Angels with dirty faces

Angels with Dirty Faces (1938) is the ultimate Warner Brothers movie, even more so than Casablanca. Not only does it feature the finest performance of one of Warners’ biggest stars James Cagney, but it is arguably the greatest gangster picture ever, a genre Warners practically invented. There Rocky finds that “Father Jerry” is the pastor of the local church who is dedicated to guiding the destinies of the children and teenagers that live there.

Angels with Dirty Faces begins with the oft-used premise of two boyhood friends whose adult lives go in opposite directions. Rocky Sullivan (James Cagney) leads a life of crime while Jerry Connolly (Pat O’Brien) becomes a priest. Rocky has just served a sentence in prison and he decides to take up residence in the New York slum neighborhood where he and Jerry grew up.

Cagney’s charismatic performance succeeds in making Rocky “the most lovable gangster in all of movies,” as Andrew Bergman put it in his book on Cagney’s films. Providing first-rate support are O’Brien, Ann Sheridan as Laury Ferguson, the neighborhood girl who falls in love with Rocky, Humphrey Bogart as crooked lawyer James Frazier, George Bancroft as mob boss Mac Keefer, Edward Pawley as a sadistic prison guard and, best of all, the “Dead End Kids” (Billy Halop, Leo Gorcey, Huntz Hall, Bobby Jordan, Gabriel Dell and Bernard Punsley) as the JDs.