1922 and ran throughout the 1920s. (A film version of the play, also titled Rain and starring Joan Crawford, was released by United Artists the same year as Scarface.) Though fairly inconspicuous in the film, and unnoticed by most viewers, the Camonte family was meant to be partially modeled after the Italo-Spanish Borgia family. This was most prominent through the subtle and arguably incestuous relationship Tony Camonte and his sister share. Camonte's excessive jealousy of his sister's affairs with other men hint at this relationship. Coincidentally, Donizetti wrote the opera for Lucrezia Borgia, about the Borgia family, and Lucia di Lammermoor from where Tony Camonte's whistle tune comes. Release After battling with censorship offices, the film was released around a year later than The Public Enemy and Little Caesar. Scarface was released in theaters on April 9, 1932. Hughes planned a grand premiere in New York, but New York censor boards rejected the showing of the film. State censorship boards in Ohio, Virginia, Maryland, and Kansas and citywide censorship boards in Detroit, Seattle, Portland, and Chicago banned the film as well. Hughes threatened to sue censorship boards for preventing the release of his film much to the approval of the New York Herald Tribune. Each state had a different board of censors which allowed Hughes to release the film in areas without strict censorship. At the request of Will Hays, Jason Joy convinced the strict censor boards to allow the release of Scarface, because the Hays Office acknowledged and appreciated the changes Hughes made to Scarface. Joy visited state censor boards individually, stating that while the Hays Office was against the positive portrayal of crime, gang films were actually documents against gangster life. Joy was successful and eventually all state and municipal censorship boards allowed Scarface to be released, accepting only the cut and censored version of Scarface. Reception At the time of release, audiences were generally positive. According to George Raft, who met Al Capone a few times at casinos, even Capone himself liked the film adding, "you tell 'em that if any of my boys are tossin' coins, they'll be twenty-dollar gold pieces." Variety cited Scarface as having "that powerful and gripping suspense which is in all gangster pictures is in this one in double doses and makes it compelling entertainment," and that the actors play, "as if they'd been doing nothing else all their lives." The National