Scarface (also known as Scarface: The Shame of the Nation and The Shame of a Nation) is a 1932 American pre-Code gangster film directed by Howard Hawks and produced by Hawks and Howard Hughes. The screenplay is based loosely on the 1930 novel by Armitage Trail, which in turn was inspired by the life of Al Capone. The film stars Paul Muni as Italian immigrant gangster Antonio "Tony" Camonte who violently rises through the Chicago gangland, with a supporting cast that includes George Raft and Boris Karloff. Camonte's rise to power dovetails with his relentless pursuit of his boss's mistress while his sister pursues his best hitman. In an overt tie to the life of Capone, a version of the Saint Valentine's Day Massacre is depicted.
After purchasing the rights to Trail's novel, Hughes quickly selected Hawks to direct and Hecht to write the film's screenplay. Beginning in January 1931, Hecht wrote the script in 11 days. Scarface was produced before the introduction of the Production Code in 1934, which enforced regulations on film content. However, the Hays Code, a more lenient precursor, called for significant alterations, including a prologue condemning gangsters, an alternate ending to more clearly reprehend Camonte, and the alternative title The Shame of a Nation. The censors believed the film glorified violence and crime. These changes delayed the film a year, though some showings retained the original ending. Modern showings of the film have the original ending, though some DVD releases also include the alternate ending as a feature; these versions maintain the changes Hughes and Hawks were required to make for approval by the Hays Office. The film is currently rated PG by the Motion Picture Association (MPA). No completely unaltered version was known to exist until the limited-edition set of Scarface (1983) was released on October 15, 2019.
Audience reception was positive, but censors banned the film in several cities and states, forcing Hughes to remove it from circulation and store it in his vault. The rights to the film were recovered after Hughes died in the 1970s. Alongside Little Caesar and The Public Enemy (both 1931), Scarface is regarded as one of the most significant and influential gangster films.
Scarface was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry in 1994 by the Library of Congress. In 2008, the American Film Institute listed Scarface as the sixth-best gangster film. It was remade as the 1983 film of the same title, directed by Brian De Palma and starring Al Pacino.
Plot
In 1920s Chicago, an Italian immigrant and ambitious low-level thug, Tony "Scarface" Camonte, works as a bodyguard for crime lord "Big" Louis Costillo. Tony guns down his boss with Costillo's disgruntled lieutenant, Johnny Lovo. Lovo takes over Costillo's territory in the South Side and has Tony and his associates, the dim-witted Angelo and the handsome playboy Guino "Little Boy" Rinaldo, supervise a lucrative bootlegging operation selling illegal beer to all of the bars there and forcing out rivals.
Tony urges Lovo to start moving in on the North Side, where the bootlegging is controlled by the Irish gangster O'Hara; Lovo refuses, ordering Tony to leave the North Side alone. Tony ignores these orders and removes O'Hara's men while expanding his rackets to the North. Before long, Lovo was only the nominal boss, while Tony became increasingly notorious and powerful, attracting the attention of other gangsters and the police.
Meanwhile, Tony pursues Lovo's girlfriend, Poppy. At first, she is dismissive of him but pays him more attention as his status rises and he starts flaunting his wealth. She visits his "gaudy" apartment, where he shows her his window view of an electric billboard advertising Cook's Tours, which features the slogan that inspires him: "The World Is Yours."
Tony finally gets rid of O'Hara. O'Hara's successor, Tom Gaffney, declares war on the South Side and attempts to kill Tony with tommy guns— with which an excited Tony quickly arms his men. The war results in Tony's victory while Gaffney is forced to go into hiding. A group of prominent citizens, including the police chief, vow to bring Tony down for all the carnage and bloodshed he has inflicted on the city.
During a night out at the theatre, Tony learns that Gaffney and the remainder of his crew are at a nearby bowling alley. Leaving Angelo behind to watch the rest of the show and report back to him the outcome, Tony personally kills Gaffney. Lovo's anger at Tony finally boils over when Tony openly flirts and dances with Poppy in front of him at a nightclub. Tony sees his beloved sister Francesca "Cesca" dancing with a stranger at the club; obsessively protective over her, he becomes enraged and hits her. Later that night, some hired gunmen try to assassinate Tony, but he kills them.
Suspecting Lovo's involvement, Tony goes to his office after bribing the local barber to call him and pretend to be part of the hit crew. When Lovo hangs up after claiming that he must have gotten the wrong number, Tony forces him to confess to the hit and then has Guino kill him. Tony, now the undisputed kingpin of the city's underworld, takes Poppy on an expensive vacation to Florida to escape the police and media attention. At the same time, Cesca secretly visits Guino at Tony's office and seduces him. The two began an affair.
Returning home, Tony learns from his mother, who has often warned him of his bad behavior, that Cesca has moved in with another man and rushes over to find her with Guino. He kills his friend in a jealous rage, and Cesca runs away in tears after revealing that they had just gotten married and were planning to surprise him. The police issue a warrant for Tony's arrest; he barricades himself in his home while Angelo is killed trying to protect him in a shootout with the police.
