e first major period of the genre, gangster films typically represented those elements in life which were familiar to movie going audiences of the time. The basis of crime stories could be drawn from current newspaper headlines and tales, which circulated through the public at large. There is a distinct similarity to be seen between the gangster films of this period and the popular journalistic style of the time, which is made more obvious "by the hurried, urgent style with dialogue pared down to a functional minimum but still sharply evocative, the words rapped out at machine gun speed" (Cameron, p. 42).
The disruptive and troubled nature of the era directly led to the creation of the prototype gangster character. American society was floundering in the midst of a turbulent and dangerous era, which films sought to mirror as best they could. "The movies, however, were hard pressed to match the violence, crime and viciousness that screamed at the public from newspaper headlines and, in order to try to do so, the movie gangster became an unsubtle, super
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