Idolatry Among the 'Angels with Dirty Faces'

A Spiritual Review of a Classic Film

In Timothy Keller’s The Reason for God, he says, “The stories that always seem to move us most deeply are those in which someone faces irremediable loss or death in order to bring life to someone else.”

A light-hearted moment in the 1938 movie Angels with Dirty Faces occurs early on, during a basketball game among the hoodlum teens. Father Jerry, played by Pat O’Brian, attempts to instill some order in a game where the teens roughhouse and ignore every rule. James Cagney as Rocky Sullivan steps in and plays referee. Recently released from jail, and boyhood friend to Father Jerry, the celebrity gangster shows a few roughhouse tricks of his own—tripping, slapping, and punching the kids and calling fouls. He forces the young hoods to finally play by the rules.

Angels with Dirty Faces was made for the season of Lent—sacrifice and redemption.

Rocky Sullivan’s behavior with the street toughs impresses the priest, who believes he might be turning a corner. There’s even a choir scene at church where Cagney’s face lights up with the memory of singing as a young boy. Is there a Lenten vow building? Possibly, but it’ll be fulfilled in a terrifying way. Unlike Father Jerry’s optimism, Rocky’s love interest, actress Ann Sheridan, remains skeptical, yet her doubts do not stop her from getting closer to him like the wayward boys who idolize him.

Cagney’s ruthlessness finally explodes against the other gangsters who target him for death. He’s a step ahead of his assassins and wipes them out, along with a few cops. The boys of the old neighborhood follow the trial, excited that Rocky sits in jail tough as ever. He’s to be executed, and he takes the verdict full of swagger and smiles. Huddled around the newspaper, one of the boys tell the rest that Rocky will spit in their eye as he’s being strapped in the chair. In Father Jerry’s last meeting with Rocky, he tells his doomed friend:

“I want you to let them down. You see, you’ve been a hero to these kids, and hundreds of others all through your life—and now you’re going to be glorified in death, and I want to prevent that, Rocky. They’ve got to despise your memory. They’ve got to be ashamed of you.”

Cagney rejects the plan out right:

“You asking me to pull an act, turn yellow, so those kids will think I’m no good? You ask me to throw away the only thing I got left, to crawl on my belly, the last thing I do—nothing doing!”

Yet, on the way to the electric chair, Rocky breaks down, begging for mercy, crying not to be put to death. He betrays his former self right up to the moment the switch is thrown.

In the last scene, in the basement of their hangout, the boys quietly stare at the newspaper headline--Coward, and scan all the gory moments of Rocky’s disintegration. Gathering their strength, the boys reject the news. They boast to each other of Rocky’s power, like no other man. When Father Jerry arrives, stopping halfway down the stairs, he tells the boys that it’s all true, every word. Rocky Sullivan died a coward.

Rocky gives his life for the dead-end kids. He goes to death “naked,” rendered faceless, and the boys now have a chance to be saved from a life of crime. Father Jerry will be there to walk them away from their sadness and idolatry.

Recently, a visiting priest at our parish said in his homily that when Christ calls out to the fishermen Simon and Andrew to come follow him, they did not act impulsively by immediately dropping their nets, becoming his disciples. The priest said that the fishermen were already primed to accept Christ who had been preaching throughout Galilee, the synagogues, and along the Jordan River. Christ had already stirred the hearts of the future apostles.

Rocky’s primed to save those boys from ruination. Earlier in the movie, Father Jerry says he’s going to topple all the dirty politicians and gangsters in the city. Rocky just laughs, glances down, smiling his wise-ass smile, and I sensed that this fast-on-his-feet hoodlum is hearing another voice, he’s being primed.

On the way to the electric chair, Christ beckons, and Rocky hears the call. In his last moments Rocky Sullivan hears the call of a greater life, as did the apostles.