1931 The Public Enemy Lobby Cards with James Cagney
For much of the movie, Tommy’s masculinity is challenged overtly– whether from the gay fashion designer hitting on him to the attempted manipulations
of Kitty. It comes to a head when Tommy gets hammered and, despite his protests, Paddy’s mistress rapes him. The next morning he wakes up hung over
and is horrified. For someone who’d come close to finally realizing a healthy sexual connection to Gwen, this woman, taking advantage of him at his lowest
and weakest point, destroys his romantic aspirations. Completely defeated and so revolted with the woman (and himself), he heads out with Matt onto
the dangerous city streets. This is when Matt, his faithful lifelong companion, is gunned down in broad daylight, with bullets bouncing only inches away
from Tommy’s head.
Tommy spent the entire movie yearning for power and love, and, just when he’d felt he had it, it’s gone in a few brief hours.
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As youngsters in 1900s Chicago, Irish-Americans Tom Powers (James Cagney) and his lifelong friend Matt Doyle (Edward Woods) engage in petty theft,
selling their loot to "Putty Nose" (Murray Kinnell). Putty Nose persuades them to join his gang on a fur warehouse robbery, assuring them he will take care
of them if anything goes wrong. When Tom is startled by a stuffed bear, he shoots it, alerting the police, who kill gang member Larry Dalton. Chased by a
cop, Tom and Matt gun him down. However, when they go to Putty Nose for help, they find he has left town.
Tom's straightlaced older brother Mike Powers (Donald Cook) tries and fails to talk Tom into giving up crime. Tom keeps his activities secret from his
doting mother (Beryl Mercer). When America enters World War I in 1917, Mike enlists in the Marines.
In 1920, with Prohibition about to go into effect, Paddy Ryan (Robert Emmett O'Connor) recruits Tom and Matt as beer "salesmen" (enforcers) in
his bootlegging business. He allies himself with noted gangster Samuel "Nails" Nathan (Leslie Fenton). As the bootlegging business becomes ever more
lucrative, Tom and Matt flaunt their wealth.
Mike finds out that his brother's money comes not from politics, as Tom claims, but from bootlegging, and declares that Tom's success is based on nothing
more than "beer and blood." Tom retorts in disgust: "Your hands ain't so clean. You killed and liked it. You didn't get them medals for holding hands with
them Germans."
Tom and Matt acquire girlfriends, Kitty (an uncredited Mae Clarke) and Mamie (Joan Blondell) respectively. Tom eventually tires of Kitty; when she
complains once too often, he angrily pushes half a grapefruit into her face. He then drops her for Gwen Allen (Jean Harlow), a woman with a confessed
weakness for bad men. At a restaurant on the night of Matt's wedding reception to Mamie, Tom and Matt recognize Putty Nose and follow him home.
Begging for his life, Putty plays a song on the piano that he had entertained Tom and Matt with when they were children. Tom shoots him in the back.
Tom gives his mother a large wad of money, but Mike rejects the gift. Tom tears up the banknotes and throws them in his brother's face. "Nails" Nathan
dies in a horse-riding accident, prompting Tom to find the horse and shoot it. A rival gang headed by "Schemer" Burns takes advantage of the disarray
resulting from Nathan's death, precipitating a gang war.
Later, Matt is gunned down in public, with Tom narrowly escaping the same fate. Furious, Tom takes it upon himself to single-handedly settle scores with
Burns and some of his men. Tom is seriously wounded in the shootout and ends up in the hospital. When his mother, brother, and Matt's sister Molly
come to see him, he reconciles with Mike and agrees to reform. However, Paddy warns Mike that Tom has been kidnapped by the Burns mob from the
hospital. Later, his dead body is returned to the Powers home.