20,000 Years in Sing Sing is a 1932 film directed by Michael Curtiz.
The setting is, no prizes for guessing, Sing Sing Prison in New York. Tommy Connors (Spencer Tracy) is a hoodlum who is well-known enough to attract a throng of reporters when he goes to Sing Sing to do a 5-to-30 stretch. He acts like a big man, spitting defiance, but Warden Long, through some canny psychology, more or less breaks Tommy and makes him into a model prisoner. Meanwhile, Tommy's faithful moll, Fay Wilson (Bette Davis) waits for him on the outside. Fay has a half-baked idea that she will use her feminine charms on Joe Finn, one of Tommy's gangster partners, in order to get Tommy released.
The warden gets news that Fay has been badly injured in a car accident. Having used the stick he offers the carrot and allows Tommy an evening on furlough to go see Fay. It turns out to be a bad idea.
The only film Spencer Tracy and Bette Davis ever appeared in together. Loosely based on a memoir of the same title by Lewis E. Lawes, the Real Life warden of Sing Sing prison.
Tropes:
- Almost Dead Guy: Joe Finn, shot in the back by Fay, lives long enough to say that "Thomas" did it when the cop busts into the hotel room.
- Blood from the Mouth: How the film lets the viewer know that Joe Finn is a goner after Fay shoots him In the Back, even though he isn't quite dead yet.
- Book Ends: The opening shot shows inmates moving around in Sing Sing as the years of their sentence float over their heads as onscreen graphics—"5 Years", "25 Years", "40 Years" and such. That cuts to the title card that says "20,000 Years in Sing Sing." At the end, after Tommy's execution, that shot is repeated.
- Captivity Harmonica: Hype, who is already on death row when Tommy is sent there, plays "Happy Days Are Here Again" and other tunes on his harmonica. As he's being taken away to the chair, Hype laments that he was finally getting good on the harmonica and could make his way through tunes without making mistakes.
- Downer Ending: Tommy is executed, for a crime he didn't commit.
- Driven to Suicide: After the jail break has failed, Bud leaps to his death from a top row in the cell block rather than surrender (he'd just get executed eventually after two guards were killed).
- Easily Forgiven: It seems that Tommy coming back is viewed as a vindication of Warden Long's furlough policy, and the warden gets to keep his job. The fact that Tommy committed murder while on furlough (or at least, that's what everyone thinks) is in itself no big deal.
- Exploding Calendar: Pages fly off a page-a-day calendar as time ticks down to Tommy's execution while his last unsuccessful appeals are heard.
- Gallows Humor: As Tommy is brought to death row after his conviction for murder, the other death row inmates greet him with a sing-along of "Happy Days Are Here Again".
- "Get Out of Jail Free" Card: The warden agreed to furlough Connors from the prison for 24 hours to visit his dying girlfriend, on his honor that he'd come back to Sing Sing. While on the furlough, he is accused of killing his old partner Finnspoiler , and the warden is blasted by the newspapers and is about to resign when Connors returns to Sing Sing and willingly faces the chair for his alleged crime. The newspapers treat the Warden as completely vindicated by this, even though he's still responsible for letting a convicted armed robber out on furlough in the first place to shoot someone.
- Heroic Sacrifice: It was actually Fay who shot and killed Joe Finn, but Tommy takes the blame and goes to the electric chair to spare her.
- Hollywood Silencer: The standard, ridiculous silencer on a revolver, which Bud makes in his cell when he's putting together a gun for his jail break.
- Honor Before Reason: Tommy returns to jail, and to a certain death sentence, because he promised Warden Long that he would.
- Institutional Apparel: This promotes Tommy's first act of defiance in jail, when he is brought into Sing Sing and given a prison uniform that is far too big for him.
- Intimidating Revenue Service: Played for a gag. As Tommy sits on death row, awaiting execution, a letter arrives for him from the IRS. It threatens him with arrest if he doesn't pay his income tax from 1926.
- Match Cut: From the window where the warden's looking out, contemplating the ruin of his career, to the window where Tommy's looking out as he waits for night and the ship that will take him to freedom.
- Prison: An inmate and the warden earn each other's respect in Sing Sing prison.
- Reveal Shot: The payoff for Tommy's refusal to wear a prison uniform. The warden says sure, Tommy doesn't have to wear a uniform—he can just go around in his union suit (one-piece full-body underwear). Then the warden sends Tommy to work, and the camera pans up to reveal that Tommy's been sent into the ice house. In the next scene Tommy's wearing a uniform.
- Smart People Play Chess: A chess set is shown in the warden's study, reinforcing the idea of him as a serious person.
- Time-Passes Montage: Tommy refuses to work, so the warden, using psychology again, lets him stay in his cell. A montage shows all the other prisoners playing baseball in the yard, marching in a band, and simply eating together. Finally Tommy breaks and agrees to work.
- Video Credits: Of all the main players at the beginning of the movie, as was Warner Brothers house style in the early 1930s.
