Each Dawn I Die

Each Dawn I Die (1939), directed by William Keighley at Warner Bros., is a crime drama you can watch online on iFILM. Investigative reporter Frank Ross writes one too many stories about a corrupt D.A. — and ends up framed for manslaughter. One day he's running copy; the next, he's inside Rocky Point Prison breaking his back on the jute mill.

James Cagney plays Ross with slow-burn desperation rather than the usual hotheaded spark — a man who knows he's innocent but can't prove it and feels that certainty eroding day by day. His reluctant ally is hardened con Hood Stacey, played by George Raft: an arrangement of mutual need held together by something short of trust. The guards are brutal. The forces that put Ross away still have reach inside the walls.

Keighley's film treats the prison less as a backdrop and more as a grinding machine — not theatrical cruelty but systematic pressure, the kind that changes what a person is willing to do. Stream Each Dawn I Die (1939) online on iFILM.