Manhattan Melodrama (1934)

Manhattan Melodrama is a 1934 American Pre-Code crime melodrama film, produced by MGM, directed by W. S. Van Dyke, and starring Clark Gable, William Powell, and Myrna Loy. The movie also provided one of the earliest film roles for Mickey Rooney, who played Gable's character as a child.

Filmed relatively quickly and with a modest budget, it was expected to return a profit but not to capture the imagination of the public. The picture's smash hit success surprised the studio and made major stars of screen veterans Myrna Loy and William Powell in the first of their fourteen screen pairings, and also solidified the success of MGM's most popular male lead, Clark Gable. The film has a nightclub scene featuring Shirley Ross singing a song called "The Bad in Every Man." After the film's release, the lyrics were rewritten by Lorenz Hart as the retitled "Blue Moon".

The film entered the lexicon of history as it was seen by John Dillinger. Dillinger attended a showing at Chicago's Biograph Theater on July 22, 1934. After leaving the theater he was shot to death by federal agents. Myrna Loy was among those who expressed distaste at the studio's willingness to exploit this event for the financial benefit of the film. Scenes from Manhattan Melodrama, in addition to Dillinger's death, are depicted in the 2009 film Public Enemies.

Hogan's Alley, the mock-up town used by the FBI Academy for training scenarios, display's the film's title on its "downtown" cinema marquee.

Arthur Caesar won an Academy Award for Best Story for this film.

Synopsis

On June 15, 1904, the ship General Slocum catches fire and sinks in New York's East River. Two boys, Blackie Gallagher (Mickey Rooney) and Jim Wade (Jimmy Butler), are rescued by a priest, Father Joe (Leo Carrillo), but are orphaned by the disaster. They are taken in by another survivor, Poppa Rosen (George Sidney), who lost his young son in the sinking. The boys live with Poppa Rosen for a short while; then Rosen, a Russian Jew, is trampled to death by a policeman's horse after he heckles Leon Trotsky at a Communist rally and a melee breaks out.

Actors