#( &&. harlow fenton )

[shewhowillrise]

Idk how one to one it is but the dc x dp idea of Danny and Jason being multiverse variants of each other should be combined with Dana Harlowe aka Strike as a Valerie variant

[of-fear-and-love]

Leslie Fenton in The Public Enemy (1931)

[letterboxd-loggd]

The Public Enemy (1931) William A. Wellman

January 28th 2023

[ulrichgebert]

Keinesfalls wollten sie Kriminelle als Helden glorifizieren, und mit allen nimmt es immer ein schlechtes Ende, teilen uns die Warner Brothers per Warntafel mit, grad als sei ihnen zu spät aufgegangen, daß ihr öffentlicher Feind irgendwie doch recht attraktiv rüberkommt. Zur Feier von James Cagneys 125. Geburtstag.

[max--phillips]

Genesis - Chapter 3

*Shows up 2 years and 3 months late with Starbucks* lmao

(Please follow @butchmandalorian-writes and turn on notifications to be alerted to new fic uploads!)

Pairing: Ezra & gn!reader (I'll update this if it changes, I'm not 100% positive where their relationship is going to go at the moment)

Warnings: In line with the previous chapters, Dragonfly is processing a lot. Angst, loss, grief, self-doubt.

Summary: You assist Ezra in his search for cinder violet. A surprise storm rolls in. Ezra asks you some questions.

Words: 4.5k

Prologue / Chapter 1 / Chapter 2

You closed your eyes and focused on the sound of the waves crashing on the beach. You focused on the smell of the salt water and sea air. The feeling of the sand beneath your knees. You wanted to cry, but your body wouldn’t let you. You clutched the plaque to your chest. Words couldn’t describe the mixture of feelings overwhelming you.

You made it.

You made it.

You heard sand crunching as Ezra approached you. It then stopped.

“I personally knew every last person on board that ship,” you said, quietly, eyes still closed. “All 79 of them. I knew their hopes and dreams for the future, their damn favorite color.”

“Sounds to me like you were a good leader, then,” Ezra said.

There was a moment of quiet. You chose not to respond to his comment. “Anthony. Susanna. Blair. Desmond.” You took a deep breath, and opened your eyes, looking over at Ezra. “Chiara. Stacey. Lily-Grace. Kristina. Marlene. Ariella. Mohammod. Harlow. Cheyanne.” You pulled the plaque away from your chest and looked at it. “Lleyton. Ayisha. Tahmina. Connah. Abida. Missy. Danielle. Safah. Poppie. Beverley.” You began to stand, slowly, still recounting names. “Luka. Zahid. Alejandro. Prince. Jena. Salahuddin. Harris. Brent. Milo. Neve.” You turned slightly towards the ocean, and began walking. “Lexi-Mae. Humzah. Rebecca. Waseem. Raisa. Tania. Mina. Cillian. Rick. Reya.” You approached where the sand was wet as the waves rolled in. “Kaydee. Fenton. Isabella. Rachel. Olaf. August. Kacey. Tahlia. Reanne. Andrew.” Ezra followed you, stopping next to you as you stood there, shoes getting wet. “Amy. Alex. Micheal. Matt. Sarah. Dale. Shyam. Adela. Catrin. Aviana. Mallory. Ronnie. Hashir. Felix. Zishan. Kobie. Brenden. Kelsea. Wiktor. Lula. Tyrese. Ayyan. Ricky. Akeel. Zakk. Zahia.”

You looked out at the horizon, dotted distantly with rocks and other islands. You looked at the plaque. Then, in one fluid motion punctuated with a grunt of effort, you threw the plaque as hard as you could into the ocean. It plunged into the water several yards away.

“I don’t know if you believe in such things, but if you do, I’m sure your team is looking to you from beyond with pride, knowing at least one of you got here,” Ezra offered.

“I don’t know, either,” you mumbled in response. “But I hope you’re right.”

You stood there for a few more long moments before Ezra turned and began walking towards the tree line behind you. You took a few more seconds to turn and follow suit. It felt like your consciousness stayed standing at the water, though, your movements almost not your own. Nothing felt real. Perhaps you, too, died on that ship and this was all some bizarre cryostasis dream your brain was having in a fit of activity before the end. Logically, you knew that wasn’t the case, but the grief and anxiety and confusion you were feeling were more than enough to override logical thought.

Your attention came back into focus as Ezra began speaking.

“I hope you don’t mind, but I’d like to get to work and not push our chances of getting caught in a storm. We’re looking for a bright purple flower, and where there’s one, there’s plenty more,” he said. “Let’s go look, shall we? Do mind any roots and vines across the ground, with all the ways this planet could kill you, I’d wager tripping does more prospectors in than anything.”

“Is that… a common profession? Prospector?” you asked, more than happy to momentarily change the subject.

“That depends on your origin,” Ezra answered. “If you’re originally from Central, or any of the core planets, really, no, it’s not common at all. Those folks tend to go into more well-educated fields and keep their feet planted firmly on a safe, habitable planet with a functioning government.”

You both reached the tree line, and Ezra began leading you into the brush, pushing some vegetation out of the way to begin clearing something of a path.

“But, if you’re from the Frontier, the Fringe, hell, even some of the tourist planets, it’s damn near your only option to get off whatever rock you were born on,” he continued. “Extremely high risk, no such thing as a safe job. So… my apologies for dragging you out of your nap and right into harm’s way,” he said, looking over his shoulder to you with an apologetic expression.

You weren’t yet sure how to respond to that, given how that “nap” ended up. You continued to follow Ezra, stepping over twisting roots, vines, and other growth.

“But, with high risk comes high reward,” Ezra said. “If you live long enough to turn in your bounty, it can be well worth the risk. ‘Course, so many succumb to the environments they prospect in, or other prospectors, not too terribly many actually make a return. Can’t tell you how many woefully unprepared kips I’ve seen get themselves killed on their first go because they thought they were stronger than nature, or couldn’t make a deal, even on the wrong end of a thrower.”

You both made it to a small clearing, and Ezra stopped for a moment to survey the surrounding trees. The canopy was thick, shading you from the sun, though not doing much to curb the oppressive humidity in the air. On top of that, every step you took seemed harder than the last. Maybe pushing yourself so soon after you woke up wasn’t a good idea. You knew that the planet was significantly denser than Earth, but you weren’t expecting the increased gravity to affect you this much. You wiped some sweat from your brow, looking around as well, taking in the alien plants. If dropped here with no other context, one might be forgiven for thinking this was the middle of a rainforest, but there was an… uncanny valley sort of feeling to it. It was definitely not familiar biology, though clearly not entirely dissimilar from what had evolved on Earth.

“Ah! That way. There’s a tree species this flower particularly likes, I’m willing to wager we’ll find a patch nearby,” Ezra said, pointing out of the clearing and beginning to walk that direction.

You continued to follow him. “So, I take it you’re one of the more successful ones,” you said, continuing your conversation.

Ezra chuckled a little. “I’d like to think so,” he responded. “Not without my fair share of challenges and loss, of course, but I’ve done alright for myself. Well enough I have a home of sorts on Central, nothing too fancy, but it’s enough.”

“You said most people from Central don’t prospect,” you pointed out.

“I am not from Central, Captain,” he said. “Depending on how you look at it, I simply got lucky.”

You wondered what he meant by “depending on how you look at it,” but chose not to pursue that. “If Central has safer jobs, why keep doing this?” you asked.

Ezra sighed. “You can take the man out of prospecting, but you can’t take prospecting out of the man, Dragonfly,” he answered. “Besides, those safe jobs lack the excitement this profession freely supplies. I’d get bored.”

