Angels with Dirty Faces (1938) on Netflix

Approved19381h 37mCrime Drama Film-Noir

Rocky Sullivan and Jerry Connolly are boyhood friends and small-time thieves. Rocky is caught and sent to reform school; Jerry becomes a priest. Rocky returns to his neighborhood a gangster.

Netflix2.8/5
IMDb7.8/1025,088 votes
Rotten Tomatoes100%

Trailer

Plot summary

Rocky Sullivan returns to his old New York neighborhood after three years in prison for armed robbery and calls on Jerry Connolly, the childhood friend who is now a Catholic priest. The lawyer Jim Frazier took the blame arrangement and promised Rocky his $100,000 cut of the robbery for when he got out; Frazier now says the money will be ready within the week and hands him $500 to tide him over. Six neighborhood boys, Soapy, Swing, Bim, Pasty, Crab and Hunky, pick his pocket, and Rocky tracks them to his old hideout, where they tell him they admire his reputation. He takes them to dinner. He rents a room from Laury Martin, a girl he bullied when they were young.

Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Angels with Dirty Faces (1938)

Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.

While filming Rocky's shootout with the police, a hunch made Cagney get out of the way before a professional machine gunner fired the shots; one bullet deflected off the steel edge of the window and went right through the wall where Cagney's head had been.
Cagney's other inspiration for Rocky was a childhood friend who was convicted of murder and executed by electric chair on July 21, 1927. The night of the execution Cagney was playing in a Broadway performance, and wept on hearing of his death.
James Cagney based Rocky Sullivan's tough-guy mannerisms on a drug-addicted pimp he remembered from his childhood in the Yorkville section of Manhattan, who stood on a street corner all day hitching his trousers and repeating the catchphrase "Whadda ya hear! Whadda ya say!"
On the next take, just before his line "come here, suckers", Cagney stiff-armed Leo Gorcey right above the nose, sending Gorcey's head back into the boy behind him and stunning them both. Huntz Hall recalled in 1978 that Gorcey hated Cagney for the rest of his life.
SPOILER
For years viewers have wondered whether Rocky really turns yellow as he is strapped into the electric chair, or is faking it to keep his promise to Jerry. Cagney said he played the role with deliberate ambiguity so that spectators could form their own opinions.
A 1995 Indian film called Ram Jaane, starring Shahrukh Khan as the Rocky-equivalent character, retold the entire plot of Angels with Dirty Faces from start to finish in an Indianized version.