James Cagney

The AFI's page on The Public Enemy gives both the start and the mould in a single sentence: this film made James Cagney a star and established that popular gangster persona Warner Bros. went on working all through the thirties. Eighteen years after Tom Powers in William A. Wellman's film of 1931 he played Cody Jarrett in Raoul Walsh's White Heat, and by the AFI the cry Cody lets out at the finale on top of the oil tank, made it Ma, top of the world, settled into everyday speech. Eighteen years lie between the two, and yet both sit inside the same mould: the film that built the persona, and the film that left the persona's line in common use. His earliest film here is from 1930 and his last from 1981, and of the thirty-nine in between William Keighley directed five.