You could certainly understand that. You could’ve much more easily taken a job with mission control, or stopped at test flights for the Genesis program, but no. That wasn’t enough. You had to be the face of it.

You two continued to walk for a while, you imagine having passed the tree Ezra had pointed out earlier some time ago. Thankfully, walking through the forest was requiring enough of your focus that your mind didn’t begin spiraling despite the quiet. It was hot and exhausting. After some time, though, you came to a large clearing with a pond of sorts in the middle, with some rock formations on the far side. Towards the other edge of the clearing, there was a patch of flowers.

“There! Perfect,” Ezra said, walking over towards the flowers with purpose. You followed. He began digging in his pockets, producing two bags, one that appeared to be empty, and another full of small tools. From the tool bag, he grabbed two pairs of tweezers.

“Now, this is delicate work,” Ezra started, handing one of the pair of tweezers to you. “As should be obvious, we have plenty of chances to get this right, but keep in mind these cinder violets are very valuable.”

You nodded. “Got it.”

“Good. So, to start, be careful picking them. That’s why you need work gloves. The stem on these flowers have sharp thorns,” Ezra explained, motioning for you to sit on the ground near him. You did so, letting out a sigh of relief as you did, thankful for any rest. You watched his movements closely as he reached forward and carefully picked one. You could see the thin, sharp thorns protruding seemingly randomly from its stem.

“Once they’re picked, you need to work quickly to get the stamen. There’s a reason we harvest them here rather than picking the flowers and taking them back to the ship,” he continued. He used the tweezers he was holding to point towards the center of the flower, where the sturdy purple petals were curled around what you assumed to be the stamen in question. “You gotta peel these back, but be careful of the stamen inside. If you accidentally break the stamen, or either of the individual parts, it’s worthless. Couldn’t tell you why, the folks this is valuable to end up burning them most of the time, but I’m not one to argue with a paying customer.”

You watched as he demonstrated what he just explained, carefully rolling back the petals to reveal the stamen inside. You immediately made the connection that it looked a lot like saffron threads, except they were a light purple color rather than red or orange. Ezra used the tweezers firmly at the base of the stamen, pinching the entire structure and removing it from the flower before carefully placing the piece in the empty bag he’d opened earlier.

“Just like that. Think you can handle it?” he asked.

“Yeah, I think so,” you responded.

So you got to work. You messed up the first flower you attempted, breaking one of the threads when you tried to roll back the petals, but you tried again and successfully extracted the stamen whole. Once you got a few under your belt, you seemed to get the hang of it, only accidentally breaking a few threads the entire time. As you worked, Ezra filled the air with chatter, thankfully not seeming to care if you responded or not.

“The petals curl inward like that to protect the stamen from the weather here,” he said. “The winds from the storms can be brutal, but the trees around are rooted deep enough they can usually withstand them, and break up the wind the further inland you go. Of course, there’s still some wind, and these flowers adapted to protect their reproduction in a fascinating way. The petals are stiff enough that only certain pollinators can get inside.”

“Pretty textbook evolution,” you commented.

Ezra made a noise of agreement. “There have been attempts to start permanent logging colonies on the planet because of how strong the wood in some of the tree species is,” he explained. “The incredible winds combined with the strong gravitational force pushed their evolution that way. Of course, all of them have failed.”

Ezra continued to talk about the planet, how lumber and these flowers were really the only things of value here, though some other plants are propagated off-world to be sold as house plants. He began telling some tangent story about said house plants, but you were happy to listen nonetheless. There would be moments of quiet, still, in which occasionally either you or Ezra would curse as one of you destroyed another stamen by accident. Ezra occasionally mumbled something about joints in his hand, or something about servos, though you didn’t think anything of it. Doing this sort of detailed work was starting to make your hand sore as well.

After what had to be a few hours, you and Ezra made a sizable dent in the patch of flowers you’d found, filling the bag about halfway with the prize he was after. Just as you were about to reach for another flower, you heard a rumble of thunder. The light that was coming in through the clearing began to dim, and you could hear rain begin to hit the leaves of the canopy, not quite yet filtering through.

“Shit,” Ezra said, looking around as he started to get up off the ground. “Nothing major, sometimes these storms pop up. But we’re too far from the ship to go back in this. Let’s take cover over in those rock formations, shall we?”

You nodded, getting up as well. Ezra grabbed the bag of cinder violet, and as the rain began to fall through the canopy, you both ran towards the pond and the rock formations on the other side of the clearing. Ezra led you under a large overhang, and you two watched as the rain intensified, thunder clapping occasionally overhead. He sighed deeply, shaking his head.

“Fair timing, I suppose. I was starting to think about calling it quits anyway. The amount we have should earn us…” he paused, humming in thought. “Maybe two or three points?”

“Points?” you asked.

“Ah, yes. It’s payment, I’m not sure how you’d value it. It’s enough for a single person to live off for maybe two months or so,” he said.

You balked at that. “Two months?” you asked.

“I told you it was valuable,” Ezra responded, smiling at you.

He turned and sat down again, back resting against the rock at the back of the overhang. You followed suit. It was quiet for a few moments as you watched the rain fall. Ezra, of course, was the one to break the quiet.

“Dragonfly, I’m sure you have a multitude of questions regarding the galaxy you now find yourself in, but I will admit, I have many of my own for you,” he said.

You sighed. “To be honest, I don’t know what to even ask yet, especially given you’re the only one I’ve met, and you’ve been with me the entire time I’ve been conscious,” you said. “Fire away.”

Ezra grinned like he’d just won a prize. “Very well. Do you mind if I start with a question about you, then?” he asked.

“Go for it,” you responded.

“How did you become captain of that handsome craft I encountered you on?” he asked.

“I wanted to save humanity,” you stated plainly. This was a bit of a softball question, one you’d answered many times at press conferences, news interviews, and presentations at various schools. “My entire life the world was crumbling around us. Every day was another record broken for hottest day, or highest sea level, or least polar ice. I never understood why no one was doing anything about it. I did try the activism route for a while, but I got disillusioned fast. It never really accomplished anything. It’s nearly impossible to make people care about something when they have incentive to ignore it. I caught wind of NASA’s Genesis program, went to test pilot school, worked my ass off… and here we are.” There was some bitterness in your tone at the end of your sentence. Here you were, indeed.

“Saving an entire planet is quite the lofty goal,” Ezra said.

You nodded. “It is. But it’s the right thing to do,” you said. “Was the right thing to do, I guess.” Doubt began to creep in. Was it? Knowing what you know now… was all of this worth it?

Ezra seemed to sense your shift in mood, and asked another question. “I must ask, was the cryostasis technology I found you in… pioneered for this mission?” he asked.

“More or less. I mean, people have been working on some form of it since… I think the bunk cryonics industry started in the 1970s,” you said. “Most of the time after that was spent thinking the entire concept would remain science fiction, but some group of scientists made a major breakthrough when I was a kid. NASA spent the next twenty odd years fine-tuning the technology to get us to Kepler-186.”

Ezra was quiet for a beat. “Cryostasis was deemed too dangerous to continue using decades ago,” he finally said. “Too much risk, side effects were too strong. Much more muscle atrophy and other deleterious effects caused by long term use. As far as that is concerned, Captain, you are very lucky.”

You looked over at him, your brow furrowed. “Other deleterious effects?” you asked.

