- published: 04 Oct 2013
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The Roaring Twenties is a 1939 crime thriller starring James Cagney, Priscilla Lane, Humphrey Bogart and Gladys George. The movie was directed by Raoul Walsh, and written by Jerry Wald, Richard Macaulay and Robert Rossen based on the story "The World Moves On" by Mark Hellinger. The Roaring Twenties was the last film that Cagney and Bogart made together.
The Roaring Twenties is based on "The World Moves On", a short story by Mark Hellinger, a columnist who had been hired by Jack Warner to write screenplays. The movie is hailed as a classic in the gangster movie genre, and considered an homage to the classic gangster movie of the early 1930s.
The film follows three men who meet in a foxhole during the waning days of World War I: Eddie Bartlett (James Cagney), George Hally (Humphrey Bogart) and Lloyd Hart (Jeffrey Lynn), and depicts their trials and tribulations from the Armistice through the passage of the 18th Amendment leading to the Prohibition period of the 11920s and the violence which erupted due to it all the way through the 1929 crash of the stock market to its conclusion at the end of 1933, only days after the 21st Amendment brought an end to the Prohibition era.