The Roaring Twenties

I'm pretty certain I had already seen the movie The Roaring Twenties once before, and I even thought that I had blogged about it here. But a search of the blog suggests that while I've mentioned the movie in passing a couple of times in conjunction with either Humphrey Bogart or James Cagney, and even posted the trailer. But apparently I'd never done a full-length post. That's why, when TCM ran the movie again recently, I made it a point to record it so that I could finally rewatch it to do an appropriate review here.

As you can guess, Cagney and Bogart are the two lead stars, with Cagney being the lead since this was released in 1939 and Cagney hadn't been eclipsed by Bogart movies like The Maltese Falcon and then the changing public tastes with World War II. And since the movie was released in 1939, there's no mention of any upcoming war, instead starting off with a scene set toward the end of the Great War. Cagney plays Eddie Bartlett, serving alongside George Hally (Bogart) with whom he's become a bit of a friend. The third friend in the group is Lloyd Hart (Jeffrey Lynn). All of them talk about what they're going to do when they get home from the war, with Eddie talking about a girl he's corresponded with, actress Jean Sherman.

The war ends in November 1918, but it takes until 1919 to get all the soldiers home. Eddie returns to his best friend from the pre-war days Danny Green (Frank McHugh), working as a taxi driver. Eddie plans to return to his job as a mechanic, and hopes to open his own garage, but when he returns to the business he finds his job has been given away. You can't really blame the manager for not being financially able to hold a job open for two years. Worse, 1920 was a year of an economic downturn, making it hard for Eddie to get a job in general and forcing him to drive second shift on Danny's taxi. Worst of all is that Eddie mees Jean (Priscilla Lane), who exaggerated her talents and is little more than a recent high-school graduate working girl.

In addition to the economic crisis I mentioned, 1920 also brought Prohibition to the US, along with the rampant attempts to get around the law. Eddie gets caught up in it when he's asked to deliver a package not realizing that it's liquor. But the club owner to whom he delivers it, Panama Smith (Gladys George), befriends him, and the two wind up going into business together. Eddie has been trying to open his own taxi business, and realizes that using the taxis to deliver hooch would be a good way to make money on the side.

Unsurprisingly, he gets hubris. He meets Jean again and still carries a torch for her, getting her a job singing in Panama's club even though she's really not much of a singer. And he steals a shipment of booze from Nick Brown (Paul Kelly), a competing gangster. This brings George back into a business partnership with Eddie, and George is eventually going to stab him in the back. Eddie brings in the one lawyer he knows, Lloyd Hart, to keep him "clean", but Lloyd is eventually going to chafe at that, falling in love with Jean along the way.

The Roaring Twenties is a very good film, but it was released in 1939, Hollywood's annus mirabilis in which so many all-time classics were made that it's so easy to overlook the movies that were only very good. I think it also doesn't help that with the US not too far from entering World War II, this sort of gangster movie was soon to go out of fashion with the viewing public. That's a shame, because Warner Bros. knew how to make a good 1930s gangster movie and had absolutely no difficulty churning out a top-notch movie with its big stars like Cagney. The Roaring Twenties is definitely a film that should be better known, and one that you should absolutely watch if you get the chance.