“I’m no expert on the subject, but if I’m remembering correctly there were some concerns about the agents used to prevent harmful ice crystals from forming, nutrition uptake over time, issues with sleep and attentiveness after being taken out of stasis… we have much safer alternatives now,” Ezra explained. “Although use of any suspended animation is less frequent now that we have faster than light travel.”

“What alternatives are there?” you asked, genuine confusion in your voice. As far as you were aware, cryostasis was the only suspended animation technique that was really achievable. Anything else wouldn’t do enough to slow the body’s metabolism, and therefore aging, or required far too much energy to be plausible, or was simply fictional magic.

“Most true suspended animation relies on manipulation of spacetime,” Ezra said casually. The surprised expression on your face in response told Ezra that that statement was not casual at all to you. “It does take a considerable amount of energy, so it is not used frequently.”

“You can just… manipulate spacetime?” you asked

“Well, I’m sure it’s not as simple as that. Like I said, I’m no expert,” he answered. “I’m not entirely sure how they accomplish it. More commonly, though, is a state of induced torpor, which is more conducive to the length of trips we take with FTL.”

You nodded, absorbing this information.

It was quiet for a long moment, other than the rain falling and wind blowing through the trees. Ezra then began speaking, almost carefully choosing his words.

“In my childhood, my peers and I were told the same stories our parents were told of Earth. Toxic skies that would choke you to death in an instant, poison plants that could burn you with one touch, vicious creatures that could eat you whole. I believe that these began as cautionary tales many generations ago, but they morphed into this mythology of a cursed planet that would punish you for even thinking about visiting its surface,” he said. “I would be remiss not to ask you what Earth was truly like, even in your day.”

You considered his question, then sighed. “While exaggerated, the stories you heard weren’t… too far off,” you responded. Ezra looked at you, surprised. “I mean, the whole planet isn’t like that. Toxic skies… occasionally, as pollution got worse or wildfire smoke ruined air quality for days on end, yes. Not so bad you’d die if you had to go outside, though. Poison plants and vicious creatures, absolutely. There are plants that, if you get even a little bit of its sap on you, it gives you chemical burns or makes you itch for days on end. Some plants and fungi have lookalikes, where one is perfectly edible, and the other is so toxic that if you eat it you’ll be dead within a day. There are animals that can and will kill you given the chance, granted there aren’t many that could swallow you whole. Hippos probably could. Maybe blue whales, but they don’t eat prey as large as us.” You smiled sadly. “Still, it’s beautiful. Vast oceans, lush jungles, mountain ranges and rock formations… even the things we built, to some degree, are beautiful. Bridges, castles, skyscrapers. It’s…” You stopped as you realized you were speaking in present tense, and you gulped, willing away the tears that threatened to begin. “It was worth saving.”

Ezra’s surprise morphed into some cross between interest and concern as you spoke. “I… wish I could’ve seen it, as you did.”

“Yeah,” you said, nodding a bit. “Me too.”

As another moment of quiet passed between you, you realized something. Surely humanity by itself couldn’t span an entire galaxy, right? And clearly, life was elsewhere in the galaxy…

“I just thought of a question,” you started.

“Please,” Ezra encouraged.

“Have we made first contact?” you asked.

“Have we made what?”

Well that’s not the response you were expecting.

“First contact,” you repeated. You then put on a bit of a voice, mocking the many documentaries about this topic from your original era. “Is there intelligent life beyond our solar system?”

Ezra looked at you, confused at first, then he seemed to remember how long you’d been asleep. “Yes.”

You weren’t sure whether to be excited or deflated with his response. “With that kind of reaction I imagine it’s commonplace.”

Ezra nodded. “As humanity fled Earth, it happened multiple times with multiple colonies concurrently,” he said. “Enough so that no one’s really sure who was first. Thankfully, other than the one time a group of us managed to establish an empire across the galaxy, everyone gets along relatively well. Well, on an official level, anyway. All bets are off once you’re in the Fringe, or the Frontier, or prospecting.”

You nodded again, and hummed in understanding. “I’m glad to hear it, I suppose. That was another thing that was still very much science fiction when I was on Earth,” you said.

“I have a feeling that will not be the last time you come across something matching that description, Captain,” he said. “You are always welcome to ask questions. I may not have all the answers, but I do a fair share of reading in my free time. I’ve picked up on some things, at least.”

“I appreciate it,” you said.

The rain began to lighten a bit, but not stop. The humidity had broken slightly, and the wind from the storm was making it a bit cooler where you were taking cover under this rock. For the moment, it was kind of nice. You wondered again if you would’ve made it this far if you had known. If you would’ve rather had your team alive for a short time on this planet’s surface, marking the mission’s technical success, or if they were better off having died painlessly in cryo. Part of you wanted to believe that if you had all made it, you would’ve proved Ezra wrong, and there would be a thriving colony on this planet’s surface in just a couple of years. But… like Ezra said earlier: people get themselves killed thinking they’re stronger than nature.

“We were going to name it Eden,” you blurted. “When we got settled, I mean. The colony, the planet, was going to be named Eden.” You looked over at Ezra. “I… suppose I don’t know if that means anything to you.”

“I believe I get the gist,” Ezra responded. “The Garden of Eden where humanity was supposedly started by some capricious deity.”

“In the Book of Genesis, the first book of the Bible, God takes six days to create existence, resting on the seventh. Adam and Eve, the first man and woman, and who are tasked with creating humanity, live in this garden God created as a paradise on Earth. It was plentiful, and they were allowed to eat from any tree in the garden except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil,” you said. “Of course, they eat from it anyway and get kicked out before they can eat from the tree of life, which would have granted them immortality.” You tilted your head back and forth for a moment in consideration. “There’s more to it than that, but that’s the condensed version. Wouldn’t be a story from a religion if the details weren’t hotly debated.”

“That is yet another thing that has not changed since your time,” Ezra responded. “I am sorry that this did not turn out to be the paradise you expected it to be.”

You sighed. “I don’t think anyone truly believed this would be a paradise,” you said. “Livable, yes. But a true paradise wouldn’t require us to work for our survival. We were prepared to start from truly nothing but the supplies we carted across 579 light years.” You paused and furrowed your brow. “We made a lot of assumptions. About the planet, about what would grow here, clearly about how the surface of the planet would be.” You didn’t want to admit that the entire program was done out of desperation. It had taken 25 years from the conception of the program to your launch date, yes, but an undertaking as huge as this… it likely would’ve benefited from more time to plan, to study the target planets, to truly understand what you were getting yourselves into. But the planet was dying, and humanity was dying with it. Someone needed to do something, and the sooner something was done, the sooner humanity could be saved.

You supposed it didn’t matter in the end.

You wondered what McCoy would say. He always balanced your optimism with caution and well-timed cynicism. You remembered what he said that night 10 days before launch, on the boat. I’m sick of worrying about what could go wrong… What if it does go wrong? You’d told him it wouldn’t. That you’d make new constellations.

You realized you were crying again. You forced yourself to take a deep breath. You wiped your cheeks with the back of your hand.

“Sorry,” you offered.

“You have nothing to apologize for,” Ezra assured you. “You’ve had an incredible amount of information dumped on you in a very short amount of time. If anyone here should be apologizing for anything, it’s me for waking you up.”

You shook your head. “No. I… given the choice between waking up to this and dying without knowing what went wrong, I would’ve chosen waking up every time.”

Ezra nodded slowly. “While I cannot begin to understand what you’re going through, I do understand that choice, at least,” he said.

Soon, the rain stopped, and the wind died down. Ezra moved to stand up, walking towards the edge of the structure you were under.

“I think now is as good a time as any to get back to the ship and head out,” Ezra said, turning back to where you were still sitting. He approached, and held a hand out to help you up.

