The Shame of a Nation (Scarface at 90, Part II: Plot summary)

Tony Camonte (Paul Muni), a gangster in Chicago, works as a bodyguard for crime lord Big Louis Costillo until being contracted by his buddy Johnny Lovo (Osgood Perkins) to kill Costillo. Though the cops bring Tony in for questioning, he quickly walks free, and Johnny takes over Costillo’s former territory on the South Side. Tony becomes his second-in-command.

Now that he’s gotten a taste of a bigger salary and more power, Tony is eager to expand the empire even farther, into the North Side. This is a bridge too far for Johnny, who pleads with Tony to leave the North Side in the control of Irish gangster O’Hara.

That doesn’t deter Tony in the least. He’s confident his gang will someday take over the North Side and dethrone O’Hara’s gang. Not only that, he believes he’ll succeed Johnny as the head honcho, and starts getting flirtatious with Johnny’s girlfriend Poppy (Karen Morley).

Because Prohibition has just come in, Tony also wants to increase their crime empire and earn more easy money through bootlegging. Johnny is also keen to do this, but insists on waiting until after Costillo’s funeral to discuss the matter.

We then meet Tony’s kid sister Francesca (Cesca) (Ann Dvorak). He’s furious to discover she’s in the entry hallway kissing some guy instead of eating dinner at home. After Tony chases away her date, he insists he doesn’t want any men touching her, and gives her money to have fun without guys.

Mrs. Camonte (Inez Palange) highly disapproves of her accepting dirty money, but Cesca is determined to live her own life as she sees fit.

Johnny takes over Costillo’s former club without any difficulty, and his gang’s control over the South Side increases even more. Tony and some of his buddies set up a bootlegging operation and begin overselling their beer to every local speakeasy. They also start putting out a lot of hits on rivals and people standing in their way.

One of these shootouts is at The Shamrock, run by O’Hara’s gang. With their rival’s top men permanently out of the picture, it seems as though the North Side is theirs. There’s a little snag when the newspaper reports one of the gangsters survived and is in hospital, so Tony and his guys pay him a little visit to take care of this problem.

Tony tries to put the moves on Poppy again, but she refuses his advances, despite feeling some attraction to him. Johnny is also angry to learn he put out a hit on the North Side, since O’Hara will now be out for blood. As they’re all arguing, a car speeds down the street and throws out a dead body, with a note pinned to him:

STAY OUT OF THE NORTH SIDE

Soon afterwards, Poppy calls Tony multiple times to arrange a meeting. The message doesn’t get through the first time on account of Tony’s dimwitted secretary Angelo (Vince Barnett), a great bit of comic relief. Finally, Tony answers the phone himself, and to his great delight learns Poppy is right outside.

Poppy brings the news that O’Hara was taken out that morning in a flower shop, which explains why a fellow gangster just brought a carnation. While she and Tony are getting friendly in his place upstairs, the cops appear outside. Tony sends her to safety down the stairs through a back door and arranges a date that night.

Enter rival crime lord Tom Gaffney (Boris Karloff), who’s just received a fine shipment of sub-machine guns. When he’s tipped off that he’s being trailed, he figures out a way to get his precious new weapons to safety.

Tony has gotten out of legal trouble the same way he did earlier, by having his lawyer cite habeas corpus to the cops. With that matter easily settled, he goes to meet Poppy at the restaurant.

Alas, their date is interrupted by a big shootout. Angelo once against provides great comic relief by being completely unharmed as he talks on the phone right in the middle of the violence.

Tony is thrilled to discover an abandoned machine gun, particularly since it’s portable. This isn’t the kind of machine gun you have to operate in a stationary position. You can take it on the go with you.

Tony demonstrates the use of this magical weapon to Johnny, whom he has another fight with, and starts putting out hits on North Side rivals.

The violence continues fast and furious, leading cops to beg a newspaper editor to quit glorifying gangsters or even giving them any coverage at all. The editor says he can’t change anything unless the laws change first. That’s politicians’ responsibility, not his.

Tony is shocked and angry to see Cesca wearing a sexy dress and dancing with his buddy Guino “Little Boy” Rinaldo (George Raft) at a nightclub. This completely distracts him from his and Johnny’s rivalry for Poppy’s attentions, and he drags Cesca home, breaks a strap of her dress, and hits her. Once again, he insists no man can ever have her.

