April 23, 1931: "The Public Enemy" Premieres

April 23, 1931: The Public Enemy premieres, based on Beer and Blood, a novel by John Bright and Kubec Glasmon. It is directed by William Wellman, and starring James Cagney. It wasn't the 1st great gangster movie -- Little Caesar, starring Edward G. Robinson, had premiered 3 months earlier -- but it made Cagney the defining gangster portrayer.

The term "public enemy" dates back to ancient Rome: "Hostis publicus" in the Latin of the time. The French Revolution used the term "ennemi du peuple," or "enemy of the people." In 1930, Frank Loesch, Chairman of the Chicago Crime Commission, used the term to describe the city's leading gangster Al Capone. This led to the use of the phrase in the title of the film.

Later, the phrase was used by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, to describe not just outlaws, but fugitives, men on the run from the law, whereas Capone, until his arrest for tax evasion, could sit tight and not really worry. Hoover had the FBI officially label bank robber John Dillinger "Public Enemy Number 1." After Dillinger was killed the title was given to others, eventually evolving into the FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list. In 1985, rapper Carlton Ridenhour, a.k.a. Chuck D, named his group "Public Enemy," due to their distaste with law enforcement and its frequent racist actions.

James Francis Cagney Jr. was born on July 17, 1899 at 391 East 8th Street, between Avenues C and D, on Manhattan's Lower East Side. Sidney Zion, a columnist for the New York Daily News, listed him as one of "The Century Seven," 7 people born in 1899, the last year of the 19th Century, whose work guided American popular culture through much of the 20th Century. They were: Duke Ellington, born on April 29; Fred Astaire, May 10; James Cagney, July 17; Alfred Hitchcock, August 13; Hoagy Carmichael, November 22; Noël Coward, December 16; and Humphrey Bogart, December 25.

If Jimmy Cagney had his druthers, he wouldn't have become known for gangster movies. Like Fred Astaire, and like George Raft, who not only played gangsters but worked for some before becoming a star, he started out as a dancer.

And he was good enough to play the great Broadway showman George M. Cohan in the 1942 film Yankee Doodle Dandy, winning the Academy Award for Best Actor. It was this combination of playing showmen and tough guys that led actor Michael J. Fox to later say, "In acting school, everybody else wanted to be James Dean. I wanted to be James Cagney."

But his roles in gangster movies most him an icon. In The Public Enemy, he played Tom Powers, a Chicago street tough rising through the ranks of gangsters in the early 20th Century, boosted by Prohibition. Mae Questel played Kitty, his first girlfriend. Early in the film, they argue during breakfast, and he pushes half a grapefruit into her face. The scene is rough, but the still photos, including the one shown above, made it look even meaner.

He dumps Kitty for Gwen, played by the top "blonde bombshell" of the time, Jean Harlow. He doesn't get to enjoy her for long, though, as he meets a typical gangster's fate of getting gunned down in the gang war that his actions launched.

Cagney went on to play a lot of tough guys: Boxers, military men, and, yes, lawmen. Playing a con artist in the 1931 film Blonde Crazy, he called somebody, "That dirty, double-crossin' rat!" Playing a cabdriver in the 1932 film Taxi!, he pulled a gun, and told an enemy, "Come out and take it, you dirty, yellow-bellied rat, or I'll give it to you through the door!" From that point onward, anybody doing an impression of Cagney would say, "You dirty rat!" But the quote was never quite accurate.

But it would be gangsters that people would think of: Patsy Gargan in The Mayor of Hell in 1933, Flicker Hays in He Was Her Man and Jimmy Corrigan in Jimmy the Gent in 1934, Rocky Sullivan in Angels With Dirty Faces in 1938, Eddie Bartlett in The Roaring Twenties in 1939, and, one more time in perhaps his greatest role, Cody Jarrett in White Heat in 1949: "Made it, Ma: Top o' the world!"

After that, he was too old to play heroes anymore, and began playing not-so-likeable authority figures, like Lieutenant Commander Morton in Mister Roberts in 1955. That same year, he played Cohan again to Bob Hope's Eddie Foy in The Seven Little Foys, and played Lon Chaney Sr. in The Man of a Thousand Faces in 1957.

In 1961, he played C.R. McNamara, a Coca-Cola executive who made a mistake and was exiled to the company's West Berlin office, and was angling to get to run their main European office in London, in the comedy One, Two, Three. The film included an homage to The Public Enemy's grapefruit scene. He turned 62 during the making of the film, and was tired, and quit acting.

In 1974, he received the American Film Institute's Lifetime Achievement Award, in a ceremony recorded for television. He told the audience, "Just for the record, I never said, 'You dirty rat!' What I said was, 'Judy, Judy, Judy!'" That was also a misquote of a man who had given up acting, Cary Grant, who was in the audience, and laughed along with everyone else.

Cagney didn't act again until 1981, when he accepted the role of Rhinelander Waldo, New York City's Fire Commissioner and Police Commissioner in the 1910s, a man he remembered well, in the film version of E.L. Doctorow's novel Ragtime. That year, the man who starred in Yankee Doodle Dandy threw out the ceremonial first ball before Game 1 of the World Series at Yankee Stadium, between the New York Yankees and the Los Angeles, formerly Brooklyn, Dodgers. (Ironically, George M. Cohan had been a fan of the New York Giants, before their move to San Francisco.)

In 1983, he'd had a stroke, and was confined to a wheelchair. Still, CBS offered him the role of an elderly ex-boxer in the TV-movie Terrible Joe Moran. He wasn't sure he could do it, so he called his old friend Pat O'Brien, who co-starred with him in Angels With Dirty Faces. O'Brien yelled, "Do it, Cagney! It's medicine!" and slammed the phone down. O'Brien died a few days later, without speaking to Cagney again. Cagney took the role, and the film aired on March 27, 1984, with scenes from his 1932 boxing movie Winner Take All used to portray the younger Moran.

James Cagney died on March 30, 1986, in Stanford, Dutchess County, New York, about 90 miles north of Midtown Manhattan.

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April 23, 1931 was a Thursday. Football was out of season. The NBA hadn't been founded yet. The Stanley Cup had been awarded 9 days earlier, when the Montreal Canadiens defeated the Chicago Black Hawks.

There were 2 games played in baseball. The Detroit Tigers beat the St. Louis Browns, 1-0 at Navin Field in Detroit. That ballpark was renamed Briggs Stadium in 1938 and Tiger Stadium in 1961. Tommy Bridges pitched a 4-hit shutout, with 3 of those hits gained by Browns 3rd baseman Red Kress, the other by future Tiger star Goose Goslin. The only run came in the 4th inning, when Dale Alexander singled home Charlie Gehringer.

And the Cleveland Indians beat the Chicago White Sox, 8-2 at Comiskey Park in Chicago. Lew Fonseca and Johnny Hodapp each got 3 hits, and Wes Ferrell went the distance for the win.