“The Most Harsh and Frank Gangster Picture We Have Ever Had”: Censoring Howard Hawks’s Scarface¹

Abstract

Howard Hawks’s Scarface (1932) was one of the most violent and controversial movies ever produced during the studio era. The film was finished in September 1931 but was released only in April 1932, because of a prolonged fight between the Hays Office and the production company, Howard Hughes’s Caddo. This article not only reconstructs the relationship between Caddo and the Hollywood censors during the production of Scarface. On the basis of this historical evidence, it also addresses a question that has not been investigated yet: How did a movie that was so attentively – even obsessively – scrutinized by the Hays Office, which imposed numerous changes, still feature an incestuous passion between the protagonist and his sister? In an effort to answer this question, the article offers a broader hypothesis regarding the representation of criminals – especially Italian-American criminals – in classical Hollywood cinema.

Keywords:

• censorship
• classical Hollywood cinema
• gangster movie
• Italian-Americans

Notes

1 I thank the Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (Los Angeles), the Bibliothèque du Film, Cinémathèque Française (Paris), and the Newberry Library (Chicago), for letting me research their collections. I also thank George Chauncey, Ronald Gregg, Silvano Montaldo, Sabrina Negri, and Debbie Rusch, who generously helped me to improve the style and content of this article.

2 In the case of Little Caesar, the censors could not act, because its production began “before the code was adopted, and therefore no script was submitted” (Black 1989, 175).

3 Films openly depicting corrupt cops, such as John Cromwell’s The Racket (1951), a new adaptation of Cormack’s play, or Fritz Lang’s The Big Heat (1953), reappeared in the early 1950s, when the Code’s power began to be questioned. The first Hollywood movie released without the Hays Office’s seal of approval was Otto Preminger’s The Moon Is Blue (1953). For a filmography of corrupt cops films see Gustafson 2007.

4 E.R. Hagemann (1984) spells it Gino. That would be a correct Italian name, but the name’s sound in the movie is unquestionably Guino, and that is how it is spelled in the police cable at the end of the film. On Scarface’s reception in Italy, see Mereu Keating 2016.

5 In the BFI Companion to Crime, Rico is mentioned as the first character in a long genealogy of closeted – or not so closeted – homosexual villains. See McGillivray 1997.

6 On the “pansy” in the twenties and thirties, see Chauncey 1994.

7 On the stereotype of the “real” man as cold and rational, thought to be in opposition to a supposed feminine proclivity for irrational behavior, see Mosse 1996.

8 On the connection between 1930s gangster movies and the First World War, see Smyth 2004.

9 On the gangster as tragic hero, see Warshow’s seminal essay from 1948.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Giaime Alonge

Giaime Alonge is Professor of Film Studies at the University of Turin, Italy. He has been Fulbright visiting professor at the University of Chicago. His main research areas are: American cinema, Italian cinema, Film and History, Screenwriting, Game Studies. His most recent monograph, Un’ambigua leggenda. Cinema italiano e Grande Guerra (1914-2018), will be published by Il Mulino in 2020.