page_title: Manhattan Melodrama
section_title: Cast
hierarchical_section_title: Manhattan Melodrama / Cast
caption_attribution_description: The crowd at Chicago's Biograph Theater on July 22, 1934, shortly after John Dillinger was killed there by law enforcement officers. The extra edition newspapers with the headline "Dillinger Dead" are being displayed and waved by some in the crowd. Manhattan Melodrama as shown on the marquee, was playing at the time.
context_page_description: Manhattan Melodrama is a 1934 American pre-Code crime film, produced by MGM, directed by W. S. Van Dyke, and starring Clark Gable, William Powell, and Myrna Loy. The movie also provided one of the earliest roles for Mickey Rooney, who played Gable's character as a child. The film is based on a story by Arthur Caesar, who won the Academy Award for Best Original Story. It was also the first of Myrna Loy and William Powell's fourteen screen pairings.
  Notorious criminal John Dillinger attended a showing of the film at Chicago's Biograph Theater on July 22, 1934. After leaving the theater, he was shot to death by federal agents. Myrna Loy was among those who expressed distaste at the studio's willingness to exploit this event for the financial benefit of the film. Scenes from Manhattan Melodrama, in addition to Dillinger's death, are depicted in the 2009 film Public Enemies.
context_section_description: Clark Gable as Edward J."Blackie" Gallagher
  William Powell as Jim Wade
  Myrna Loy as Eleanor Packer
  Leo Carrillo as Father Joe
  Nat Pendleton as Spud
  George Sidney as Poppa Rosen
  Isabel Jewell as Annabelle
  Muriel Evans as Tootsie Malone
  Thomas E. Jackson as Asst. Dist. Atty. Richard Snow
   
  Isabelle Keith as Miss Adams, Jim's secretary
  Frank Conroy as Blackie's lawyer
  Noel Madison as Manny Arnold
  Jimmy Butler as Jim Wade as a boy
  Mickey Rooney as Blackie as a boy
  Shirley Ross as black Cotton Club singer
  George Irving as Campaign Manager (uncredited)
  Leonid Kinskey as Trotskyite (uncredited)
  Edward Van Sloan as Yacht Capt. Swenson (uncredited)
  Sam McDaniel as black prisoner on Death Row (uncredited)
   
  Cast notes
  Manhattan Melodrama was the only film that Clark Gable and William Powell made together, but both men were married to Carole Lombard. Lombard was married to Powell when she made her only film with Clark Gable, No Man of Her Own.
caption: The crowd at Chicago's Biograph Theater on July 22, 1934, shortly after John Dillinger was killed there by law enforcement officers.
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