Production
When first offered the project, Cagney's agent was convinced that his star property would never consent to playing a role where he would be depicted as an abject coward being dragged to his execution. Cagney, however, was enthusiastic about the chance to play Rocky. He saw it as a suitable vehicle to prove to critics and front office honchos that he had a broad acting range that extended far beyond tough guy roles. Bogart, for one, was very impressed by the death house scene and informed Cagney as such.
When Jack Warner saw The Dead End Kids in a production of Samuel Goldwyn's Dead End, he quickly hired the cast. For the first test as The Dead End Kids, Warner cast them in the movie Crime School opposite Humphrey Bogart which was a success which led to the culmination of this movie.
After this movie, Michael Curtiz would work again with James Cagney in films such as Yankee Doodle Dandy and Captains of the Clouds. Curtiz would later reteam with Humphrey Bogart for his landmark film, that won him an Oscar, Casablanca.
The film would mark the first of three films with Bogart and Cagney, the next two films would be made the following year, The Oklahoma Kid and The Roaring Twenties.
Read more about this topic: Angels With Dirty Faces
Famous quotes containing the word production:
“It is part of the educator’s responsibility to see equally to two things: First, that the problem grows out of the conditions of the experience being had in the present, and that it is within the range of the capacity of students; and, secondly, that it is such that it arouses in the learner an active quest for information and for production of new ideas. The new facts and new ideas thus obtained become the ground for further experiences in which new problems are presented.”
—John Dewey (1859–1952)
“Just as modern mass production requires the standardization of commodities, so the social process requires standardization of man, and this standardization is called equality.”
—Erich Fromm (1900–1980)
“The production of too many useful things results in too many useless people.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)