The Mayor of Hell

Overview

Gangster Cagney allows his powerful political connections to appoint him "deputy inspector" of a state reform school. There he finds the youths abused and battered by a brutal, heartless warden and his thuggish guards. It is a nurse who informs Cagney and pleads with him to clean things up. Something touches Cagney's normally hard heart and he commits himself to enacting more humane reforms. Soon, he gets the warden booted out and begins working closely with the inmates, who come to trust and respect him until Cagney's dark side emerges and he reveals himself for what he is--a ruthless mobster. This destroys the boys' trust and when the old warden is reinstated makes matters even worse until Cagney makes a difficult choice.

Product Details

Release Date:	05/12/2020
UPC:	0883929713035
Original Release:	1933
Rating:	NR
Source:	Warner Archives
Presentation:	[B&W]
Language:	English
Time:	1:30:00
Sales rank:	51,709

Special Features

Commentary by film historian Greg Mank; Warner Night at the Movies 1933 Short Subjects Gallery: Vintage Newsreel,; Musical short The Audition, Classic cartoon The Organ Grinder, Trailers of The Mayor of Hell and 1933's The Kennel Murder Case; Bonus Trailers of the Storyline-Linked Crime School and Hell's Kitchen; English SDH subtitles

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

James Cagney	Patsy Gargan
Madge Evans	Dorothy Griffith
Dudley Digges	Mr. Thompson
Arthur Byron	Judge Gilbert,Judge Gilbert
Allen Jenkins	Mike
Frankie Darro	Jimmy Smith
Farina	Smoke
Dorothy Peterson	Mrs. Smith
John Marston	Hopkins
Charles Wilson	Guard
Hobart Cavanaugh	Tommy's Father
Ted Offenbecker	Charlie Burns
Raymond Borzage	Johnny Stone
Robert Barrat	Mr. Smith,Mr. Smith
G. Pat Collins	Brandon
Mickey Bennett	Butch Kilgore
Sheila Terry	the Girl
Harold Huber	Joe
Edwin Maxwell	Louis Johnston
William V. Mong	Walters
Sidney Miller	Izzy Horowitz
George Humbert	Tony's Father
George Offerman Jr.	Charlie Burns
Charles Cane	Tommy Groman
Wallace MacDonald	Johnson's Assistant
Adrian Morris	Car Owner
Fred 'Snowflake' Toones	Hemingway
Wilfred Lucas	Guard
Bob Perry	Collector
Charles Sullivan	Collector
Ben Taggart	Sheriff
George Offerman Sr.	Charlie Burns

Technical Credits

Lucien Hubbard	Producer
Archie Mayo	Director

Editorial Reviews

The Mayor of Hell is a hybrid movie, an uncomfortable melding of social melodrama, gangster film and love story that never quite puts its parts together convincingly. Mayor's core is the social melodrama, with the other genres grafted onto it, but even here it has problems: it has a social conscience that it parades grandly, but that conscience doesn't sit comfortably with the excessive, and sometimes absurd, melodramatics that encase it. To put it simply, the screenplay's reach far exceeds its grasp, and this results in some truly awful dialogue (and some entire awful scenes) in places. That said, when it manages to get its act together, it does provide a number of effective sequences, and director Archie Mayo uses a machine-gun directorial approach that tries to keep the film lively and engaging, aiming for genuine emotion when possible but not afraid to go for artificial if it keeps the film moving. James Cagney is in fine fighting rooster style, using his personal charm to imbue believability into a character that doesn't really make a lot of sense. Madge Evans is rather colorless, albeit in a colorless role, but Dudley Digges is absolutely dandy as the villain of the piece, and Frankie Darro does well as the main delinquent with a good side underneath. One last warning: as with many films of the period, there are a number of ethnic stereotypes.