Detail View: Movie Posters: Scarface

Scarface.jpg

Scarface

Crime

Decade 1930

1932

Caddo Company

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0023427

Paul Muni, Ann Dvorak, George Raft, Boris Karloff, Karen Morley, Osgood Perkins, C. Henry Gordon, Vince Barnett, Purnell Pratt, Tully Marshall, Inez Palange, Edwin Maxwell, and Howard Hawks

Howard Hawks and Richard Rosson

Scarface (United Artists, 1932). One Sheet (27 X 41). Legendary Producer Irving Thalberg called it, one of the strongest pictures he had ever seen. Producer Howard Hughes united with director Howard Hawks to create one of the most bullet-riddled, violent and impressive gangster films ever made. The genre had been around since the early days of the cinema; with Josef von Sternbergs Underworld in 1927 and Warner Brothers sensational entries Little Caesar and The Public Enemy. In June 1931, Hughes went into production on his pseudo-biopic of Chicago gangster Al Capone, under the working title Scarface, a nickname that was associated with Capone. Both the director Howard Hawks and screenwriter Ben Hecht would use real-life events in the shaping of the films script and spend hours interviewing actual gangsters for accuracy. The scene where Paul Muni as Tony Camonte guns down his boss, Big Louie Costillo, was based on the actual event where Al Capone gunned down his own boss, Big Jim Colosimo. The St. Valentines Day Massacre was depicted in the film, as were assassination attempts on Camonte, that mirrored real attempts on Al Capones life. And in a scene where real life mirrored the cinema, Boris Karloff is gunned down in a bowling alley and would become a reality four years later with the murder of Machine Gun Jack McGurn on the anniversary of his orchestrating the St. Valentines Day Massacre. The title Scarface caused an immediate sensation and got the attention of Will Hays, the president of the MPPDA, the cinemas self-censorship bureau. Hays wanted the films title changed and recommended The Shame of the Nation. United Artists, the films distributor, didnt want any problems getting the film released and registered this title on December 4, 1931. The film was completed in October 1931, but due to its strong images of violence, sexual innuendo and semi-glorification of gangsters, it had trouble passing the various censors and getting an o

%G

4

4

1930s

299321 Bytes

None

Scarface.jpg

image/jpeg

768 x 1024