Frisco Kid 1935

In San Francisco in the 1850s, a city where gold fever has left shipowners short-handed, Bat Morgan, James Cagney a sailor ashore, is robbed and nearly shanghaied aboard another ship. After a narrow escape, he remains in town to settle scores and to carve out a larger share of the action in the vice district. He organises the various gambling dens and other illicit enterprises into a single, powerful operation, forging an alliance with a corrupt city boss, Jim Daley Joe King. This new power base brings him into direct conflict with a crusading newspaper run by Jean Barrat, Margaret Lindsay — the daughter of a murdered publisher — and the idealistic editor Charles Ford Donald Woods.

Loyal to his friends even when they stand on the opposite side, Bat Morgan protects the editor when Jim Daley orders him eliminated. He also falls for Jean, yet his hard-boiled code and self-interest make true romance almost impossible. When his best friend, Solly Green George E. Stone, takes a bullet for him, Bat mourns the loss, and Jean later points to Solly as an example of people helping others, remarking that Solly would still be alive if not for Bat’s world.

Anger toward a judge provokes Bat to bring his Barbary Coast crowd to the opening night the judge has staged at the Opera House. A gambler, Paul Morra Ricardo Cortez, pushes into the judge’s box and murders him on a flimsy pretext. The outrage over the killing sparks a public outcry, Morra is arrested, and a lynch mob forms. Bat helps secure Morra’s release—not out of affection for the man, but out of debt for what Morra started in his ascent.

Soon after, Ford is murdered by Jim Daley in a bar-room brawl. Jean blames Bat for the bloodshed and the spiral of violence it triggers. A vigilante movement sweeps through the city, rounding up Morra and Daley and hanging them both. When the Barbary Coast mob vows to retaliate by wrecking the press and burning the town, Bat Morgan tries to keep the peace, steering the crowd away from a rampage. Yet as the vigilantes close in on the Coast, he is shot in the back by one of the underworld thugs and left to be taken by the mob. Jean saves him from hanging, granting him his freedom on her parole.