After a roustabout sailor avoids being shanghaied in 1850s San Francisco, his audacity helps him rise to a position of power in the vice industry of the infamous Barbary Coast.
Frisco Kid is a 1935 western film starring James Cagney and directed by Lloyd Bacon. Set in San Francisco in the 1850s, it traces the rise and fall of a sailor who achieves wealth and success on San Francisco's Barbary Coast but is spurned by the woman he loves. The supporting cast also features Ricardo Cortez, Lili Damita, and Barton MacLane. Writing for Turner Classic Movies, Richard Harland Smith observes: “While hewing closely to the crime-shouldn't-pay maxims of the newly minted Production Code, the violence is often disarmingly brutal, with a double hanging late in the film being as disturbing as it is coyly elliptical.”