Pie-Face (1932) 🇺🇸

The time has arrived, with “Scarface,” for the gangster picture to end all gangster pictures. Here, citizens, it probably is!

“Pie-Face” — a Leonard Hall Production. Scenario and dialogue by “Scoop” Hall. Directed by L. von Sternberg Hall. World premiere at Hogan’s Place, ring three times and ask for Joe.

by Leonard Hall

Scene — A dive. A sign on the door says “The Happy Valley Tatting and Euchre Club. “ Mr. Robinson is sitting at a desk excavating his molars with a dirk. Messrs. Muni and Cagney are wistfully shooting at kiddies from an open window. Dirty-Face, or Mr. Ince, who is Gangland’s leading brooder, is brooding into a mug of beer. A score of heels and molls are quietly fighting about the room.

Mr. Muni — Zam! I got the little one in the patched pants!

Mr. Cagney — I got him, you mugg!

(They unobtrusively shoot each other in the abdomen.)

A Ragged Stranger — (from under the table) — They couldn’t keep their noses clean!

Miss Dietrich — (entering, and hiking up her skirt to the vaccination)— The cops is outside.

Mr. Robinson — (laying down the dirk and picking up a machine-gun) — Leave the muggs in!

(Mr. Nagel, accompanied by fifty bulls and dicks, enters.)

Mr. Nagel — Come on, Pie-Face, the Big Fellow wants to see you.

Miss Todd — (standing on her head for two obvious reasons) — Leave the rats have it!

Mr. Robinson — (snarling) — I’m the boss, see? I give orders, see? I own this town, see? Reach for a handful of clouds, copper!

(A burst of machine-gun fire. Mr. Nagel and the fifty bulls and dicks fall, threshing about.)

A Ragged Stranger — (hanging from a chandelier) — They couldn’t keep their noses clean! 

(Messrs. Sam Warner, Howard Hughes, Mervyn LeRoy and Howard Hawks enter, stepping over the bodies. They point reproving fingers.)

Mr. Warner— Fie, Eddie! Tut! Remember the censors!

Mr. Hughes — (Wagging index finger) — Naughty boy! Careless fellow!

Miss Todd — (turning a cartwheel) — Give it to the rats!

(Machine-guns chatter. Warner, et al go down squirming. A terrific explosion. Police sirens sound. Beer barrels roll through basement windows. Ten-ton trucks collide. A sedan goes over Niagara Falls. Hand grenades explode in a tin can factory. The Fifth Marines charge with the bayonet, bellowing.)

A Ragged Stranger — (sitting on a telephone pole in Bayonne, N. J.) — They couldn’t keep their noses clean!

(He falls to the street, splitting his skull like an old gourd. Fade into a shot of a windy hill-top in Connecticut. It is spring. The note of a love-maddened cuckoo is heard.)

Charles Farrell — Always together, darling — into the sunset.

Janet Gaynor — Always together, Chuck, or God help the box-office.

Charles Farrell — My pet!

Janet Gaynor — My duck!

(The cuckoo, is joined by a tom-tit, a bob-white and a purple-tufted goofus. The son sets, like a poached egg sinking in the sea of boiled spinach. Slowly fade into “The End. “)

Friday and Saturday nights, at this theater —

“How Anchovy Paste Is Made”

Cast

Pie-Face ......... Edward G. Robinson

Rat-Face ......... Paul Muni

Baby-Face ......... James Cagney

Dirty-Face ......... Ralph Ince

Pansy, a gun moll ......... Marlene “Legs” Dietrich

Petunia, a young Botany teacher ......... Thelma “Legs” Todd

A Ragged Stranger ......... Adolphe “Legs” Menjou

Chief Potts ......... Conrad “Bull” Nagel

Guns, torpedoes, heels, bulls, dicks, molls, muggs, dopes and other vermin too numerous to mention

Collection: Photoplay Magazine, August 1932

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