Irish Cultural Center
1106 N. Central Ave.
Phoenix, AZ 85004
602-258-0109 www.azirish.org

The Irish played a huge part of the 30's Hollywood, but did not really escape the stereotypes of the movies. Movie historian Mike Perkins will discuss the Irish and movies followed by the classic "Angels With Dirty Faces" which stars Jimmy Cagney, Pat O'Brien, and Humphry Bogart.

It has been said that the Irish were America's first ethnic minority. The massive diaspora that sent millions of Irish to America in the 19th century continued into the 20th century. This meant that Irish stereotypes which were the basis of innumerable vaudeville jokes and ethnic stereotypes were part of the world the Irish were facing in the tough times of the 1930's. So in a period when Irish and Irish Americans all but dominated movie making, the movies continued to present these stereotypes as a matter of course.

The fact that "Angels With Dirty Faces" stereotypes the Irish does not keep it from being a great movie. According to reviewer Mark Bourne

"In 1938 Warner Brothers took a stand in the nature/nurture debate, pointing the A-list gangster melodrama, Michael Curtiz's Angels With Dirty Faces, squarely at the poverty, social dysfunction, and ineffectual judicial system that mold and ultimately doom gangland's Rocky Sullivan (James Cagney). It's a random dice-toss of chance — a boy from the New York City slums can't run as fast as his best pal on the day it counts most — that preordains the boy to come of age in reform schools and prisons, which educate him only in how to become a top-dog hoodlum. Fifteen years later, Rocky is a front-page gangster released from prison when he reunites with his pal Jerry, who's now a priest (Pat O'Brien), in their old tenement neighborhood. Even through its contrived sentimentality, Angels remains a pinnacle achievement from the heyday of the Hollywood gangster cycle. Rocky Sullivan, like other toughs played by the charismatic Cagney in The Public Enemy and other hits, so sculpted the actor's public image that not even his footloose spin playing George M. Cohan in Yankee Doodle Dandy could shake it. The way Rocky hitches his shoulders remains a staple of Cagney impressions. (Cagney took the mannerism, along with Rocky's catch-phrase "Whaddya hear, whaddya say?," from a streetcorner pimp he recalled from his own hard growing-up in Manhattan's Hell's Kitchen.) Thanks to this film, Cagney earned the New York Film Critics Award and his first Best Actor Oscar nomination. "

The presentation will be by local author and radio personality Mike Perkins. Mike was born and raised in Columbus, Ohio, becoming a reporter and advertising copy writer for WCOL radio in 1969, and beginning a lifelong career as programmer, producer, talk show host, journalist, photographer, and illustrator for WBBY, WTVN and other regional media companies. His critical and historical articles have appeared in Talkers, Pittsburgh Portfolio, and Rolling Stone. He has been recognized for writing excellence by United Press International and the Advertising Federation of America, and currently heads his own creative consulting firm, SeeHearNow Productions, in Scottsdale, Arizona. He has recently published Leveque : The First Complete Story of Columbus' Greatest Skyscraper.

The program will start at 7 pm and admission is $5.00. There will also be a cash bar. For further information, please call (602) 258-0109.

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