Manhattan Melodrama is a 1934 American pre-Code crime drama film, produced by MGM, directed by W. S. Van Dyke, and starring Clark Gable, William Powell, and Myrna Loy.

Notorious criminal John Dillinger attended a showing of the film at Chicago's Biograph Theater on July 22, 1934.

[2] Myrna Loy was among those who expressed distaste at the studio's willingness to exploit this event for the financial benefit of the film.

Two boys, Blackie Gallagher (Mickey Rooney) and Jim Wade (Jimmy Butler), are rescued by a priest, Father Joe (Leo Carrillo), but are orphaned by the disaster.

Studious from the very beginning, Jim (played as an adult by William Powell) gets his law degree and eventually becomes the assistant district attorney.

Blackie's girlfriend Eleanor (Myrna Loy) loves him, but pleads with him in vain to marry her and give up his dangerous life.

Meanwhile, Blackie, who acknowledges that he is a changed man (due to Eleanor's having left him), coldly kills Manny Arnold (Noel Madison) for not paying his gambling debts.

He is sworn in, and at a hearing regarding commutation of the sentence, he denies the application, stating that the voters have a right to expect that he not ever be "corrupted by money, influence, or even by my own personal feelings."

Eleanor tries to get him to commute the sentence to life imprisonment, revealing Blackie's motive for killing Snow, but that only makes things worse.

Jim finally offers to commute the death sentence, but Blackie turns him down, admitting to the murder of Manny Arnold.

Cast notes Filmed relatively quickly and with a modest budget, Manhattan Melodrama was expected to return a profit but not to capture the imagination of the public.

The film has a Harlem nightclub scene featuring Shirley Ross in blackface singing a song called "The Bad in Every Man."