The Roaring Twenties

he Roaring Twenties (1939) is action director Raoul Walsh's first gangster film. This newsreel-like, semi-documentary film, with both hard-hitting gangster genre action and romantic sentiment, shares a lot of similarities with the greatest gangster films of the 30s, including Little Caesar (1930) <littc.html>, Scarface: The Shame of the Nation (1932) <scar.html>, and Public Enemy (1931) <publ.html>. All of these films portray bootlegging, murder, gangster life, and the death of the hero at the conclusion. At the …

…Fay, with frowsy saloon singer Gladys George's role fashioned after brassy speakeasy singer-promoter and hostess Texas Guinan (known for her greeting "Hello, suckers" that was changed to "Hello, chumps" in the film). During the opening scrolling prologue after the credits, Hellinger apologetically informs the audience that the film ("a memory") is based upon real people and events that he covered as a newsman during the 1920s - when Prohibition and gangster life pervaded the land: