Stone) who gazes up at Rico with a rapturous desire that, unlike Rico, he barely bothers to sublimate. The male triangle is completed by Caesar’s worshipful lapdog Otera (George E. When Joe finds a female dancer and show business success, the jilted Caesar unhinged by a jealousy that dare not speak its name even to himself, makes his first mistakes in judgement. A diminutive bandit whose single-minded ambition compensates less for his stature than his repressed homosexual desire, Caesar Enrico Bandello is compact, swarthy and tightly wound his golden boy pal Joe played by the scion of Hollywood royalty Douglas Fairbanks Jr. Burnett Little Caesar was first out of the gate and an immediate sensation. Directed by Mervyn LeRoy from the novel by W.R. The three films also evenhandedly parcel out social pathology and sexual aberration: homosexuality in Little Caesar. “… the fashion for romanticizing gangsters” must be denounced.
“Criminals should not be made heroes… The flaunting of weapons by gangsters will not be allowed…” The subtle gay gangster films of the early 1930s – Little Caesar 1931, The Public Enemy 1931 and Scarface 1932
