Before there was Scarface, there was The Racket. 

Hollywood film tycoon Howard Hughes produced this bold crime drama four years before his famously influential follow-up rattled Tinseltown. The film was nominated in the Outstanding Picture category at the first Academy Awards and stars matinee idol Thomas Meighan as the honest cop who vows to bring down his Capone-like nemesis, played by thug-faced Louis Wolheim. The pair battle it out in a corrupt, noir-ish, Prohibition-era Chicago while Marie Prevost’s sassy gangster’s moll Helen looks on with wry disdain and steals the show from everyone!

Dir. Lewis Milestone | US | 1928 | N/C PG | 1h 21m

With: Thomas Meighan, Louis Wolheim, Marie Prevost

Performing live: Mike Nolan (piano), Frank Bockius (percussion)

Introduced by Jamie Dunn, Film Editor of The Skinny

Restored in 2016 by the Academy Film Archive. Elements for this restoration provided by The Howard Hughes Corporation and by the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, College of Fine Arts’ Department of Film and its Howard Hughes Collection at the Academy Film Archive. 

DCP courtesy of the Academy Film Archive.