You hesitated to reach out. Much like your hesitation at leaving the ship, you almost didn’t want to leave. You made it here. Did you deserve to make it any further? What about your crew? How in the world would you even move on from something like this?

You took Ezra’s hand, and hoisted yourself up off the ground.

“Alright. Where to from here?”

[fourorfivemovements]

Films Watched in 2021:

01. The Public Enemy (1931) - Dir. William A. Wellman

[365filmsbyauroranocte]

The Public Enemy (William A. Wellman, 1931)

[facrytalcs-blog]

( @winniethepoohx​ )

          HARLOW COULDN’T KEEP still as she surveyed the area, wondering where to go first. there were so many things to see and do, but she couldn’t choose, so perhaps asking would be the best, and so she turned to lai, her dress accidentally hitting someone behind her. ❝ what do you wanna do first ?? dance ?? get some food ?? explore ?? ❞

[winniethepoohx]

vesper & harlow ;; “*finger guns*” | @facrytalcs !

vesper let out a loud, dramatic gasp, floating a few inches and doing a flip in the air before throwing himself onto the ground. “I’VE BEEN SHOT!” he exclaimed, absolutely dramatic. “I HAVEN’T SEEN YOU IN MONTHS AND THE FIRST THING YOU DO IS KILL ME --- I’M HURT, ABSOLUTELY WOUNDED, HARLOW ---”

[doubleattitude]

Radix Dance Convention, Atlanta, GA: RESULTS

High Scores by Age:

Rookie Solo

1st: MIla Simunic-’Never Enough’

2nd: Brenna Ferrell-’Showstopper’

2nd: Alaina Chadbourne-’Walk The Dinosaur’

Mini Solo

1st: Ellie Melchior-’Function’

2nd: Barrett Robison-’Ping’

3rd: Spencer Parnell-’The Return’

3rd: AnaKate Danner-’Unleashed’

3rd: Paislyn Schroeder-’Vibin’

4th: Kaylee Schwamb-’See Me Now’

4th: Lily Planck-’She’s A Lady’

5th: Georgia Beth Peters-’Come Together’

5th: Ava Grace Merritt-’Love Me’

5th: Anslee LeBlanc-’Take Care Of Yourself’

6th: Bella Smith-’Against The Music’

6th: Clare Gibbons-’Baby I’m A Star’

7th: Xin Lee-’Finding Home’

7th: Avery St John-’Tomorrow’s Song’

8th: Londyn Knox-’Without You’

9th: Lauren Fenton-’Boogie Shoes’

9th: Madelyn Laken-’Surprise’

10th: Penelope Thomas-’Love Shack’

10th: Lila Morath-’Miss Velour’

Junior Solo

1st: Amaya Llewellyn-’Must’

1st: Leila Winker-’Takt’

2nd: Emme James Anderson-’Resume’

3rd: Riley Fiorello-’Crippled Bird’

3rd: Estella Guzman-’No Contamination’

3rd: Ally Reuter-’Stagma’

4th: Mia Doyle-’Designated Harmony’

4th: Brinkley Pittman-’Gravity’

4th: Addison Cullather-’Tangent’

5th: Morgan Belyeu-’Older’

5th: Kalli Ramet-’Rock Me Baby’

5th: Roberta Marcos-’Torn’

6th: Luna Powell-’1977′

6th: Ella Paige Moore-’Breaking Point’

6th: Zella Wentz-’Fearless’

7th: Addison ?-’How Does A Moment Last Forever’

7th: Collier McLain-’Love Has No Limits’

7th: Mia Mondok-’Music Box’

7th: Gabriela Miller-’Sinking’

8th: Mia Narvaez-’Destinations’

8th: Amanda Fenton-’Devil In Disguise’

8th: Annabel Ellis-’The Forest’

8th: Sidney Hill-’The Moon’

9th: Zoe Kappler-’Changeling’

9th: Callie Ludtke-’Impossible’

9th: Leah Midgett-’Mirror Mirror’

10th: Kinley Andrews-’All That Jazz’

10th: Meredith Lee-’Especially A Woman’

Teen Solo

1st: Harlow Ganz-’End of Love’

1st: Preslie Rosamond-’Possibly Maybe’

2nd: Emery Sousley-’Birds of Paradise’

3rd: Olivia Taylor-’Closure’

3rd: Oliver Keane-’Electric Pulse’

4th: Kenzie Robertson-’1977′

4th: Josh Stephens-’Fires’

4th: Johanna Jessen-’Party’

4th: Gabriella Kennedy-’Ritz’

4th: Rianna Weck-’Sensory Overload’

5th: Delaney Lorenz-’Creep’

5th: Haley Midgett-’Smile to Me’

5th: Sydney Tam-’Touch’

6th: Natalie Bumgarner-’Maybe This Time’

6th: Kate Higginbotham-’Polly’

7th: Kennedi Washington-’Epilogue’

7th: Kayla Pierce-’Fire Speak’

7th: Kayla Montgomery-’Lalia’

8th: Cady Cropper-’Godspeed’

8th: Maddie Laine Callaway-’Piece by Piece’

9th: Mia Lott-’Flawless’

9th: Jordan Stevener-’Ghosts’

9th: Ally Organo-’Like You’ll Never See Me Again’

10th: Julia Deana-’Hate You’

10th: Madison marshall-’Icon’

10th: Dempsey Foxson-’Vain’

Senior Solo

1st: Seth Gibson-’Identity’

1st: Dai Boyd-’Try A Little Tenderness’

2nd: Libby Wiley-’By Thy Light’

3rd: Brittany Willard-’Unchained Melody’

4th: Raven Rutledge-’A Pale’

5th: Rebecca Lewyn-’Devil I Know’

5th: Anna Goodman-’Fallen Alien’

5th: Alexandra Jinglov-’Take It Easy’

6th: Belle Mason-’Drones’

6th: Katelynn Midgett-’Georgia’

6th: Ayana Davis-’Progressing’

7th: Kaili Tam-’Malamente’

7th: Elaina Samady-’Loving Ghosts’

7th: Ally Pereira-’Daring to Love’

7th: CJ Parker-’A Letter From France’

7th: Madison Phelps-’A Feeling Felt’

7th: Avery Ferguson-’When You Sleep’

8th: Izzie Bringle-’Hush’

8th: Molly Fisher-’Moved’

8th: Lexi Elias-’The Weight’

9th: Gracie Avalos-’A Body’

9th: Kirsten Brown-’Asylum’

9th: Julia Hale-’Cellophane’

10th: Brooke Manchester-’Go’

10th: Ainsley Wharton-’These hands’

10th: Sophie Hooker-’We’ll Meet Again’

Mini Duo/Trio

1st: Academy for The Performing Arts-’Fall For You’

2nd: Milele Academy-’Miami’

3rd: Studio 413-’Party Planners’

3rd: Milele Academy-’Vibology’

Junior Duo/Trio

1st: Milele Academy-’Fiyah Speak’

1st: Academy for the Performing Arts-’Oceania’

2nd: B-viBe The Dance Movement-’The Mess We’re In’

3rd: Dance Productions Unlimited-’Superpowers’

Teen Duo/Trio

1st: The Royal Dance Academy-’Greiving’

2nd: Milele Academy-’Down We Go’

2nd: Accolades Movement Project-’I Remember Her’

3rd: Studio 413-’Distortion’

3rd: Academy for the Performing Arts-’Fledglings’

3rd: Academy for the Performing Arts-’Rebuild’

