The Bowery (1933)

Interesting facts

The Bowery is a 1933 American pre-Code historical comedy-drama film set on the Lower East Side of Manhattan around the start of the 20th century directed by Raoul Walsh and starring Wallace Beery and George Raft. The supporting cast features Jackie Cooper, Fay Wray, and Pert Kelton.

Production

The Bowery was the first film produced by Twentieth Century Pictures; two years later it would merge with the Fox Film Corporation to form Twentieth Century-Fox.

The movie features Wallace Beery as saloon owner Chuck Connors, George Raft as Steve Brodie, the first man to jump off the Brooklyn Bridge and live, Jackie Cooper as a pugnacious child, Fay Wray as the leading lady, and Pert Kelton as a bawdy dance hall singer. (There had been some talk that Beery's fellow MGM contract player Clark Gable would play the Raft role.)

Director Raoul Walsh later wrote, in his autobiography Each Man in His Time, that directing Beery and Raft "was like trying to keep the peace between a lion and a tiger" although he said "both men were big hearted, generous to a fault. Professional jealousy waned after each had registered his beef. Later, they became good friends."

The film is an absorbing presentation of the views and behaviors common at the time. The movie opens with a close-up of a saloon window featuring a sign saying "Nigger Joe's" in large letters (the name of an actual Bowery bar from the period operated by an African-American). Cooper's character has a habit of throwing rocks at people's windows in Chinatown.

The Bowery bears some resemblances to a concurrent movie She Done Him Wrong, a film starring Mae West and Cary Grant released earlier the same year by a different studio (Paramount Pictures) featuring Wallace Beery's older brother Noah Beery in a similar role as a Bowery saloon owner sleeping with Mae West's character.

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