Wissenswertes

Despite both Edward G. Robinson and James Cagney having spent most of their acting careers with Warner Bros., this was the only film the two acting legends appeared in together.

At the time the movie was made, James Cagney had appeared in several movies but was not yet a big star. During the making of Leichtes Geld (1931), Cagney was simultaneously filming Der öffentliche Feind (1931) with director William A. Wellman. (Screenwriters Kubec Glasmon and John Bright were rewriting dialogue for "Public Enemy" while working on the set of "Smart Money".) Knowing that his friend Edward G. Robinson was already a star, Cagney deferred to Robinson in most of their scenes together. But by the time this movie was released, "The Public Enemy" had been out for several months and had made Cagney a star as well, so Warner Brothers put Cagney and Robinson's faces together on posters for the film and gave them equal billing.

The movie was made to capitalize on the success of Der kleine Cäsar (1931). Edward G. Robinson insisted that the script be rewritten to make his character, Nick Venizelos, a more sympathetic gangster and less of a copy of his "Little Caesar" character, Rico Bandello.

Edward G. Robinson's wife at the time, Gladys Lloyd, appears as the "second cigar stand clerk". They were married from 1927 until 1956. They would appear in five films together from 1931 to 1932.

A mostly-unknown Boris Karloff has an uncredited bit part as Sport Williams near the beginning of the movie, when he bets and loses $100 in Nick's craps game in the back room of Nick's barber shop. It was the same hundred dollar bill that Nick had given his lady visitor shortly before the craps game started, and that she handed to a shadowy figure in a dark doorway immediately afterward. Five months after this movie was released, Frankenstein (1931) premiered, making Karloff a household name.