East Side, West Side

Allan Dwan's New York epic, one of the last major features shot at Fox's 55th Street studio. George O'Brien, fresh from Murnau's Sunrise, is John Breen, raised on an East River brick barge. The barge sinks; washed into Manhattan, he is taken in by the Jewish Lipvitch family, boxes, then is adopted by a millionaire builder who is in fact the father who once rejected his mother. Dwan maps the story onto the city: barge, Bowery, Brooklyn Bridge, subway, a Lindbergh tickertape parade shot the month they filmed. Breen ends on a penthouse terrace, looking at the skyline that once shut him out.