Underworld
About Underworld
Bull Weed, leaving a bank robbery, picks a drunk off a Chicago corner and renames him Rolls Royce. The former lawyer becomes the brains of the gang, and he and Bull's girl, Feathers, fall in love without acting on it, out of loyalty to Bull. At a gangland ball the rival Buck Mulligan forces himself on Feathers. Bull kills him, is caught, and is sentenced to hang. On the eve of the execution Rolls Royce's escape plan fails. Bull breaks out himself, sure he has been double-crossed, and in a gunfight with the police he wounds Rolls. When he sees that Rolls and Feathers stayed loyal, he gives himself up and goes back to be hanged.
Cast & crew
More about Underworld
Josef von Sternberg directed. Ben Hecht wrote the original story and won the Academy Award for Best Original Story at the first Academy Awards, in 1929. Hector Turnbull and B. P. Schulberg produced. The New York opening was 20 August 1927. The picture also went out as Paying the Penalty.
Themes
Background
Buck Mulligan's flower shop sits less than three years after Dion O'Banion was shot in Schofield's flower shop in Chicago. The film never prints the city's name.
Making
Hecht later kept his distance from the finished film. An Immortal Ephemera account of the Criterion edition says Sternberg expanded Hecht's story and changed the drunk, called the Weasel on the page, into Rolls Royce.
Reviews
Variety, in June 1927, ran a piece headed "Underworld Is Newest Vogue" and treated this Paramount film as the picture that set off the cycle.
Look
Bert Glennon shot Bancroft, Brook, and Brent in the speakeasy and the gang ball, with the Chicago of the story staged for Paramount rather than on Chicago streets.
Preservation
The Library of Congress survival database lists a print. Copies are on the Internet Archive and Wikimedia Commons.
Notes
- George Bancroft plays Bull Weed, Clive Brook plays Rolls Royce Wensel, and Evelyn Brent plays Feathers McCoy.
- Fred Kohler plays Buck Mulligan. Helen Lynch plays Mulligan's girl, Meg. Larry Semon plays Slippy Lewis.
- Wikidata also lists Robert N. Lee and Howard Hawks among the writers.
- Bert Glennon was the cameraman.
- The AFI Catalog, citing the Library of Congress American Silent Feature Film Survival Database, lists the film as extant.
- A later score credited on Wikidata is by Robert Israel. The 1927 release was silent.
Awards
- Academy Award for Best Original Story (Ben Hecht, 1st Academy Awards, 1929)
Scenes
- Bull pulls the drunk out of the gutter after the bank job and later calls him Rolls Royce.
- At the ball, Mulligan grabs Feathers and Bull kills him.
- Bull, loose and convinced of a double-cross, shoots Rolls during the police fight, then sees he was wrong and gives himself up.
Also available
- Internet Archive (1927-underworld-la-ley-del-hampa-josef-von-sternberg-intertitulos-en-ingles)
- Wikimedia Commons (Underworld (1927).webm)
