“Angels With Dirty Faces.” (1938)

So, “Angels With Dirty Faces.” (1938). Cagney with the original Dead End Kids. Bernard Punsley, Bobby Jordan, Billy Halop, Leo Gorcey, Huntz Hall, and Gabriel Dell. Cagney plays Rocky Sullivan, a street tough who grows up to be a charismatic gangster. He and his childhood pal, Jerry Connelly (Pat O’Brien) commit a petty crime and flee, Rocky gets caught and goes to reform school and into a life of crime, Jerry escapes, straightens out and becomes a priest trying to save the current generation of kids, the Dead End crew, from the same fate. Ann Sheridan is the grown up neighborhood girl who had a crush on Rocky. Rocky is just out of prison and back in the neighborhood to collect on his pre-conviction enterprise being managed by his old partner, Frazier, played by Humphrey Bogart. Of course his ex-partner and cronies don’t intend to make good and try to pull a Billy “Bats” on him. Rocky, though, has a few tricks up his sleeve. Of course the kids idolize Rocky, undoing all the good of Father Connelly. It all comes down to the final scenes. As Connelly says: “All right, fellas... let's go and say a prayer for a boy who couldn't run as fast as I could.”