Trivia / Angels with Dirty Faces

---

• Actor-Inspired Element: James Cagney drew on his memories of growing up in New York's Yorkville, a tough ethnic neighborhood on the upper east side, just south of Spanish Harlem. His main inspiration was a drug-addicted pimp who stood on a street corner all day hitching his trousers, twitching his neck, and repeating, "Whadda ya hear! Whadda ya say!" Those mannerisms came back to haunt Cagney. He later wrote in his autobiography, "I did those gestures maybe six times in the picture. That was over thirty years ago - and the impressionists have been doing me doing him ever since."
  • Cagney's other inspiration was his childhood friend, Peter "Bootah" Hessling, who was convicted of murder and "sent to the electric chair" on July 21, 1927. The night Bootah was executed, Cagney was "playing in a Broadway show" and "wept" upon hearing of his friend's death.
• Banned in China: Because of the controversy over gangster films, the film was banned outright in Denmark, China, Poland, Finland, and parts of Canada and Switzerland.
• Completely Different Title: In Sweden, the film was called "Panik i gangstervärlden", meaning "Panic in the Gangster World".
• Development Hell: In 1985, it was announced that Sylvester Stallone and Christopher Reeve was star in a remake of the film as part of the former's deal with The Cannon Group. Following a huge outcry from many, including Roger Ebert, the idea was abandoned and Stallone made Cobra instead.
• Fatal Method Acting: Averted. While filming Rocky's shootout with the police, one scene called for James Cagney to be right at the opening as machine-gun bullets took out the windows above his head. At this point in his career, Cagney had experience with the unpredictability of using live gunfire; he later recalled that "common sense or a hunch" made him wary about the upcoming scene, and he finally decided to tell Michael Curtiz to shoot the scene in process. As Cagney walked away, the professional machine-gunner — a man named Burke — fired the shots. One of the bullets ricocheted, hitting the steel edge of the window and going right through the wall where Cagney's head had been. This experience convinced Cagney that "flirting this way with real bullets was ridiculous".
• Hostility on the Set: James Cagney's opening scene with The Dead End Kids took place in the basement of a deserted building. By this time they had been throwing their weight around quite a bit with other directors and actors on the lot. As the scene was being shot, Leo Gorcey jokingly ad-libbed "He's psychic!", throwing the rhythm of the scene right out the window. In the next take, just before he said "Come here, suckers", Cagney stiff-armed Gorcey right above the nose. His head went back and hit the kid behind him, stunning them both momentarily. Huntz Hall saw Gorcey being hit, and later recalled in 1978: "Leo hated [Cagney] for the rest of his life" after the incident.
• Never Work with Children or Animals: The Dead End Kids terrorized the set during shooting. They threw other actors off with their ad-libbing, and once cornered Humphrey Bogart and stole his trousers. They didn't figure on James Cagney's street-bred toughness, however. The first time Leo Gorcey pulled an ad-lib on Cagney, the star stiff-armed the young actor right above the nose. The gang behaved themselves from that point on.
• Those Two Actors: This was one of many films that James Cagney made with Pat O'Brien and the first of three he made with Humphrey Bogart.

---