the United States as the twisted version of the "American Dream" trope presented in these films were more popular with audiences abroad than with American audiences. The suggestion made in the gangster films that ruthlessness and amorality were the qualities that American society rewarded the most provoked considerable outrage at the time, and a great many newspaper editorials condemned Hollywood for releasing such films. A review in The New York Post called the 1931 film Little Caesar a "Horatio Alger tale transferred to the underworld". As early as the summer of 1932, Will Hays of the Hays office advised Hollywood production chiefs that he wanted no more gangster films, leading to a promise that "there would be no more sawed off shotgun stuff". Despite the promise made in 1932, it was being reported in Variety on 13 June 1934 that "infuriated federal officials" were planning to impose censorship to end gangster films once and for all if Hollywood did not promise to end such films. The Labour Department contended that watching gangster films were the leading cause of criminality in children while the Justice Department claimed that such films "encouraged a general disrespect for the police and a lenient attitude towards thugs". Largely as a result of such pressure, in July 1934 gangster films were effectively banned within Hollywood as the Hollywood moguls were always terrified about the possibility of the federal government imposing censorship. Mafia Westerns In Italian cinema after the Second World War, the Mafia was depicted in genre that was very close to the Westerns produced by Hollywood at the same time, as people on the mainland of Italy tended to see Sicily as a "frontier", an island that the Italian state did not entirely control, and as a remote, mysterious and dangerous place. Typical of these films was In nome della legge (1949) directed by Pietro Germi, which told the story of the magistrate Schiavo newly arrived from the mainland in a town in Sicily oppressed by the corrupt Baron Lo Vasto, who employs the Mafia to terrorize the people. Schiavo, who plays a role analogous to the honest Sheriff in American Westerns, proceeds to "clean up" the town by imposing the authority of the Italian state and by persuading the local Mafia boss that the Baron is the enemy of the town. In this and other films like I Mafiosi (1959) by Roberto Mauri, the