Then the power struggle between Tony and Johnny starts intensifying, with the stakes increasingly higher. Even more trouble appears when Tony returns from a month-long Florida vacation with Poppy and learns Cesca moved out. Tony storms over to her new home and flips out to see Guino is living with her.

Now the stage is set for one final confrontation between Tony and the law, with the highest stakes ever.

The gripping story of an innocent fugitive (I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang at 90, Part II: Behind the scenes, reception, legacy)

Robert Elliott Burns, a shellshocked WWI veteran, was in the wrong place at the wrong time in 1921 Atlanta, and under the cruel judicial system of the 1920s, he was unfairly judged as guilty and sentenced to six to ten years in a hard-labor chain gang in Georgia. He escaped with help from a fellow prisoner, found refuge in Chicago, and started a successful new life.

Sadly, his marital troubles later led to him being extradited back to Georgia, despite fierce attempts to keep him in Chicago, and he went back into the South’s bestial prison system. In 1930, he escaped again, and in 1931, his memoirs were serialized in True Detective Mysteries magazine.

His story came out as a book in January 1932, I Am a Fugitive from a Georgia Chain Gang! Knowing a hot commodity when they saw one, Warner Brothers purchased film rights soon afterwards.

The studio’s story department originally voted against adapting the book to the silver screen, since “all the strong and vivid points in the story are certain to be eliminated by the present censorship board.” However, Jack Warner and Darryl F. Zanuck overrode them and went ahead with the project.

Roy Del Ruth, the studio’s highest-paid director, was assigned to the film, but he backed out for similar reasons to the story department. He thought it was too morbid and heavy, since God forbid a film not be all happy-clappy rainbows, glitter, daisies, puppies, and kittens. He also thought it would be box office poison and the last thing Depression audiences would want to see.

Mervyn LeRoy left his film in progress, 42nd Street, and took over directing duties. Howard J. Green and Brown Holmes wrote the screenplay.

Lead actor Paul Muni (né Frederich Meshilem Meier Weisenfreund) met with Robert Elliott Burns several times to get a raw, authentic feel for the real-life character he was playing. Not only did Muni want to learn how Burns walked, talked, and acted, he also wanted to acquire the smell of fear. As he said, “I don’t want to imitate you; I want to be you.”

Muni’s intensive research didn’t end there. He asked the studio to get its hands on every last newspaper and magazine article, book, and other media about the South’s horrific penal system. Muni also met a few California prison guards, one of whom had labored in a Southern chain gang.

Warner Brothers wouldn’t allow Muni to go all the way by meeting wardens and guards still in Georgia.

Film critics highly praised I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang, which was released 20 November 1932. It was the studio’s third-biggest film of 1932, earning $650,000 in the U.S. ($14,139,255 in 2022) and $949,000 abroad ($20,643,313 in 2022).

Audiences loved the film too, both as a gripping story and as a damning indictment of chain gangs. Many people hadn’t been aware of this cruel practice or how harsh the judicial system could be. As a result of this public outrage, Burns and many other prisoners successfully won their appeals and were released in January 1933.

J. Harold Hardy, a Georgia chain gang warden who appears as as character, sued Warner Brothers for a million dollars for “vicious, brutal, and false attacks.”

The film was nominated for three Academy Awards—Best Picture, Best Actor, and Best Sound Recording. The National Board of Review also gave it the 1932 award for Best Picture, and in 1991, it was added to the National Film Registry for being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.”

In 1987, I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang was remade as The Man Who Broke 1,000 Chains, starring Val Kilmer in the leading role.

The wolf that lurks within (Steppenwolf, Part III: Behind the scenes, reception, legacy)

Hermann Hesse began writing Steppenwolf in Basel in 1925, during a period of deep despair and personal crisis. He had separated from his second wife, Ruth Wegner, almost as soon as they married in 1924. Not only did they spend very little time living together, the marriage reportedly was also unconsummated. Hesse struggled with depression and feelings of isolation throughout his life, and this episode plunged him into deeper and deeper despair which culminated in suicidal thoughts.

Hesse wrote in his journal, “I’m giving up everything, my life […] I’m an aging man. To react to your world in any other way than by dying or by the Steppenwolf would be a betrayal of all that is sacred.”

Reportedly, the wolf signet on the house façade painted by Burckhard Mangold at Spalenberg 22 in Basel inspired Hesse’s title. Most of the novel was written in Basel’s Hotel Krafft, though it was completed in Zürich.

