O Prefeito do Inferno

Racketeer James Cagney takes over a reform school that's being run like a prison. With help from pretty nurse Madge Evans, he turns the place around and helps the boys get back on the right track. But the scummy guy that used to run the school is determined to destroy all the good work they've done, no matter what harm it does to the kids.

Intense, gritty drama that tackles the issue of juvenile crime and how to deal with it. Strong writing with some good characters. Cagney's excellent in one of his best and probably most underrated films. The kid actors are all terrific and believable. Dudley Digges is a particularly evil villain. Backed up by a typically solid WB stable of supporting actors. Jaw-dropping climax is one of the best finishes to any movie of this decade. Remade as Crime School, with Humphrey Bogart and the Dead End Kids. That one's not bad but it's not nearly as powerful as this one.

This one of those social dramas that WB knew how to put together and were guaranteed boxoffice hits in the thirties. This early "dead end kids" are sent to a reform school where they are mistreated. Cagney, a gangster as part of a deal is appointed as the commissioner of the school. He doesn't take it seriously at first but he changes and makes the necessary changes to improve the lives of the boys. The idea is to let the boys rule and administer their community. Whether this is sound social reform is beyond my belief but it's a movie. It's a lot like Boys Town with a slight darker tone. A useless happy ending deluges what impact the scene prior hard but is still good. WB would later make this same movies with Bogart in the Cagney/fatherly role.

Jimmy Smith leads a group of thieving kids. Jimmy and five others are caught in their hideout and sent to reform school run by the heartless superintendent Thompson. Dorothy, the nurse, is concerned about the conditions. Well-connected street gangster Patsy Gargan (James Cagney) had been appointed deputy commissioner as a political payoff. With no particular interest in the political work, he is tasked to write a report on the school. After witnessing Thompson's brutal treatment, he decides to take an interest in the kids.

This is Cagney playing his good guy gangster. It's solid. The kids are solid pre-Dead End Kids. The morality is pretty simple. My only complaint is nurse Dorothy would never quit. She needs to be outright fired and be carried out kicking and screaming. She's basically abandoning the boys. The guard who gives the boy his coat should be replaced with Dorothy. Patsy's call to Thompson should be replaced with a call to Dorothy. That way the story could still end the same way. This is a very simple moral gangster film.

The great James Cagney, top-billed in big letters, doesn't show up till the movie's second third, and probably has less screen time than Dudley Digges, who plays the eee-vill reform-school potentate. But when Jimmy arrives, as a deputy commissioner of something-or-other out to reform reform schools, he slashes the air with his hands and jumps on the balls of his feet and spits out punchy Warners-First National dialogue with all the customary, and expected, panache. The psychology in this crisp antique, one of Warners' many efforts to assert its place as the "socially conscious" studio, doesn't run deep: Digges is bad just because the script requires him to be, and there's the quaint notion that juvenile delinquents will turn into swell kids if they're just given a dash of autonomy. But it's made in that spare, fast style that the studio specialized in, and it never bores. Frankie Darro, who got into all kinds of onscreen trouble during a brief tenure as Warners' favorite Rotten Street Kid, is an ideal JD -- a handsome, charismatic toughie with a pug nose and a hate-filled stare that could wither steel. No kid actor today can touch him.

JAMES CAGNEY gets top billing in THE MAYOR OF HELL but it's really little tough guy FRANKIE DARRO who has the central role of a boy from the slums who lands in a reform school run by a ruthless warden (DUDLEY DIGGES) interested only in punishing the boys while he cooks the books. Darro makes quite an impression with his hostile looks, locking glances with the warden at every turn with eyes blazing with hatred.

It takes the entrance of Cagney to change things around, an ex- gangster who has been deputized to help run things at the reformatory and who sympathizes with the plights of the boys, especially Darro who reminds him of his own tough days as a street punk. JAMES CAGNEY puts all of his usual energy into the role of the do-gooder who changes things around, along with cooperative Nurse Griffith (MADGE EVANS), and is there when the going gets tough and things revert back to their nasty ways during his brief absence.

The last half-hour of the film gets a little too melodramatic as the kids take matters into their own hands after the warden causes the death of one of their fellow inmates. There's a climactic scene where they put him on trial. When he escapes their clutches by jumping out a window, a chase follows and a barn is burned down forcing him to jump to his death. The plot contrivances that follow are hard to swallow, but for Jimmy and Madge Evans at least there's a happy ending.

ALLEN JENKINS is a welcome presence for comic relief but the tone of the film borders on heavy prison melodrama almost all the way.

DUDLEY DIGGES plays the unsympathetic role of the sadistic warden fairly well, but I still think of him as the befuddled detective who has a hard time pinning down RAFFLES (Ronald Colman) in that Scotland Yard yarn.

For Cagney fans, this is a glimpse of him at his talented best in an early role. Archie Mayo directs the project in his brisk, no nonsense Warner style.