3rd: Academy for the Performing Arts-’Tiny Cities’

Senior Duo/Trio

1st: Studio 413-’Black Flies’

2nd: Milele Academy-’Darkest Hour’

3rd: B-viBe The Dance Movement-’Heartbeat’

Rookie Group

1st: Elite Studio-’I Don’t Want to Show Off’

2nd: Elite Studios-’90′s Babies’

Mini Group

1st: Encore Studio-’Uptown Girl’

2nd: Encore Studio-’Windowdipper’

3rd: Encore Studio-’Turn to Stone’

Junior Group

1st: Jill’s Studio of Dance-’All I Want’

1st: B-viBe The Dance Movement-’Down The Line’

1st: B-viBe The Dance Movement-’History In The Making’

2nd: Milele Academy-’Save a Horse’

3rd: Elite Studio-’Collective Breath’

Teen Group

1st: Academy for the Performing Arts-’Don’t Forget Me’

1st: Encore Studio-’Kinjabang’

2nd: Studio 413-’Social Media Overload’

3rd: Milele Academy-’Close Up’

Senior Group

1st: Elite Studios-’I Still Remain’

2nd: Milele Academy-’Get It’

3rd: Academy for the Performing Arts-’Holdin Out’

Rookie Line

1st: Encore Studio-’Conga’

Mini Line

1st: Jill’s Studio of Dance-’Jailhouse Rock’

2nd: Encore Studio-’Truth’

3rd: Elite Studio-’Get Busy’

3rd: Elite Studios-’What You Did To Me’

Junior Line

1st: Milele Academy-’Missy’

2nd: Jill’s Studio of Dance-’It’s About That Walk’

3rd: Studio 413-’Into the Night’

Teen Line

1st: Studio 413-’Hold On Tight’

2nd: Encore Studio-’Yikes’

3rd: Encore Studio-’Just Say’

Senior Line

1st: Studio 413-’Rumors’

2nd: Jill’s Studio of Dance-’Lost’

3rd: Jill’s Studio of Dance-’Who You Are’

Mini Extended Line

1st: Encore Studio-’Vibeology’

2nd: Studio 413-’Critical Level’

3rd: Jill’s Studio of Dance-’I’m Alive’

Junior Extended Line

1st: Jill’s Studio of Dance-’Covergirl’

1st: Jill’s Studio of Dance-’Footloose’

1st: Studio 413-’Goodbye’

2nd: Studio 413-’Girl Boss’

Teen Extended Line

1st: Studio 413-’No One’

2nd: Studio Powers-’BLACK’

3rd: Studio 413-’Ready or Not’

Senior Extended Line

1st: Jill’s Studio of Dance-’Shut It Down’

2nd: Jill’s Studio of Dance-’Trust Me Again’

3rd: Jill’s Studio of Dance-’Resolution’

Junior Production

1st: Studio 413-’Electricity’

Teen Production

1st: Encore Studio-’Cardi’

2nd: Jill’s Studio of Dance-’JLo’

3rd: Elite Studio-’That 70′s Show’

High Scores by Performance Division:

Rookie Jazz

1st: Encore Studio-’Conga’ 2nd: Elite Studio-’I Don’t Want to Show Off’

Rookie Tap

Elite Studios-’90′s Babies’

Mini Jazz

1st: Encore Studio-’Uptown Girl’ 2nd: Jill’s Studio of Dance-’Jailhouse Rock’ 3rd: Milele Academy-’Move Your Body’

Mini Hip-Hop

Studio 413-’Lose Control’

Mini Tap

Studio 413-’Critical Level’

Mini Contemporary

1st: Encore Studio-’Windowdipper’ 2nd: Encore Studio-’Turn to Stone’ 3rd: Encore Studio-’Truth’

Mini Lyrical

1st: Elite Studios-’Every Single Thing I Have’ 2nd: Vermont Ballet Theater-’Build It Up’

Mini Specialty

Jill’s Studio of Dance-’I’m Alive’

Junior Jazz

1st: Jill’s Studio of Dance-’Covergirl’ 2nd: Studio 413-’Electricity’ 3rd: Milele Academy-’Save a Horse’ 3rd: Jill’s Studio of Dance-’It’s About That Walk’

Junior Hip-Hop

1st: Milele Academy-’Missy’ 2nd: Studio 413-’Girl Boss’ 3rd: Academy for the Performing Arts-’New Skool’

Junior Tap

1st: Studio 413-’Into the Night’ 2nd: Academy for the Performing Arts-’You Can Feel It’

Junior Contemporary

1st: Studio 413-’Goodbye’ 2nd: B-viBe The Dance Movement-’Down The Line’ 3rd: Elite Studio-’Collective Breath’

Junior Lyrical

Jill’s Studio of Dance-’All I Want’

Junior Musical Theatre

1st: Academy for the Performing Arts-’Guns and Ships’ 2nd: Vermont Ballet Theater-’We Go Together’

Junior Specialty

1st: Jill’s Studio of Dance-’Footloose’ 2nd: B-viBe The Dance Movement-’History In The Making’

Teen Jazz

1st: Encore Studio-’Just Say’ 2nd: Studio 413-’Body Language’ 3rd: Studio 413-’Social Media Overload’

Teen Hip-Hop

1st: Encore Studio-’Yikes’ 2nd: Studio Powers-’BLACK’ 3rd: Jill’s Studio of Dance-’Fire Emoji’

Teen Tap

1st: Studio 413-’No One’ 2nd: Encore Studio-’Cardi’

Teen Contemporary

1st: Studio 413-’Hold on Tight’ 2nd: Encore Studio-’Kinjabang’ 2nd: Academy for the Performing Arts-’Don’t Forget Me’ 2nd: Encore Studio-’Sadness’ 3rd: Milele Academy-’Hurting You’

Teen Lyrical

Vermont Ballet Theater-’Gravity’

Teen Musical Theatre

1st: Elite Studios-’Take Off With Us’ 1st: Academy for the Performing Arts-’Wait For Me’

Teen Specialty

1st: B-viBe The Dance Movement-’Cage of Bones’ 2nd: Studio Powers-’Area 51′

Senior Jazz

1st: Studio 413-’Rumors’ 2nd: Jill’s Studio of Dance-’Shut It Down’ 3rd: Elite Studios-’Sleep’

Senior Hip-Hop

Academy for the Performing Arts-’Welcome to Our Hood’

Senior Tap

Academy for the Performing Arts-’Holdin’ Out’

Senior Contemporary

1st: Elite Studios-’I Still Remain’ 2nd: Milele Academy-’Get It’ 2nd: Jill’s Studio of Dance-’Lost’ 3rd: Jill’s Studio of Dance-’Who You Are’ 3rd: Jill’s Studio of Dance-’Trust Me Again’

Senior Lyrical

1st: Elite Studios-’Kissing You’ 2nd: B-viBe The Dance Movement-’Came Here For Love’

Senior Specialty

1st: Academy for the Performing Arts-’Still Smiling’ 2nd: B-viBe The Dance Movement-’For This You Were Born’

Best of Radix:

Rookie

Elite Studio-’I Don’t Want to Show Off’

Encore Studio-’Conga’

Mini

Milele Academy-’Move Your Body’

Jill’s Studio of Dance-’Jailhouse Rock’

Encore Studio-’Uptown Girl’

Junior

Elite Studio-’Collective Breath’

Milele Academy-’Missy’

B-viBe The Dance Movement-’History In The Making’

Studio 413-’Goodbye’

Jill’s Studio of Dance-’Covergirl’

Teen

Academy for the Performing Arts-’Don’t Forget Me’

