City Streets (1931) on Netflix
Nan Cooley, a racketeer's daughter, loves The Kid, who works a shooting gallery. Her father wants him in the gang, but The Kid will not join the rackets.
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- Netflix3.8/5
- IMDb7.0/102,121 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes80%
Plot summary
Pop Cooley is a racketeer, and his daughter Nan is in love with The Kid, who earns his living at a shooting gallery. Pop wants the young man in his gang so that he can support Nan in the style she is used to, and Nan prods him as well, but The Kid has no ambitions in the rackets. Blackie, the bootlegging chief, is against the involvement of Pop's associate, Big Fellow Maskal, with Blackie's gun moll, Aggie, and Maskal wants Blackie gone. Nan is implicated in Blackie's killing and sent to prison; she takes the blame, trusting that the mob will arrange her acquittal.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about City Streets (1931)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Film historian Marc Spergel reports City Streets was the first film to demonstrate the use of "voice-over" in a sound production: director Rouben Mamoulian recorded two separate sound channels on a single segment of film so Gary Cooper's voice as The Kid is heard while the screen shows only Sylvia Sidney's face, a form of "subjective sound."
- Clara Bow, cast as Nan, suffered a much publicized nervous breakdown late in pre-production and was replaced by Sylvia Sidney, whom film historian John Douglas Eames said became "an instant star" in the part.
- To evade studio artistic control, director Rouben Mamoulian deliberately made no explicit changes to the Garrett/Marin script before filming; instead he introduced technical and aesthetic changes during shooting without formal authorization.
- Crime writer Dashiell Hammett, under contract to Paramount, wrote the outline "After School" about a 16-year-old girl who collaborates in crime with her bootlegger stepfather and helps exonerate her teenage boyfriend from a murder allegation; by the completed screenplay the protagonists had been re-characterized as young adults.
