Robert Warshow’s classic 1948 essay The Gangster as Tragic Hero would have been much different if Warshow had had access to Fox Film’s extensive contributions to the genre, beginning with Raoul Walsh’s 1915 Regeneration. This remarkable feature from 1931 – one of only four directed by the temperamental Rowland Brown, a successful screenwriter (The Doorway to Hell) rumored to have underworld connections of his own – dismisses the romantic/tragic bent of the Warner Bros. gangster films in favor of a strikingly modern, non-judgmental perspective, portraying the rise of Danny Raymond (Spencer Tracy) from truck driver to mob boss in a series of blunt, staccato scenes. Stripped of psychology or sociological motivation, Brown’s gangsters become objects in motion, beyond morals or meanings.
As a director, Brown advances his plot largely through ellipses: a montage of license plates with changing dates serves to bridge seven years of Tracy’s rise from petty hoodlum to power broker. He takes his time over grace notes though – as when he cuts to an elegant, overhead shot to observe George Raft (here in his first movie appearance) performing a silky, vaguely sinister soft-shoe number. Brown’s gift for synecdoche pays off at the stunningly abrupt ending, when two lines of dialogue resolve the main character’s fate: “Don’t those society people have the big weddings?” “Yeah, but us hoodlums have the best funerals”. The film’s failure at the box office convinced Fox executives that their new star, Tracy, was turning out to be a poor investment; today his performance seems as clean and cold as ice water.

Dave Kehr

Rowland Brown’ (1900-1963) directed three excellent films between 1931 and 1933, then all his script were refused and he spent all his life trying to find a producer for them.
This Quick Millions, one of Tracy’s first films, it was directed by Brown who was a former screen-writer (he wrote the screenplay for another good gangster-movie, Doorway to Hell, with James Cagney). the film is probably one of the most crude and critical gangster-movie of the time, where the relationships between the ‘mob’ and the business world are more clearly and courageously depicted. After this one he directed Hell’s Highway, a ‘chain gang film’, which was released some weeks before LeRoy’s Im a Fugitive from a Chain Gang, that is as (or even more) crude, rough and sadistic as LeRoy’s film. One of the co-screenwriter of this second film was Samuel Ornitz who in 1947 will be jailed for “anti-american activities”. Another story of censorship.
“Another gangster story, but written down to the bone and directed for evervthing it contains. Brown’s direction seems to follow the lines of least resistance for the maximum effect”. (Variety, 4/22/1931)