The Bowery is a 1933 American pre-Code historical comedy-drama film set in the Lower East Side of Manhattan around the start of the 20th century directed by Raoul Walsh and starring Wallace Beery and George Raft.

In the Gay Nineties, on New York's Bowery, saloon owner Chuck Connors (Wallace Beery), finds that his rival, Steve Brodie (George Raft), has thrown a melon at his window.

Connors meets a homeless girl named Lucy Calhoun (Fay Wray) and takes her to his apartment, where he lives with Swipes, and lets her spend the night.

Brodie re-opens the refurbished saloon, and when war is declared against Spain, Connors enlists in an effort to get away from the Bowery, where he is no longer a big shot.

The men lament not being able to say goodbye to Swipes, but they soon see, to their delight, that he is hiding in an artillery box on the supply wagon just ahead of them.

The movie features Wallace Beery as saloon owner Chuck Connors, George Raft as Steve Brodie, the first man to jump off the Brooklyn Bridge and live, Jackie Cooper as a pugnacious child, Fay Wray as the leading lady, and Pert Kelton as a bawdy dance hall singer.

[4]) Director Raoul Walsh later wrote, in his autobiography Each Man in His Time, that directing Beery and Raft "was like trying to keep the peace between a lion and a tiger" although he said "both men were big hearted, generous to a fault.

The movie opens with a close-up of a saloon window featuring a sign saying "Nigger Joe's" in large letters (the name of an actual Bowery bar from the period operated by an African-American).

At one point, Cooper's character breaks a window, knocking over a kerosene lamp and causing a lethal fire that spreads through the block.

The Bowery bears some resemblances to a concurrent movie She Done Him Wrong, a film starring Mae West and Cary Grant released earlier the same year by a different studio (Paramount Pictures) featuring Wallace Beery's older brother Noah Beery in a similar role as a Bowery saloon owner sleeping with Mae West's character.

[citation needed] The Bowery was one of 11 films in which Wray portrayed the leading lady in 1933, including the original version of King Kong.

[8] In 1943 it was announced that 20th Century Fox would remake the film as a musical, Bowery After Midnight, with William Bendix in the Beery role.