Studio 413-’Hold On Tight’

Studio Powers-’BLACK’

Milele Academy-’Hurting You’

Jill’s Studio of Dance-’Fire Emoji’

Encore Studio-’Yikes’

Senior

Milele Academy-’Get It’

Elite Studios-’I Still Remain’

Studio 413-’Rumors’

Academy for the Performing Arts-’Holdin Out’

Jill’s Studio of Dance-’Lost’

Studio Standout:

Elite Studios-’I Still Remain’

Academy for the Performing Arts-’Holdin Out’

B-viBe The Dance Movement-’History In The Making’

Encore Studio-’Yikes’

Jill’s Studio of Dance-’Lost’

Milele Academy-’Get It’

Studio 413-’Hold On Tight’

[liveshaunted-moved]

Useless Post, All Muses Zodiac Sign

Pisces:

Reggie Peters Catalina Schnitz Raven Keller Alex Tanning Juleka & Luka Couffaine Danny Fenton Nikki Wong

Total: 8

Aries: 

Kay McCall Iz Spyros Cody Anderson Rose Fitzherbert Butch Jojo Jeremy & Kenndy Raynes Karen Harley Sally Jackson Varian Maggie Tozier Xu Xialing Alexander Wright Jr Rosella Franker Lilith Clawthrone Cecila Braken Van Palmer

Total: 17

Taurus:

Gwen Mitchell Cynthia Murphy Jonesy Garcia Sam Teller Amity Blight Pepa Madrigal Icy Darcy

Total: 8

Gemmi:

Lucas Friar Maia Tua Plagg Lindsay Reid Piper McLean Nathalie Sancoeur Parker Caine Connor Stoll Nellie Boyd Sam Manson

Total: 10

Cancer:

River Johnson Alix Kubdel Jason Grace Juliet Hart Leo Valdez Brooklyn Porter Taylor Wilson Nyx Diaz Farkle Minkus Marceline Abadeer Valenica Perez Jazz Fenton

Total: 11

Leo:

Seph Hudson Victor Franker El Jackson  Tom Lucitor Harmony Roisin Kagami  Tsurugi Veronica Pratt Kyle & Olivia Karter Daphne Sabrina Castiean Quentin Roberts

Total: 12

Virgo:

Clary Fray Florence Mayard Adrien Agreste Haley Long Chris Rodriguez Luke Patterson Noah Harley Emria & Edric Blight

Total: 9

Libra: 

Travis Stoll Neve Hook Regina Harley Ryder Barnes Carrie Wilson Morgan Charming Dahlia Rider Lottie Matthews Tyson Roberts

Total: 9

Scorpio:

Kastor Teller Vidia Chris Halliwell Maryse Lightwood Clarisse la Rue Duncan Taylor Aroha Tipene Izzy Hayden Gabbi Carter Harlow Beaumont Buttercup Utonium Ben Rey Max Dickens Charlie Tate

Total: 14

Sagittarius:

Kiera Schnitz Wolfie Amy Turner Xavier Laten Ally Dawson Sydney Pranter

Total: 6

Capricorn:

Austin Moon Shego Jace Herondale Maya Hart

Total: 4

Aquarius:

Luke Crain Silena Beaurgard Finn Mertens Tara Carpenter

Total: 4

[foxesandmagic]

Happy Holidays, OC Community (11/11)

Lyla Carlisle and JJ Maybank (Outer Banks) for @vividparacosm​;

Heather Conway and Peter Parker (Spiderman) for @timotheechalamats​;

Tegan Ackermann and Reggie Peters (Julie and the Phantoms) for  @randomfandomingwrites​;

Jonathan Carnahan and Mara El-Masri (The Mummy) for @valiantgentle;

Tommy Shelby and Josephine Fenton (Peaky Blinders) for @decennia;

Steve Rogers and Morgan Stark (Marvel) for @jewelswrites-ish;

Fangs Fogarty and Maddox Harlow (Riverdale) for @reggiemantleholdmyhand-tle;

Billie Scherbatsky-Stinson and Luke Mosby (How I Met Your Mother) for @fiercefray;

Lion and Fox (Original Fiction);

Martin ‘Marty’ Carter and Alia Underwood (Constantine).

A/N: Gif credit goes to the respective owners; I just found them and edited together. (I’m trying to do something for each OC blog I follow, so I apologise if I miss anyone and there were some where I wasn’t sure on faceclaims. Also, sorry if I did old OCs for people or the gifs didn’t fit... I did myself some so that I could say I’d done 100).

[aion-rsa]

The Public Enemy Solidified Gang Rule Under James Cagney for 90 Years

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William Wellman’s The Public Enemy (1931) turns 90 this weekend. When the film first came out, a theater in Times Square showed it nonstop, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The movie marks the true beginning of gangster movies as a genre. Mervyn LeRoy’s Little Caesar may have hit theaters first, but The Public Enemy set the pattern, and James Cagney nailed the patter. Not just the street talk either; he also understood its machine gun delivery. His Tommy Powers is just a hoodlum, never a boss. He is a button man at best, even if he insisted his suits have six buttons.

The Public Enemy character wasn’t even as high up the ladder as Paul Sorvino’s caporegime Paul Cicero in Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas. But Cagney secured the turf Edward G. Robinson’s Rico Bandello took a bullet to claim in Little Caesar, and for the rest of his career Cagney never let it go.

Some would argue genre films began in 1931. Besides mob movies, the year introduced the newspaper picture with Lewis Milestone’s The Front Page and John Cromwell’s Scandal Sheet; Universal Pictures began an unholy run of horror classics via Tod Browning’s Dracula and James Whale’s Frankenstein, with the two turning Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff into household names; and Howard Hawks’ Scarface would land the knockout for the gangster genre, even if it didn’t get released until 1932.

Sadly, the classic “Gangster Film” run only lasted one production season, from 1930 to 1931, and less than 30 films were made during it. Archie Mayo’s The Doorway to Hell started the ball rolling in 1930, when it became a surprise box office hit. It stars Lew Ayres as the top mug, with Cagney as his sidekick. For fans of pre-Code Hollywood, it is highly recommended. It includes a kidnapping scene which results in the death of a kid on the street. Without a speck of blood or any onscreen evidence, it is cinematically shocking in its impact.

Both Little Caesar and The Public Enemy earned their street cred, defying the then-toothless 1930 Motion Picture Production Code, which preceded the Hays Code. After New York censors cut six scenes from The Public Enemy to clear it for release, the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA) set further guidelines for the proper cinematic depiction of crime.

Public Enemy director Wellman was an expert in multiple genres. He spit out biting satires like Nothing Sacred (1937) and Roxie Hart (1942), and captured gritty, dark realities in The Ox-Bow Incident (1943) and Story of G.I. Joe (1945). He won his only Oscar for A Star Is Born (1937). The Public Enemy is the first example of what would be his trademark: stylish cinematography and clever camera-work. The dark suspense he captures is completely different from the look of German expressionism. It captured the overcast shadows of urban reality and would influence the look of later noir films. His main character would inspire generations of actors.

“That’s just like you, Tom Powers. You’re the meanest boy in town.”

Orson Welles lauded James Cagney as “maybe the greatest actor who ever appeared in front of a camera.” Will Rogers said watching Cagney perform was “like a bunch of firecrackers going off all at once.” The New York City born performer explodes in this movie. Even in black and white, Cagney’s red hair flares through the air like sulfur on a match. It turns out to be a slow burn, which will reach its ultimate climax in 1949’s White Heat. The Public Enemy is loaded with top talent, but you can’t take your eyes off Cagney. Not even for a second. You might miss some tiny detail, like the flash of a grin, a wink, or a barely perceptible glare.

