Did You Know?
This was the movie that bank robber John Dillinger had just seen before he was gunned down in front of Chicago's Biograph Theater on July 22, 1934. He had been set up by Anna Sage, the madam of a brothel, who knew Dillinger's girlfriend, Polly Hamilton. Sage was facing deportation and thought the tip might get her off. She told FBI agent Melvin Purvis that she would be wearing orange which appeared red, leading her to be dubbed "The Woman in Red". Dillinger was shot three times when he tried to escape, and Sage wound up being sent back to Romania.
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After John Dillinger was killed, William Randolph Hearst had the statement "A Cosmopolitan Production" removed from the credits of all prints; instead, Selznick's and Van Dyke's credits are repeated from the following card--thus their names appear twice in a row. The print in the Turner library is of this version.
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George Cukor was assigned as director for additional scenes after the preview showing on 14 April 1934, because director W.S. Van Dyke had already started on his next movie, The Thin Man.
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Lorenz Hart was asked to write more commercially appealing lyrics to "The Bad in Every Man" after this movie was released. The result was "Blue Moon," which was copyrighted under that title in December 1934.
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This is the first of 14 pairings of Myrna Loy and William Powell and the first of three movies they would make together in 1934.
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This is probably the only major film to offer a fairly accurate re-creation of the General Slucum disaster. The popular excursion steamer caught fire in New York's East River on the morning of June 15, 1904, while transporting passengers to a picnic organized by St. Mark's Evangelical German Lutheran Church (Lower East Side, Manhattan). At an estimated 1,021 fatalities, mostly women and children, this was New York City's single worst tragedy, in terms of lives lost, before 9/11. An incompetent, inexperienced crew was held primarily to blame for the tragedy.
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The movie and scenes form this movie is featured in the production of Public Enemies by director Michael Mann.
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"Lux Radio Theater" broadcast a 60 minute radio adaptation of the movie on September 9, 1940 with William Powell and Myrna Loy reprising their film roles.
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