Larceny, Inc.

1942: Lloyd Bacon, director; starring Edward G. Robinson, Jane Wyman, Broderick Crawford, Jack Carson, Anthony Quinn. Warner Brothers released a string of fine gangster movies in the 1930s and 1940s, but this one was different: It played up the Mob for laughs. Based on humorist S.J. Perelman’s The Night Before Christmas, hijinks ensue when crooks find that going straight can be more profitable than robbing banks. The plot is very similar to Woody Allen’s 2000 movie Small Time Crooks, but Allen has never publicly acknowledged any connection to the earlier film.