Cesca slips inside, planning to kill her brother, but can't bring herself to do it. Tony and Cesca arm themselves, and Tony shoots at the police from the window with a Thompson submachine gun, laughing maniacally as he guns them down. Moments later, however, Cesca is killed by a stray bullet. Calling Cesca's name as the apartment fills with tear gas, Tony stumbles down the stairs just as the police break down his door. Tony pleads for his life, but instead of putting on the offered handcuffs, he tries to escape, resulting in him being shot. As Tony falls dead on the street, the electric billboard blazes "The World Is Yours" above him.
Cast
Production Development Business tycoon Howard Hughes, then involved in film-making, wanted a box-office hit after the success of his 1931 film The Front Page.; Gangster films were topical in the early 1930s in the age of Prohibition. Hughes wanted to make a film based on the life of gangster Al Capone superior to all other films in the genre.; He was advised against making the film, as the genre was crowded; Little Caesar starring Edward G. Robinson and The Public Enemy starring James Cagney were already box-office successes, and Warner Bros. claimed nothing new could be done with the gangster genre. Furthermore, industry censors such as the Hays Office were becoming concerned with the glamorization of crime in media.
Hughes bought the rights to Armitage Trail's novel Scarface, inspired by the life of Capone.; Trail wrote for many detective story magazines during the early 1920s, but died of a heart attack at the age of 28, shortly before the release of Scarface. Hughes hired Fred Pasley, a New York reporter and authority on Capone, as a writer. Hughes asked Ben Hecht, who had won the first Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay in 1929 for his silent crime film Underworld, to be head writer.; ; Suspicious of Hughes as an employer, Hecht requested a daily salary of $1,000, to be paid every day at six o'clock. Hecht claimed he would only waste a day's labor if Hughes was a fraud.
Hughes wanted film director Howard Hawks to direct and co-produce. This surprised Hawks, as the two had never been friendly; Hughes had filed a lawsuit against Howard Hawks in July 1930, alleging that Hawks's film The Dawn Patrol had plagiarized his film Hell's Angels. Over a game of golf, Hughes promised to drop the lawsuit (irrelevant as the judge had already dismissed it). By the 18th hole, Hawks had become interested in directing the film. He became more convinced when he discovered Hecht would be the head writer. Hecht and Hawks worked well together, intending to portray the Capone character as of the Borgia Family, including the suggestion of incest between the main character and his sister, present in Trail's novel.
Writing Hecht wrote the screenplay in 11 days in January 1931, adapted from Trail's novel. Fred Pasley provided additional writing, as well as W. R. Burnett, author of the novel Little Caesar. Pasley's contributions included elements of the book Al Capone: Biography of a Self-Made Man; the book contains a barbershop scene with Capone similar to the introduction of Tony Camonte in the film. Pasley was not credited for his work on the screenplay.; ; John Lee Mahin and Seton I. Miller rewrote the script for continuity and dialogue.
Because there were five writers, it is difficult to distinguish which components were contributed by which writer; however, the ending of Scarface is similar to Hecht's first gangster film Underworld, in which gangster Bull Weed traps himself in his apartment with his lover and fires at the hordes of police outside, and thus was likely a Hecht contribution.
The film version of Scarface bears little resemblance to the novel. Though the film contains the same major characters, plot points, and incestual undertones, changes were made to reduce the length and the number of characters, and to satisfy the requests of censorship offices. To make gangsters appear less admirable, Tony's character was made to appear less intelligent and more brutish than in the novel. Similarly, the sibling relationship between Tony and the police officer was removed to avoid depicting police corruption.
Ties to Capone The film and novel are loosely based on the life of gangster Al Capone, whose nickname was "Scarface". The names of characters and locations were changed. Capone became Camonte, Torrio became Lovo, and Moran became Doran. In some early scripts, Colosimo was Colisimo and O'Bannion was Bannon, but the names were changed to Costillo and O'Hara, respectively. This and other alterations made to characters and identifying locations to maintain anonymity were due to censorship and Hawks's concern about the overuse of historical details.
Ben Hecht had met Capone and "knew a lot about Chicago", so he did no research for the script. According to Hecht, while working on the script, Capone sent two men to visit him in Hollywood to ensure the film was not based on his life. He told them the Scarface character was a parody of numerous people, and that the title was chosen as it was intriguing. The two left Hecht alone.
The references to Capone and actual events from the Chicago gang wars were obvious to audiences at the time. Muni's character had a scar similar to Capone's, received in similar fights. The police in the film mention Camonte is a member of the Five Points Gang in Brooklyn, of which Capone was a known member. Tony kills his boss "Big Louis" Costillo in the lobby of his club; Capone was involved in the murder of his first boss "Big Jim" Colosimo in 1920.; Rival boss O'Hara is murdered in his flower shop; Capone's men murdered Dean O'Bannion in his flower shop in 1924. The assassination of seven men in a garage, with two of the gunmen costumed as police officers, mirrors the St. Valentine's Day Massacre of 1929. The leader of this rival gang narrowly escapes the shooting, as did gang leader Bugs Moran.; ; The film opens at the intersection of 22nd Street and Wabash Avenue in the middle of Capone's South Side, the site of many of Capone's crimes.