Copyright EinDao

To try to overcome his personal demons, Hesse resumed psychotherapy with Josef Lang, a disciple of Carl Jung, as he was writing Steppenwolf. Anyone who knows anything about Jungian philosophy will easily see its strong influence in the book, particularly the Magic Theatre in the final section.

Jung’s theories and practices heavily drew from dream analysis, the collective unconsciousness, metaphysics, the paranormal, mythology, astrology, gnosticism, anima and animus (i.e., the unconscious feminine side of a man and the unconscious masculine side of a woman), archetypes, repressed aspects of our personalities, spirituality, art and dance therapy, and the persona (i.e., a consciously-created identity or personality influenced by the collective psyche via life experience, socialization, and acculturation). After Steppenwolf was published, Jung also got into alchemy.

Another big influence on Hesse’s story was jazz music, which he became a fan of in 1926. The character of Pablo was based on Sidney Bechet, a saxophonist and clarinetist then touring Switzerland.

Steppenwolf first appeared in the esteemed German literary journal Neue Rundschau in November 1926, and “Treatise on the Steppenwolf” was published as a preprint teaser in May 1927. Hesse’s publisher, Samuel Fischer Verlag, published the entire thing in book format in June 1927.

The first English translation appeared in 1929, and the first paperback edition came out in 1963.

Hesse wrote a spin-off short story in 1928, “Harry, the Steppenwolf,” about a wolf named Harry who’s kept in captivity in a zoo and entertains visitors by destroying images of German cultural icons like Mozart and Goethe.

Steppenwolf became the dozenth book in the German-language Manesse Library of World Literature series in 1946, which started in 1944. Most of the volumes in this series get the royal treatment as gold-leafed hardcovers with luxurious paper, binding threads, gilded covers, and attached ribbon bookmarks. Each book has an afterword by a contemporary writer, literary scholar, or literary critic.

Steppenwolf was added to the Suhrkamp Library series in 1969, a series created by German publisher Peter Suhrkamp as “a lovers’ library for an elite readership,” with a focus on 20th century literature. The first six volumes selected were edited by Hr. Suhrkamp himself, and the very first book of the series was Hesse’s Journey to the East. Over the years, many of Hesse’s other works have been added to this series.

A second edition of Steppenwolf in the Suhrkamp Library came out in 1985, illustrated with fifteen watercolours by Gunter Böhmer.

In 1978, Steppenwolf was included in the ZEIT Library of 100 Books, a collection of important, classic world literature chosen by a six-member jury and meant to interest people in reading. Only one book by each author on the list was allowed. A book edition of the essays about these books, originally published in the weekly German newspaper Die Zeit, came out in 1980.

This list and the accompanying essays were so successful, a list of 100 great nonfiction books was created in 1984. In 2002 and 2003, a list of 50 German-language works for children came out.

In the preface to the 1961 edition, Hesse wrote that this book was “more often and more violently misunderstood” than anything else he’d ever written. Most readers seemed to focus on the depression, despair, and suffering instead of Harry’s spiritual and psychological healing and determination to improve his life and start doing things differently.

Many of Hesse’s friends and longtime readers thought Steppenwolf celebrated so-called immorality because of its depiction of drug use and non-marital sex, a criticism which continued for many decades. By modern standards, those things are so tame! It’s not like there are any graphic sex scenes or detailed descriptions of using drugs and getting high.

Guess what, neo-Puritans: Real life ain’t a G-rated Disney movie where everything is glitter, daisies, kittens, rainbows, and puppies.

In 1974, the book was adapted to the silver screen, starring Max von Sydow as Harry, Dominique Sanda as Hermine, Pierre Clémenti as Pablo, and Carla Romanelli as Maria. It was in pre-production for seven years due to negotiations with the Hesse family over film rights and the complicated planning that went into making “the first Jungian film.”

Before von Sydow was cast, Timothy Leary, Jack Lemmon, and Walter Matthau were proposed.

Over the decades, many songs have referenced or been inspired by Steppenwolf, and there have been many literary references as well. The American–Canadian rock band Steppenwolf and the Danish rock band Steppeulvene, both formed in 1967, also took their names from the novel.

In 1967, the Magic Theatre Company of San Francisco was founded, and the Steppenwolf Theatre Company was founded in Chicago in 1974.

And of course, the title of this blog and my old Angelfire website, Welcome to My Magick Theatre, also comes from the book.

