The s tudios era : Dominance and divers i ty in the Golden Age of Hol lywood, 1929–1948

A pre-Code screening of The Public Enemy at the Strand Theatre, New York, 1931 Before the main feature began at the Mark Strand Theatre, a movie palace on Broadway in New York City, the assembled audience watched a puppet show. In the words of a New York Times review, they saw “a brief stage tableau, with sinuous green lighting, which shows a puppet gangster shooting another puppet gangster in the back.”1 What followed was a screening of The Public Enemy starring James Cagney and directed by William Wellman, the latest in a series of gangster movies mainly put out by Warner Brothers studios focused on the criminal activities and crime bosses that flourished during Prohibition.