Warner Bros. purchased the rights on Dec. 1, 1930, to the book Beer and Blood by John Bright and Kubec Glasman. This book described the Prohibition era of Chicago "racketeering" (the word originated in Chicago newspapers in 1923), but Warner production chief Darryl Zanuck shifted the focus from the book's social theme to the film's personal theme. Tommy is based on the real gangsters Hymie Weiss and Dion O'Banion. Weiss survived a machine-gun ambush as portrayed in the film with his fictional friend Matt. The omelet Weiss used on his girlfriend became a grapefruit in the film. The death of Nails Nathan followed closely the real death of Samuel Nathan of the O'Banion mob, and the horse was killed in the film as it was killed in Chicago by Louis "two-gun" Alterie. Gang war reached a crescendo in 1928-29 as Al Capone used violence to destroy the gangs of O'Banion and Bugs Moran. There were 116 bombings and 399 murders in Chicago in 1928. The violence reached a climax with the murder of seven of Moran's men Feb. 14, 1929, in the St. Valentine's Day Massacre. On April 24, 1930, the Chicago Crime Commission posted in public the names of 28 criminals, creating the first "Most Wanted" list, headed by a "Public Enemy No. 1" (Joe Aiello, head of the Moran gang, was No. 1 and Al Capone was No. 4). With the help of a federal unit under Prohibition Bureau chief Alexander Jamie (not Elliot Ness), Capone was arrested in 1931 and would die in prison in Alcatraz in 1937 from syphilis. After this film, the FBI began its war on crime in the wake of the 1932 Lindbergh kidnapping, the interstate crime spree of John Dillinger, and the Federal Crime Acts of 1934.
1. Realistic urban setting
opening street scene and tavern
diagonal perspective of Sergei Eisenstein's montage
