Hollywood vs The Mob

Little Caesar was the first big mafia movie to come out in the 30's and along with Scarface and The Public Enemy it invented the mobster genre. It was very different than the mobster movies that preceded it. Little Caesar focuses on the dreams, struggles, and personality of the mobster himself. A character striving for the American Dream by illegal means.

The Public Enemy released in 1931. 1920 was a defining year in American history. It was the year when prohibition went into effect. It was the year Irish, Polish, Jewish, and Italian immigrants transformed themselves from petty gang criminals into organized crime bosses through production and distribution of illegal booze.

In the early 1930's Hollywood fell in love with violence, gun violence. Which was so often a part of the mob conflicts between warring families vying for control of the illegal booze rackets. No early mobster film did a better job of bringing this violence to the big screen than Scarface.

It would be hard to say if the roaring twenties created organized crime, or if organized crime created the roaring twenties, but we do know in the 1920's the ethnic neighborhood gangs of America grew into organized crime syndicates as a result of prohibition. In some cases many of the mob bosses became idolized in cinema.

The movie Marked Woman leaves audiences with one of the most prophectic and haunting images in cinematic history. The women of the night, prostitutes, brought down the most powerful mob boss ever, walk out in the night into obscurity. The Godfather they put in jail was Lucky Luciano.

Loan Shark, released in 1952 is a film-noir piece about loan-sharking, and the mafia, and rackets. It captures a time of change not only for the mob and the country, but for the film industry.

By 1965, black men in America's cities were angry, frustrated, and ready to explode against a system that had failed them. They were tired of being the last to receive resources. They wanted a piece of the American Dream. They wanted more money and power.

The Purple Gang released in 1960 veers away from the idea that mobsters were a products of their environment, products of urban poverty. Hollywood in the 50's and 60's was eager to retell the mobster story.

By the mid 1970's America, as well as Hollywood's film producers and writers had for the first time a better understanding of how this countries Sicilian and Italian Mafias worked.