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Good Bad Guy: Edward G. Robinson, a killer onscreen, was in reality a cultivated gentleman who enjoyed collecting the artwork of van Gogh and Picassos.
Photograph courtesy of Cookie Curci-Wright
Remember When
Hollywood's Vintage Villains
By Cookie Curci-Wright
James Cagney, Edward G. Robinson and Humphrey Bogart are renowned names from Hollywood's past. Best known to a generation of movie fans from the 1930s and '40s, they represented the tougher-than-tough movie villain who ultimately lost out to the hero, but managed to subtly steal a few scenes for himself in the process.
Edward G. Robinson, wearing a well-blocked fedora, a pinstriped suit and a pinkie ring, was Hollywood's "Most Wanted" actor at the box office during an era of prohibition, bathtub gin and bootlegged whiskey.
In 1931, Robinson starred in the film Little Caesar, and set a standard for Hollywood tough guys. The film was loosely based on the real-life of public enemy number one, Al Capone. The familiar sight of a snarling Edward G. Robinson soon became his Hollywood trademark.
Real-life underworld figures like Al Capone, Frank Nittie, Bugsy Segal and Pretty Boy Floyd inspired a succession of 1930s gangster films. The hard times of the Depression created an enormous boom in movies. Wanting to forget their troubles, each week some 85 million people paid about a quarter to watch Bogie, Cagney and Robinson do their stuff.
As the archetypal hoodlum in many of these films, Edward G. Robinson established himself early on as a pug-faced, cigar smoking villain. But contrary to his unsavory film image, Robinson was, in reality, a cultivated gentleman who enjoyed collecting art. His extensive collection included van Gogh and Picasso and was considered one of the world's finest.
In 1932, James Cagney starred in the film Public Enemy Number One. Cagney caused a mild sensation when he shoved a grapefruit into the face of his leading lady, Mae Clark. His ungentlemanly behavior incurred the wrath of women's groups nationwide who protested his onscreen abuse of Miss Clark.
Despite Cagney's tough-guy image, the feisty actor actually began his show business career as a chorus dancer in a vaudeville revue in which he debuted as a lady dancer! Finally, in 1957, he was allowed to display his dancing and musical abilities in the 1942 classic Yankee Doodle Dandy, for which he won the Academy Award.
Humphrey Bogart is best remembered as the romantic lead in the wartime classic Casablanca. But he began his career as a B-picture bad guy. In the classic Petrified Forest, Bogart personified menace and danger as killer Duke Mantee in this 1937 film. He played so many gangsters and died so often he holds the record for most times killed on celluloid.
The role of Sam Spade, in the film noir classic The Maltese Falcon (1941), changed Bogie's image. He soon became a new kind of movie tough-guy; half heavy, half hero, an image he parlayed into a chain of 1940s film classics, including To Have and Have Not, The Big Sleep and Key Largo.
America's favorite onscreen cynic, Bogart, wasn't born with that stiff upper lip and trademark lisp. He acquired those assets years later through an accident suffered in the Navy.
In 1967, the spaghetti western came along and a new kind of anti-hero was born. Actor Lee van Cleef, with his sharp features and narrow, steely eyes made moviegoers' skin crawl when he appeared on screen in a series of Italian-German made films. Van Cleef, a former business accountant, was best known as the foil for Clint Eastwood in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, and was usually eliminated in these films just before the credits rolled.
In 1972, Francis Ford Coppola's Godfather gave onscreen crime and corruption a whole new dimension and complexity. Gone were the Runyonesque characters from Guys and Dolls, replaced this time around by a more sophisticated wiseguy. Marlon Brando and Al Pacino inherited the bitter fruit of power in this exciting epic crime drama. Pacino's struggle for power in this gangster opera and his eventual dominance as ruler of the underworld both horrified and fascinated movie audiences and established Pacino firmly as Hollywood's number one box office bad guy.
Attending the palatial movie houses of the past to root for our favorite actor was an anticipated experience shared by the whole family. The sense of excitement and expectation we felt, as we entered the lobby of the opulent theater, filled us with a reverence for this magical, almost religious world. The soft, deep crimson carpet under our shoes and the enticing smell of fresh popcorn encouraged our imaginations, and at the same time filled us with a sense of safety and sanctuary. We knew we could face the worst of Hollywood's villains and still leave the theater smiling.
As we well know, there's a little good in the worst of us and a little bad in the best of us. Which explains why we occasionally find ourselves rooting for the bad guy now and then, while having a devilishly good time in the process.
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Willow Glen, California Since 1992
