The story is that Robert Cain, a Wall Street stock broker, is caught and sent to prison for embezzlement. His son, Robert Cain Jr., has lived a rich and sheltered life, unaware of his dad's illegal activities, so now he has to face both the shame and a sudden lack of money. His father's friends avoid him, and nobody wants to hire him because of his father being in jail. Eventually he turns to crime, almost by chance.
Retold like this, it would seem as if Johnny Apollo was like many other gangster films from the 1930s, something like Public Enemy (William A. Wellman 1931), Angels With Dirty Faces (Michael Curtiz 1938) or The Roaring Twenties (Raoul Walsh 1939), but it is not; neither in style, temperament or trajectory. There is for example no focus on crime itself, or the gangster in society. It is not interested in that but in the characters, their personal development and their interactions. The film is slower, more mellow in tone, and there is little violence, compared to many famous gangster films. I would not call it a gangster film at all.
While Johnny Apollo was made in late 1939, released in 1940, it does not feel like a film of the 1930s. In tone, look and sensibilities it feels ahead of its time. It could have been released ten years later without it seeming old-fashioned. If it had been released then, it would now inevitably be referred to as a film noir. But as film noir is inexplicably said to have begun in 1941 (with John Huston's adaptation of The Maltese Falcon), Johnny Apollo is not mentioned in that connection. But referring something to film noir usually raise more questions than provide answers. It is a paradox in that film noir is either defined too broadly, encompassing most black and white Hollywood films of the 1940s and 1950s that are not cheerful, or too narrow, with an arbitrary set of necessary traits that might be found in a handful of films but not in many of the most celebrated noirs.
It would be more accurate to say that Johnny Apollo is not of any named style or genre and its story is unpredictable all the way until the end. The characters grow and change along the way, and while their actions are always plausible, given what we know of them, they can still surprise or take off in new directions. This is one of Hathaway's many strengths as a filmmaker, when he tells his own story in his own way, and do not follow some genre template. He once made a distinction between "Westerns" (films that just happened to take place in the time and place of the Old West) and "Western Westerns" (films that were generic Westerns, telling clichéd stories), and that distinction is valid for many of his best films, whether set in the Old West or not, as they are of no distinct genre, or might appear to be one genre but then turn into something else.
Something that Hathaway is known for is his habit to use as much on-location footage as possible, and this is often said to have begun with The House on 92nd Street (1945). But many of Hathaway's films, from his start in the early 1930s, were shot partly on location and this is true of Johnny Apollo too. Scenes are filmed on streets, railway stations and even at Sing Sing, among other places. It adds a local flavour to the film that is one of its many qualities, and might also be a reason for why it feels ahead of its time. Not that on-location filming was unusual at the time, other films from 1940, from Gregory La Cava's Primrose Path to John Ford's The Grapes of Wrath, use it to good effect too, but they often feel more specific to their time whereas Johnny Apollo does not.
The film's cinematographer is Arthur Miller, who might have been the best cinematographer working in Hollywood at that time. It is a shame that he and Hathaway did so few films together (only two I believe), although the style of the film is what you would expect from Hathaway. He knew better than most where to place the camera, and his square, forceful composition, with plenty of use of deep space, and deep focus when possible, are often striking without being showy. Consider this image:
It is the moment that the son learns about his father. In the background of the shot we see his old life, carefree, sporty and happy, and in the foreground we see his new life, shame and crime.
While Tyrone Power plays the lead as Cain Jr. (he later changes his name to Johnny Apollo), the greatest performance is by Lloyd Nolan, as the gangster who takes Cain/Apollo under his wings. He is for a long time a likeable guy, friendly, loyal, sweet, attentive and funny, but when he is threatened he is ruthless. But as it is not until the end of the film that he is threatened, we have not experienced his vicious side for most of the film and might easily have been seduced by him. Charley Grapewin, as an old lawyer and close friend of the gangster, also gives a great performance. The main female character, the girlfriend of the gangster, is played by Dorothy Lamour. She is not, as is often the case in the 1940s, a femme fatale, and she is not a victim either. Instead she is a strong, independent character, something of the moral centre of the film, and it is she who put things right in the end. Not because of a genre contrivance but as it comes naturally to her character to do so. Edward Arnold plays the dad and his is fine too. Arnold is, in the first scenes, his conventional screen persona. Cain Sr. is angry, sleazy and corrupt, but when he is in jail he begins to change and grow too, and becomes a new and better man: sad and dignified.
Grapewin and Nolan, Marc Lawrence in the middle.
As you can tell, I like Johnny Apollo very much. Many of the reasons for this are things that are hard to describe as they are gestures, moods, exchanges between characters, things that are created on set by the director and the actors. The way Power looks at his hands as Lamour sings a melancholic song; the way Lawrence push out a chair with his foot to Power to show there are no hard feelings after a fight; the closeup on a used ice pick; Power and Lamour meeting for the first time in a staircase; Nolan telling a joke about having tried to rob a freezer thinking it was a safe; the way the camera often lingers on things instead of pushing on, The latter aspect is something I particularly like about Hathaway, the way he can spend a lot of time on small, seemingly insignificant moments. It makes his films follow their own rhythm, and it is a rhythm I feel at home in.
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I do not want to suggest that Hathaway is unique in transcending genres, doing his own thing, and creating distinct characters and mood. It is what artists do, and all the great filmmakers in Hollywood did it. I only want to emphasise that Hathaway is among those great ones, and while Johnny Apollo is not his best work, it is a fine example of what he can do, and how he goes about telling his stories and making his films.
The one thing that feels wrong in the film is the ending, or rather the second ending. There is a sequence in prison which feels like the end, both emotionally and stylistically. It ends with the following shot, and then a fade-out to black. It is the appropriate way to end the film, and a satisfying closure.
However, after the fade-out there is a new scene, of three main characters laughing together and driving off in a car. Since it is abrupt, unnecessary and its tone inappropriate, I feel with some certainty that this was not part of the original script or Hathaway's intention, but something added in post-production to satisfy the audience's alleged need for there to be an obvious happy ending. I cannot know for sure, but I think it is a fair assumption to make, and it would not be unique for Johnny Apollo for such an ending to be added. But regardless of how it happened to be there, it is easy to ignore.
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Information about Zanuck hiring Hathaway, and his autonomy during the production, I got from Henry Hathaway: The Lives of a Hollywood Director by Harold N. Pomainville.
Basil Wright once said about Hathaway: "Note first the verisimilitude of the settings, second, the modest but unerring rightness of all his camera angles, and third, the sense of ebb and flow of passion between two tough but inarticulate humans." and it is a perfect summation of his oeuvre.
Links to all my previous posts on Hathaway:
https://fredrikonfilm.blogspot.com/2011/08/henry-hathaway.html
https://fredrikonfilm.blogspot.com/2011/08/henry-hathaway-afterthoughts.html
https://fredrikonfilm.blogspot.com/2012/06/spawn-of-north-henry-hathaway-1938.html
https://fredrikonfilm.blogspot.com/2013/11/souls-at-sea-henry-hathaway-1937.html
https://fredrikonfilm.blogspot.com/2014/11/from-hell-to-texas-1958-on-hathaway-and.html
https://fredrikonfilm.blogspot.com/2018/06/summing-up-hathaway.html
https://fredrikonfilm.blogspot.com/2020/02/hangup-1974.html
