ABSTRACT
Criminal behavior has always been fashionable in American popular culture. The first “original gangstas” appeared in early films such as D. W. Griffith’s Musketeers of Pig Alley (1912). This urban gangster film, shot on New York’s lower East Side, became notorious because it claimed to feature petty street criminals as extras, a promotional stunt that—whether factual or not—established an enduring connection between sociopaths and their silver screen counterparts that remains intact in films such as Goodfellas (1990) and The Wolf of Wall Street (2013). In the 1930s, Little Caesar (1931), Public Enemy (1931), and Scarface (1932) shocked audiences with violent prohibition-era scenarios that were “ripped from the headlines,” a phrase used six decades later to tout the authenticity of the NBC television program Law & Order (1990–2010), which traded upon topical, true crime plotlines.