The wolf that lurks within (Steppenwolf, Part II: My personal relationship with the novel)

Hermann Hesse’s Steppenwolf, published in 1927, is one of the books that most changed my life. It was among my father’s old books stored in my room, and I took it into my own collection (with permission) when I fell in love with Hesse when I was fourteen. However, I didn’t get around to reading it until December of 1999, shortly before I turned twenty.

I obviously didn’t have a huge amount of life experience at that age, and my cognitive development was still about six years away from full maturity. Thus, there were aspects of the book that flew over my head or which I misinterpreted or didn’t think were that important.

However, I still connected to Harry’s basic struggles and character arc, and saw myself in him. I had enough self-awareness to recognise how overly serious I could be, preferring my intellectual, interior life of the mind over social life with peers and taking part in current pop culture. I also never learnt how to two-person dance, and even before I knew who Buster Keaton was, I was channeling his spirit by deliberately rarely smiling or laughing.

I also absolutely loved the Magic Theatre and all the trippy, surrealistic, mystical, esoteric, paranormal things happening there.

Rereading Steppenwolf at age 42 was an even deeper and more personal experience. I’m now much closer to Harry’s age, and I’ve gone through a lot more of life and more finely honed my views. E.g., at nineteen, I also agreed with Harry’s disgust for bourgeois conformity and society, but it was more of an abstract, political idea, not something I really got on a personal level.

I’ve always felt much more comfortable in the proletarian and lower-middle-class world. Those people are humbler and more authentic, and don’t live their lives by cookie-cutter checklists of mindless conformity, doing things only because they’re expected, and keeping up with the Joneses in their little suburban housing developments with freaking open concept houses promoted by HGTV.

Although I do, like Harry, also like certain surface aspects of bourgeois society, like their comfortable homes, ability to afford nice things to decorate the house, and tendency towards high culture thanks to widespread university education. I just don’t like all the classism, snobbery, and pretensions that go along with it.

Harry’s depression over being almost fifty and still feeling like he hasn’t accomplished nearly as much as he hoped to with his life also hit home much more strongly at 42. At nineteen, you’re so full of idealistic expectations and assumptions for your happy future, and then you find yourself not being in the same position as most of your peers, like finding a partner, marrying, and having kids by a certain age, locking in a long-term career, buying a great house, achieving success in your field.

I also suffer from cyclical depression, though unlike Harry and his creator, at least I haven’t had any suicidal thoughts or plans since I was fourteen.

Harry loves classical music and has no familiarity with modern jazz until Hermine forcibly introduces him to it. I love classic rock and pop, and also enjoy classical music, while not having any interest in anything modern. Harry isn’t the type of person who goes to clubs, and he has no idea how to dance. Likewise, I’ve always preferred to stay in reading, writing, doing homework, studying, and watching serious films instead of going to places like clubs and bars, and I only know how to do solo dancing and line dances. Social life with my peers never held any appeal for me.

When I first read the novel at nineteen, I was 100% virgin and had never even gone on a date (by choice). Thus, the scenes of Harry in bed with Maria, his feelings about his failed marriage with Erika, and the other sexual and romantic content didn’t really speak to me with any personal connection.

At 42, after having had a physical relationship with my now-ex Sergey, I could relate to Harry’s romantic disappointments and understand what some of the phrasing in the sex scenes referred to. (None of them are graphic or detailed. They’re more of the left to the imagination type, but the language is very evocative both emotionally and sexually.)

Then as now, I adored the Magic Theatre section at the end, though again, it was more of an abstract “This is awesome!” feeling at nineteen, and a general love of esoterica, mysticism, and the paranormal. At 42, I’d done so much more reading on those subjects, and also understood the deeper intentions of the specific rooms Hesse chose for Harry to enter and the experiences he has inside.

E.g., the room where cars and humans hunt one another and kill for sport is a statement on the increasingly impersonal, violent, machine-centric nature of society, not just a shockingly violent image of a future world. The room where Harry plays chess with pieces of glass representing the 100,000 aspects of his personality is about trying to put oneself back together after being so broken, and making sense of our numerous selves. The room where he revisits his past with all the girls and women he ever loved is a poignant longing for long-lost loves and imagining how we should’ve done things instead.

And even though Harry fails the Magic Theatre, he’s nevertheless determined to continue healing and doing things differently going forward. There’s always a next time, and when he goes into the theatre again, “Pablo would be waiting for me, and Mozart too.”

