Product Description

Five members of a teen-age gang, including leader Jimmy Smith, are sent to the State Reformatory, presided over by the melodramatically callous Thompson. Soon, Patsy Gargan, a former gangster appointed Deputy Commissioner as a political favor, arrives complete with hip flask and blonde. Gargan falls for activist nurse Dorothy and, inspired by her, takes over the administration to run the place on radical principles. But Thompson, to conceal his years of graft, needs a quick way to discredit Gargan.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #53008 in DVD
• Brand: Warner Brothers
• Released on: 2008-03-25
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Black & White, DVD, Original recording remastered, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: 1.00 pounds
• Running time: 90 minutes

Features

• You scratch my back, I?ll scratch yours. Politicos award gangster Patsy Gargan a cushy job as a honcho at a woefully run boys reform school. No experience necessary. No expectations. No problems.But firebrand Patsy (James Cagney) runs up against plenty of problems in this impassioned Depression-era mix of social conscience filmmaking and the gangster genre. He sees something in the kids ? himself.

Customer Reviews

Warner's pre code social drama
Warner Brothers were famous for their social dramas and this time it is reform schools. Released in 1933, "The Mayor of Hell", is a forceful pre-code melodrama which exposes the cruelty and neglect doled out to the inmates of a reformatory, teenagers who invariably return to society as hardened criminals due to the inhuman treatment they receive.

The film is really a starring vehicle for the magnetic Frankie Darro as the hoodlum who fights the system but James Cagney officially stars as a gangster politically appointed as governer of the reform school. Cagney clearly gives the film box office appeal but the balance of the drama is awkward as his part was obviously built up. MGM's Madge Evans plays a crusading nurse and although she is excellent, she lacks the realism that Joan Blondell, for example, would have brought to the part. The film builds to an exciting and predictable climax and Dudley Digges is a very convincing villian.

The print of the DVD is excellent and there are some entertaining extras, the best being a good commentary which particularly highlights the censorship issues which plagued the film. Warner's night at the movies is included but unusually, both the short film and the cartoon are dreary.

The is probably the least interesting film included in the Warner's Gangster Set Volume 3.

Typical Cagney
The only reason I got this movie was we caught the beginning on AMC and had to leave before it was over. I am basically collecting his musicals. After watching it from beginning to end I have to say I am not sorry I got it. It is a good story and shows how you can turn kids around by treating them with respect. It also shows how someone can really screw up their life by making the wrong choices. It's worth seeing.

A Typical Hokey-But-Entertaining Early '30s Cagney Film
This is a typically fast-moving entertaining movie of the early 1930s. When you have James Cagney in the lead, these "pre-Code" films are even better: just fun stuff to watch.

Usually, when films are "dated," it's a negative but not so with films from 1930-1934. Yeah, with the slang and the attitudes, dress, hairstyles, etc., they are dated but that's a big part of the fun. These films have an edge to them that almost always are a hoot to view.

This also teaches you that kids were punks 75 years ago, too, stealing, robbing, mugging, lying - hey, that's the human condition. This movie debunks the theory that "people were nicer back in the old days." No, people have always been rotten or good. The degree was aided by their environment, parents, financial situation and other things. Here, we get a bunch of "Dead End" kids who wind up in Reform School.

The ridiculous and stupidly-liberal storyline has kids acting immediately like angels once they run the show at the reform school; not punished in the slightest for causing a man to fall to his death and setting the institution on fire (the explanation: he was a meanie and deserved it. So much for real justice and reform.); and "Patsy" shooting a guy but never having to even be questioned by police because he's the good guy!

Notice the subtle anti-religious dig in which the only guy seen praying is the evil "warden." That's no coincidence, no accident. That sort of negative-association things has been going on ever since the Hays Code was canned in the late '60s and was seen, as you see hear, in the Pre-Code early '30s.

Dudley Digges, by the way, is outstanding in his "bad guy" role of "Mr. Thomson." I especially his voice was very effective and could picture him playing one of those similarly-evil roles as an institution boss in a Charles Dickens film adaptation.

Cagney played his normal role, the take-no-guff tough guy who gets the pretty girl, "Dorothy Griffith," played by Madge Blake. Frankie Darro also was effective as the leader of the boys, "Jimmy Smith." Just the looks on Darro's face alone made his character believable. Some thing he was the real star of the film, but I'll still go with Cagney. The rest of the reform school kids weren't too believable and they were really ethnic stereotypes, but they were all fun to watch.

I thought the most interesting part of the film was the first 20 minutes when we saw how bad these kids were and witnessed the good and bad and stereotypical parents in the court after the kids were arrested. Those scenes are pure 1930s Dead End Kids stuff. They always showed the kids to be bad news at the beginning of the film, but by the time the story was over they all looked acting more like Wally and Beaver Cleaver - hardly rough "delinquents." It's very far-fetched but it works, entertainment-wise.

Overall, a hokey but very entertaining movie, typical of Cagney films and those of the early '30s. Almost all of them rate at least four stars for their entertainment value.