Cagney had a simple rule to acting: All you had to do was to look the other person straight in the eyes and say your lines. “But mean them.” In The Public Enemy, the characters communicate without lines. When Tom and Matt Doyle (Edward Woods) sneak a peek into Larry the Limp’s casket, we understand this is the first time the two young thugs lost someone their own age. The scene barely implies how fortunate they are not to be in that box, but their curiosity is as palpable as the loss of their last shred of innocence.

Cagney was originally cast as Matt, and scenes were shot with him in the role. The parts were switched mid-production, but they didn’t reshoot the flashback scenes, making it look like the pair swapped bodies between 1909 and 1915. It’s a shame because Frankie Darro, who plays the young Matt, made a career out of playing baby face Cagney, and later joined the East Side Kids franchise.

Former “Our Gang” actor Frank Coghlan Jr. took on the role of young Tom. He takes the lashes from his cop father’s belt, backtalking him the whole time. Tom Powers is reprehensible. He never says thank you and doesn’t shake hands. He delights in the violence and sadism. Powers doesn’t go into crime because of poverty; he just can’t be contained. Cagney’s mobster mangles, manhandles, maims and murders, and still needs more room in his inseam. 

Dames, Molls, and Grapefruits

Besides defying the ban on romanticizing criminals, both The Public Enemy and Little Caesar broke sexual codes. There are explicit signs that Rico Bandello represses his sexuality in Caesar. Scenes between him and his friend Joe, and his gunman Otera, thinly veil homoerotic overtones. Public Enemy’s Powers, by contrast, subtly encourages the gay tailor who is openly hitting on him.

There are strong indications Putty Nose (Murray Kinnell) is grooming Tommy and Matt for more than just fenced goods. Look at the way Putty sticks his ass in Powers’ face while he is shooting pool. Putty Nose’s execution at the piano is creepily informed by the unspoken sins between the men. Tommy relishes the kill.

However, Tommy doesn’t relish being manhandled when he’s too drunk to notice. While the gang goes to the mattresses in the movie’s gang war, Tommy is raped by Jane (Mia Marvin), his boss Paddy’s girl. Powers protests the best he can, but the camera angles leave no doubt. Tommy wakes up hungover, horrified, and feeling impotent. Matt, however, has no trouble getting “busy” with his girlfriend Mamie, played by Joan Blondell, in one of the scenes trimmed by the censors.  Blondell, Jean Harlow, and Mae Clarke, who plays Tommy’s girlfriend Kitty, represent a glitzy cross-section of white Roaring Twenties glamour. In the opening credits, when Harlow and Blondell smile at the camera, male audience members of the time blushed.

Harlow was Hollywood’s original “Blonde Bombshell,” starring in the movie that coined the term. Her earthy comic performances would make her a major star at MGM, but she was a dud to critics of The Public Enemy. Hers was the only part which was criticized, and the reviewers were brutal, declaring her voice untrained and her presence boring.

Harlow’s greatest asset had to be contained within the Pre-Code era. Straddled with a wordy part as a slumming society dame, she is directed to slow her lines to counter the quick patter of the rest of the cast. Yet Harlow uses that to her benefit in the film’s best moment of sexual innuendo. While telling Tommy about “the men I’ve known,” she pauses, and appears to be calculating them in her head before she says, “And I’ve known dozens of them.” When an evening alone with Tommy is cut short, Gwen’s exasperation over the coitus interruptus is palpable. Members of the Catholic Legion of Decency probably had to go to confession after viewing the film for slicing.

Most people know The Public Enemy for the famous grapefruit scene where Powers pushes a grapefruit into his girlfriend’s face. “I wish you was a wishing well,” he warns, “so that I could tie a bucket to you and sink ya.” Tommy treats women like property. They are status symbols, the same as clothes or cars. Kitty’s passive-aggressive hints at commitment get on Tom’s nerves. He can only express himself through violence. There are rumors Cagney, who would go on to rough up Virginia Mayo in White Heat and brutalize Doris Day in Love Me or Leave Me, didn’t warn Clarke he was going to use her face as a juicer. According to the autobiography Cagney by Cagney, Clarke’s ex-husband Lew Brice loved the scene so much he watched it a few times a day, timing his entrance into the theater to catch it and leave.

Both actors have said it was staged as a practical joke to see how the film crew would react. It wasn’t meant to make the final cut. Wellman told TCM he added it because he always wanted to do that to his wife. The writer reportedly wrote the scene as a kind of wish-fulfilling fantasy.

The screenplay was written by Harvey F. Thew. It was based on Beer and Blood by John Bright and Kubec Glasmon. The unpublished novel fleshed out press accounts of the bootlegging Northside gang leaders, Charles Dion “Deanie” O’Banion, Earl “Hymie” Weiss, and Louis “Two-Gun” Alterie. Cagney based his Tommy Powers character on O’Banion and Altiere. Edward Woods was doing his take on Weiss. The book reflected the headlines in the Chicago papers, which reported Weiss smashed an omelet into his girlfriend’s face.

Read more

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The Trouble Squad

The Public Enemy borrowed from the day’s headlines in other ways too. Hymie Weiss was assassinated in October 1926. It was the first reported “machine-gun nest” murder. It is recreated in the killing of Matt Doyle. While shooting the sequence, Cagney ducked real machine gun fire to bring authenticity to the scene. Also taken from real life is the fact that after O’Banion was killed in ‘24, Alterie’s first reaction was to do public battle with the killers. This is similar to Tommy’s final shootout at Schemer Burns’ nightclub headquarters.

Leslie Fenton’s dashing mob captain Nails Nathan (“born Samuel”) flashes the greatest grin in mob movie history. He is based on Samuel “Nails” Morton, a member of O’Banion’s mob. Both “Nails” were driven to their coffins the way it is depicted in The Public Enemy. The real Morton died in a riding accident in 1923, and “Two-Gun” Alterie and some of the other gang members went back to the stables, rented the horse which kicked Nails in the head, and shot the animal. Mario Puzo may have been inspired by this scene when he wrote The Godfather. It is not only tie to the Francis Ford Coppola movie. Oranges have as much vitamin C as grapefruits. Another similarity between the two films is the threat of being kidnapped from the hospital by a rival gang.

The Powers brothers’ relationship vaguely echoes the one between war hero Michael and Sonny Corleone, who believes, as his father does, soldiers were “saps” to risk their lives for strangers. Donald Cook, who played Mike Powers, didn’t pull any punches on the set. In the scene where he knocks Tom into the table before going off to war, he really connects. Wellman told Cook to do it without warning so he could get that look of surprise. Cook broke one of Cagney’s teeth, but Cagney stayed in character and finished the scene.

“It is a wicked business.”

After the stock market crash, get-rich-quick schemes seemed the only way through the Great Depression. The gangster was an acceptable headline hero during Prohibition because the law was unpopular with the press. But after 1929, the gangster became the scapegoat villain. The Public Enemy was the ninth highest grossing film of 1931. But the genre lost its appeal after April of that year, as studios pumped out pale imitations and audiences got tired of the saturation, according to the book Violence and American Cinema, edited by J. David Slocum. Religious and civic groups accused Hollywood of romanticizing crime and glamorizing gangsters.

The Public Enemy opens with a dire warning: Don’t be a gangster. Hoodlums and terrorists of the underworld should not be glamorized. The only MPAA rule the film didn’t break was portraying an alliance between organized crime and politics. The studios passed the films off as cautionary tales which were meant to deflate the gangster’s appeal by ridiculing their false heroism.

