney. Cook played his part a bit too well, and he struck Cagney in the mouth with such force, he actually broke one of Cagney's teeth. Yet in spite of his genuine shock and pain, Cagney stayed in character and played out the rest of the scene. In another incident, live ammunition was used in a scene where Tom Powers ducks around the corner of a building to take cover from machine gun fire; the use of live ammunition was common practice at the time. The bullets struck the wall of the building at the position where Cagney's head had been just a moment before.[13]

A controversial scene in which Tom (James Cagney) angrily smashes a half grapefruit into his girlfriend's face (Mae Clarke)

In a 1973 interview featured in the Turner Classic Movies documentary The Men Who Made The Movies: William Wellman, Wellman said he added the grapefruit "hitting" to the scene, because when he and his wife at the time would get into fights, she would never talk or give any expression. Since she always had a grapefruit for breakfast, he always wanted to put the grapefruit into her face just to get a reaction out of her, so she would show some emotion; he felt that this scene gave him the opportunity to rid himself of that temptation.[14][15]

Some, such as film critic Ben Mankiewicz, have asserted that Mae Clarke's surprised and seemingly somewhat angry reaction to the grapefruit was genuine, as she had not been told to expect the unscripted action.[16] However, in her autobiography, Clarke stated that Cagney had told her prior to that take what he planned to do. She said that her only genuine surprise came later, when she saw the grapefruit scene appear in the final film, as it had been her understanding that they were shooting it only as a joke to amuse the crew.[17]

According to Cagney, Clarke's ex-husband had the grapefruit scene timed, and would buy a ticket just before that scene went onscreen, go enjoy the scene, leave, then come back during the next show just in time to see only that scene again.[18] The grapefruit-to-the-face incident from The Public Enemy is parodied years later in the 1961 Cagney movie One, Two, Three when Cagney threatens Otto (Horst Buchholz) with a half grapefruit but then decides against doing so.

The film featured a prologue[6] "apprising the audience that the hoodlums and terrorists of the underworld must be exposed and the glamour ripped from them" and an epilogue "pointing the moral that civilization is on her knees and inquiring loudly as to what is to be done." At the film's premiere in New York City, the film's prologue was preceded by a "brief stage tableau, with sinuous green lighting, which shows a puppet gangster shooting another puppet gangster in the back."[2]

According to Warner Bros records the film earned $464,000 domestically and $93,000 internationally.[5]

On Rotten Tomatoes, the film received a 100% "Fresh" rating based on 29 reviews, with a weighted average of 8.41/10.[20]

Andre Sennwald, who reviewed the film for The New York Times upon its April 1931 release, called it "just another gangster film at the Strand, weaker than most in its story, stronger than most in its acting, and, like most, maintaining a certain level of interest through the last burst of machine-gun fire"; Woods and Cagney give "remarkably lifelike portraits of young hoodlums" and "Beryl Mercer as Tom's mother, Robert Emmett O'Connor as a gang chief, and Donald Cook as Tom's brother, do splendidly."[2]

Time magazine called The Public Enemy "well-told" and noted, "Unlike City Streets, this is not a Hugoesque fable of gangsters fighting among themselves, but a documentary drama of the bandit standing against society. It carries to its ultimate absurdity the fashion for romanticizing gangsters, for even in defeat the public enemy is endowed with grandeur."[21] Variety called it "low-brow material given such workmanship as to make it high-brow" which attempts to "square everything [with] a foreword and postscript moralizing on the gangster as a menace to the public welfare."[6]

A theatre in Times Square ran The Public Enemy 24 hours a day during its initial release.[18] At the 4th Academy Awards, the film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Story, losing to The Dawn Patrol.