Goodfellas introduced the audience to Jimmy Conway, who was also known as “The Gent” – here’s why. Although Martin Scorsese has explored various genres throughout his career as a filmmaker – from black comedy with The King of Comedy and After Hours to historical drama with The Age of Innocence and more – he continues to be best known for his gangster movies, which explore the Italian-American identity and touch on themes like redemption and guilt. Of all his gangster movies, the one often regarded as his best is the 1990 film Goodfellas.
Based on the book Wiseguy by Nicholas Pileggi, Goodfellas chronicles the life of mob associate Henry Hill (Ray Liotta), from his days as a teenager fascinated by the mafia presence in his Italian-American neighborhood in Brooklyn, to his involvement with the family of Paul Cicero (Paul Sorvino) and his decision to become an FBI informant. During his time working for Paulie’s crew, Henry met a lot of big names from the mob and formed a close bond with some of them, among those Jimmy Conway (Robert De Niro). Henry met Jimmy when he was still a teenager running errands for Paulie, and they ended up working together many times, including when Henry was dealing drugs behind Paulie’s back.
The main characters in Goodfellas are based on real-life gangsters, though most of them had to go through name changes. Such is the case of De Niro’s Jimmy Conway, whose real name was James Burke, and they were both known as “The Gent”. When Henry introduced Jimmy in Goodfellas, he explained that he must have been around 28-29 years old and was already a legend, and everyone “went wild” as soon as he entered the room. In that same scene, Henry pointed out that Jimmy tended to tip everyone, and they were very generous tips: he gave the doorman a hundred dollars “just for opening the door”, he put hundreds in the pockets of the dealers at every game, and gave another hundred to the bartender “just for keeping the ice cubes cold”.
It was this strange and generous tipping habit that earned him the nickname “The Gent”, even if he wasn’t always a gentleman. Although Goodfellas established that Jimmy wasn’t a man to mess with, it didn’t fully show how dangerous and violent he was. Among his most “notable” actions was that time when just before he got married, he discovered his fiancée’s ex-boyfriend had been stalking her, and on their wedding day, the police found his body cut into more than a dozen pieces. Of course, there’s also his decision to kill anyone involved in the Lufthansa heist who could betray him or lead the police to them, which is why the first one to die was Parnell “Stacks” Edwards, who failed to get rid of the van used in the heist.
Other sources, however, attribute the nickname “The Gent” to Burke’s dapper appearance, though it’s most likely about the tipping habit. When Henry became an FBI informant, his confessions sent Paulie and Jimmy to jail, and “The Gent” passed away in 1996 of cancer, eight years before becoming eligible for parole. Goodfellas subtly showed why Jimmy earned the nickname of “The Gent”, though it also left it open to interpretation to an extent.