Through this hand-wringing, however, Cagney turns false heroics on its head with the comic brilliance of a Mack Sennett short. Stuck without a gun, he robs a gun store armed with nothing but moxie. Powers never rises in the organization. He takes orders and whatever the boss says is a good cut, only asking for more money once from Putty Nose. Unlike Rico, who rose to be boss among bosses, Powers has no power to lose. This is just the first gig he landed since he was a regular “ding ding” driving a streetcar, and it connected with audiences like a sock on the button. They identified with the scrappy killer, and it surprised them.

Even Gwen notices Tommy is “very different, and it isn’t only a difference in manner and outward appearances. It’s a difference in basic character.” Strict Freudians might lay this on his mother (Beryl Mercer), the greatest enabler Cagney will see until White Heat. Ma Powers’ little boy is a budding psychopath knocking off half the North Side, but look at the head on his beer. For audiences at the time, Tom was the smiling, fresh-scrubbed face of evil. He is consistently unsympathetic but likable from the moment he hits the opening credits.

Like Malcom McDowell’s Alex in A Clockwork Orange, he is the fiend’s best friend. Even if it is Tommy’s fault his best pal Matt gets killed. While Cagney spent his career ducking his “you dirty, double-crossing, rat” line from Taxi, the actor wasn’t afraid to play one in Powers. He’s not a rat in the sense he’d snitch on anyone. He’s the last of the pack who sticks it out for his pals when his back is up against the wall.

A Hail of Bullets

Tommy Powers goes by this credo: live fast, die young, and leave a corpse so riddled with bullets, not even his mother can look at his body when he’s done. But then, no one can end a film like Cagney. He’s danced down the White House stairs in Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942), been rolled across the concrete steps of a city church in The Roaring Twenties (1939), and was blown to kingdom come in White Heat. He gets two death scenes in The Public Enemy, a rain-soaked climax, and a denouement as scary as The Mummy. Tommy only brings one gun to the gang fight, and by the time he hits the pavement, he’s got more holes in him than the city sewage system.

“I ain’t so tough,” Tommy says on his final roll into the gutter. Cagney’s first professional job was in a musical drag act on the Vaudeville circuit, and he called himself a “song and dance man” long after retirement. For The Public Enemy, conductor David Mendoza led the Vitaphone Orchestra through such period hits as “Toot Toot Tootsie (Goodbye),” “Smiles,” and “I Surrender Dear.” But the song “I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles” is the one which lingers in the memory. Martin Scorsese has cited it as a reason his films are so filled with recognizable music.

Street violence comes with a natural soundtrack. Transistor radios accompany takedowns. Boom boxes blast during shakedowns. Car stereos boost the bass during drive-by shootings. In The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight, mobsters feed quarters into a jukebox to cover up sounds of a beating.

In The Godfather, Part II, a street band plays traditional Italian songs while Vito Corleone puts bullets in the neighborhood Black Hand, Don Fanucci. The last thing we hear in the abrupt close to the mob series The Sopranos is a Journey song. The first thing Tommy’s mother does when she hears her boy is coming home from the hospital is drop a needle on a record.

The ending leaves us with two questions: Who killed Tommy, and what’s his brother going to do about it? We figure whoever did the job on Powers was probably a low-level button man from Schemer’s rival outfit. Probably even lower down the ladder than Tommy, and on his way up, until another Tommy comes along. Crime only pays in the movies, Edward G. Robinson often joked.

Mike’s reaction to the bandaged corpse is ambiguous. He’s already shown outward signs of the trauma following the horrors of war. Is he clenching his fists in anguish or anger? Is he broken by the battlefield or marching off in vengeance, a soldier on one last duty? Cook’s exit can go either way.

After 90 years, The Public Enemy is still fresh. It’s aged better than Little Caesar or Scarface. Cagney wouldn’t play a gangster again until 1938, but the image is etched so deeply in the persona, audiences forget the vagaries of villainy Hollywood could spin, and the range of characters Cagney could play. He and the film continue to influence filmmakers, inform culture, and surprise audiences. Tommy Powers was just a mug, but those streets are still his.

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[byneddiedingo]

James Cagney in The Public Enemy (William A. Wellman, 1931) Cast: James Cagney, Edward Woods, Jean Harlow, Joan Blondell, Donald Cook, Leslie Fenton, Beryl Mercer, Robert Emmett O'Connor, Murray Kinnell, Mae Clarke, Mia Marvin. Screenplay: Kubec Glasmon, John Bright, Harvey F. Thew. Cinematography: Devereaux Jennings. Art direction: Max Parker. Film editing: Edward M. McDermott. James Cagney has always seemed to me the movies' greatest loner, and the film that made him a star bears that out. The scene that brings it home for me is the one in which Cagney's Tom Powers is hiding out from the rival mob, and the woman named Jane (Mia Marvin) who looks after him gets him drunk and seduces him. In the morning, when he remembers that they had sex, he's shocked and slaps her, then storms out of the hideout. It's a less famous scene than the one in which he shoves a grapefruit in Mae Clarke's face, but that's partly because the scene with Jane was cut by the censors after the Production Code went into effect; it was restored only after the movie made it onto video. The two scenes are similar in suggesting that although Cagney's characters aren't exactly chaste, they don't connect with women except for their mothers, like Beryl Mercer's Ma in The Public Enemy or Margaret Wycherly's Ma Jarrett in White Heat (Raoul Walsh, 1949). Almost every major leading man of the 1930s and 1940s can be identified with his on-screen teamwork with a leading lady (or two): Cary Grant with Katharine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy likewise, James Stewart with Jean Arthur or Margaret Sullavan, Clark Gable with Jean Harlow or Joan Crawford, Gary Cooper with Barbara Stanwyck or Marlene Dietrich, and so on. But Cagney never struck sparks with any of his leading ladies. He seems too coiled and defensive to give up any part of himself to a woman. In The Public Enemy, he's matched with Harlow, who does her best to thaw him out, but their scenes are not particularly memorable. In his private life, Cagney was notable for having married only once and having stayed married from 1922 till his death in 1986, without rumors of extramarital dalliance, something of an anomaly in Hollywood. The Public Enemy uses this enclosed quality of Cagney's to good effect, and it's a tribute to whoever made the decision to give him the lead -- claimants include director William A. Wellman and producer Darryl F. Zanuck -- after initially casting him in the secondary role of Matt Doyle, played by the now mostly forgotten Edward Woods. It's largely thanks to Cagney that The Public Enemy still hold up today, even though it has some of the stiffness and uncertainty of early talkies, especially when it comes to dialogue. Robert Emmett O'Connor, for example, who plays Paddy Ryan, tends to introduce long pauses between sentences when he's delivering his lines, as if afraid that the audience won't keep up with what he's saying.

[beautifulactres]

Jean Harlow and Leslie Fenton in The Public Enemy (1931)

[facrytalcs-blog]

📨 for harlow + amber; a text my muse would send to yours. ( @winniethepoohx​ )

HARLOW: amber i’m worried HARLOW: i mean HARLOW: more worried than before HARLOW: u remember otulissa ?? HARLOW: her last name’s showenhower HARLOW: as in freakshow HARLOW: she’s fucking around with west i just know it HARLOW: no wonder she was vague as shit HARLOW: and i gave her your name when she asked oh my god HARLOW: i give u permission to use ur guitar and knock her to next year or smth HARLOW: via music or just hitting her with the guitar whichever works best