The wolf that lurks within (Steppenwolf, Part I: General overview)

An unnamed narrator has found the writings of a former boarder in his aunt’s house, where he also lives. He then goes on to describe how several years ago, this man named Harry Haller, who was almost fifty, came to stay with them and took the furnished bedroom and sitting room in the attic. Harry stayed for nine or ten months and brought many books with him. Though their bedrooms were right next door and they often met on the stairs, it took awhile for them to become properly acquainted on account of Harry’s reclusiveness.

After the opening section narrated by this unnamed young man, we get to Harry’s records, with the title “For Madmen Only.” (This book has no chapters, and very few section breaks.)

A few years away from his 50th birthday, Harry Haller’s life isn’t exactly going the way he hoped it would. His wife Erika divorced him some years back; he’s suffering with gout; he feels totally disconnected from bourgeois society despite his emotional attachment to surface things like happy families and well-maintained homes with araucaria flowers; he has no long-term career or even job; and he’s overwhelmed with depression and suicidal thoughts.

Harry’s life changes when he goes out for a glass of wine at the Steel Helmet on a rainy night and instead discovers a previously unnoticed doorway with a Gothic arch in the middle of an old stone wall he loves. Even more surprisingly, there’s an electric sign on the door, blinking the message:

MAGIC THEATRE
ENTRANCE NOT FOR EVERYBODY
FOR MADMEN ONLY!

After Harry has a drink at the tavern, he goes back to the old stone wall in the hopes of seeing that tempting, mysterious sign again. However, the door, archway, and sign have vanished.

Harry encounters a man carrying a signboard on a pole, and in front of him an open tray held up by straps. When Harry asks him to stop so he can read the sign, it bears the message:

ANARCHIST EVENING ENTERTAINMENT
MAGIC THEATRE
ENTRANCE NOT FOR EVERYBODY

Harry asks him what, where, and when this Magic Theatre is, and the stranger reiterates that it’s not for everybody. However, he does give Harry a booklet on cheap paper, the type found at fairs, and vanishes before Harry can pay him.

When Harry gets home, he discovers this is no ordinary carnival poppycock, but a serious treatise that describes his own life, competing wolf and human natures, and gloomy future outlook perfectly. He doesn’t just see himself in this in an abstract way; it actually uses his own name.

Treatise on the Steppenwolf. Not for everybody.

Harry agrees with the eerie booklet that he ought to kill himself, though he doesn’t want to wait till his 50th birthday as it prescribes. There are still two years to go, and he’s awash in despair, disconnection from everything and everyone he used to love, and the aches and pains of middle-age. He makes a date with his razor for the near future.

A day after Harry tries again to find the mysterious door and sign, he runs across a professor whom he used to be good friends with. The professor invites him over for dinner, and Harry agrees against his own reservations.

Harry is set off by a ridiculous framed engraving of his idol Goethe, styled as a conceited old man with a blank expression. The evening gets worse when the professor lambasts a recent antiwar editorial in the newspaper, which, unbeknownst to his host, was written by Harry himself. Finally, Harry snaps and rips into the ridiculous picture of Goethe, and storms out of the house, visions of the razor dancing through his head.

Harry ends up in a tavern called the Black Eagle, where he meets a woman who takes him to task for not knowing how to dance and being so melodramatic. Though she’s giving him quite the tongue-lashing, Harry nevertheless dreads her leaving, since then he’ll have to go home and kill himself.

While she’s dancing with someone else, Harry falls asleep and has a surrealistic dream about Goethe, who also takes him to task for being so serious.

Since Harry is still terrified of going home and facing the razor, his anonymous new friend arranges for him to lodge upstairs overnight. Before he falls asleep again, he realizes he has something to live for after all, and his hopeless starts fading.

The next time he meets this woman, he guesses her name is Hermine, since she seems so much like the female version of his old friend Hermann. Over the ensuing months, Hermine teaches him to dance, introduces him to jazz music, takes him to buy a gramophone, and has many deep conversations with him.

During this time, Harry also becomes friends with a jazz musician named Pablo and lovers with a beautiful young woman named Maria. All three of his new friends are instrumental in his restoration to normalcy and hope.

And then comes the grand finale of Harry’s initiation into this new life, a masked ball followed by the Magic Theatre. Which rooms will he choose to go into, and what sorts of lessons and esoteric experiences will he have there? And will he pass this test?