Johnny Eager

Mervyn LeRoy's 1941 gangster film is remembered today largely for Van Heflin's performance. Johnny Eager, played by Robert Taylor, seduces the district attorney's stepdaughter as revenge and then actually falls in love. That template is standard, but what makes the film interesting is Heflin's alcoholic, literary-minded friend, a man who feels both admiration and pity for his boss and gives the gangster picture an unusual inflection. Heflin won the Academy Award for best supporting actor for the role. MGM's polished house style softens the hardness the genre had at Warner Bros.; instead of streets there are well-lit drawing rooms. The Turner and Taylor pairing was assembled to the logic of the star system, but the film's emotional centre is not there. Who it's for: viewers interested in classic Hollywood gangster films and the MGM studio aesthetic. Who it's not for: anyone wanting the harsher, dirtier examples of the genre, or who will find the romance forced.