Warner Archive offers a DVD of The Beast of the City (1932), in which Walter Huston plays a career cop who tries to clean up the city, despite determined opposition from politicians, the press, the public, his superiors - and even his brother (Wallace Ford) who has made an attachment with a gangster's moll (Jean Harlow).
A dark and gritty film noir (which tends to go overboard in its concluding stages), the film was financed for Metro by William Randolph Hearst as an answer to Little Caesar.
Both Louis B. Mayer and Irving Thalberg were horrified by the finished film and attempted to withhold it from release. They kept it on the shelf for a year and then instructed salesmen to make little attempt to book it into theaters.
The MGM brass hoped the movie would show a loss (which it did) and thus discourage moneybags Hearst from further forays into the grim and totally alien world of film noir.
A dark and gritty film noir (which tends to go overboard in its concluding stages), the film was financed for Metro by William Randolph Hearst as an answer to Little Caesar.
Both Louis B. Mayer and Irving Thalberg were horrified by the finished film and attempted to withhold it from release. They kept it on the shelf for a year and then instructed salesmen to make little attempt to book it into theaters.
The MGM brass hoped the movie would show a loss (which it did) and thus discourage moneybags Hearst from further forays into the grim and totally alien world of film noir.