Tag Archives: James Cagney

Blonde Crazy (1931) with Joan Blondell and James Cagney

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From the outset, Blonde Crazy promises to be a midwestern hotel chamber piece. It’s a story of the help: including opportunistic bellboys (James Cagney) and plucky chambermaids (Joan Blondell). He does her a service by nabbing her a job, and in such a world, he probably expects some recompense.

James Cagney is still kicking around and feeling out his persona; Joan Blondell’s on the way up with him. It’s mind-boggling that in the year 1931 alone both of them put in time in over half a dozen pictures each for Warner Bros. They were both building up a body of work quite quickly.

In a movie like this, the people I’m often preoccupied with are the Charles Lanes and Guy Kibbees — the host of able character actors who always show up in a movie like this. Blonde Crazy has quite the assortment. It’s stuffed with the kind of familiar faces, making a small trifle like this worthwhile, playing desk clerks and delinquent jewels salesmen, among other things. You know the types.

If the story remained in the hotel, it would be severely handcuffed because its stars are meant to be out in the world! Thankfully, the movie breaks out of the constraining formula and finds itself allowing Cagney to shine because there was no one who could do charisma like him. However, Blondell’s never one to be discounted, keeping with him tit for tat.

She exhibits plucky defiance ranking up there with any of the top female performers of the 1930s, coping with the social systems while still holding her own in a man’s world teeming with come-ons and everyday misogyny.

Does it matter what it has in the way of plot? Hardly. Instead, Bert (Cagney) and Anne (Blondell) leave the hotel, becoming business associates or better yet, accomplices drumming up clever (and slightly dubious ways) to make a quick buck.

Blondell is never taken in. She sees right through Burt and still stays with him. He has flashes of decency but driven as he is by money and other superficial qualities, he’s a tough guy to try and wrangle in. Still, their prevailing attribute is their loyalty to one another. Cagney likens himself to a modern Robin Hood. He does have that kind of rapacious charm (and this is before the world knew Errol Flynn).

In time, they’ve had an upgrade frequenting the lavish hotel circuit as partners, though their romantic status remains a bit hazy. Bert inserts himself into a fistfight on the dance floor. It seems like the perfect point of intersection for Cagney. He comes to the aid of Louis Calhern a man he’s been eyeing for some time namely, because of his scintillating female company (Noel Francis). She’s been giving him the look. Anne knows it too. She wasn’t born yesterday.

Unfortunately, Bert gets punked. He’s been made a sucker. In the movie world, you don’t make a sucker of Jimmy Cagney and get away with it. With his pride hurt by the big boys, he looks to regain his stripes by pulling a double-sided con of his own, just to break even. He doesn’t bother to tell Anne. It’s preliminary work for greater coming attractions. If you want to try and get a line on Cagney’s character, he’s not quite his usual gangster type; he’s a smaller operator, but still stretching the boundaries of the law. In his own words, he’s “not tough just mercenary.”

For all the names crammed in the picture, I almost forgot to mention Ray Milland. I hardly knew he was in pictures this early in time, and he looks like a babyface, albeit a handsome one. He’s relegated to the secondary role. He’s Anne’s dreamboat. The complete antithesis of Cagney. He has class. So they get married. But he’s fallen into a bit of misfortune. The only man who can probably pull him out is good ol’ Bert.

All these bits and pieces feel conventional. There’s the immediate romantic tension and the story zips along. Milland is nothing aside from the other man. But if you miss out on Cagney and Blondell’s rapport, then you’ve failed to appreciate the merit of the picture. They make it shine.

While it’s not cutting-edge entertainment, Blonde Crazy does simultaneously straddle the lines of genre. It’s not totally gangster — there’s romance and melodramatic flourishes — and there’s a lightness of comedy. This is what lingers.

Because, in the end, Bert’s sent up for a prison sentence and Anne dutifully shows up professing her undying love. They were meant to be together. What I will remember is how Cagney says “Hone-eee,” and how Cagney, donning his most elocutionary voice, spouts off a bit of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. And it’s a violent picture: full of socks, slaps, and spanks, all in a comical vein and totally indiscriminate. Everyone gets in on it. It helps in illustrating the underlying fact that this is not just Cagney’s movie. Blondell more than holds her own, and they make it better together. What’s more, this was just the beginning.

3.5/5 Stars

Other Men’s Women (1931): Moving Pictures are Alive

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There’s an underlying sense that The Other Men’s Women was a primitive picture and yet it has a plucky energy as if it doesn’t know any better. Warner Bros. was at the cutting edge of talking pictures and Vitaphone wasn’t exactly old hat. The medium was still in its relatively latent stages.

Given this backdrop, William Wellman seems to take to the amount of freedom he has with a maximum amount of relish. The camera already feels slightly more versatile. With the shackles gone and a new amount of mobility, he moves his camera all over the place conducting dialogue scenes in any manner of places we would normally take for granted.

But he also slices the conventional 180-degree line to smithereens. It’s off-putting given our filmgoing sensibilities, and yet there’s something equally raw and frenetic about it that gives it a very appealing flavor. His camera is atop trains or out in the garden by the sweet peas. Moving pictures are alive!

Part of this may have been out of necessity because in 1931 alone Wild Bill churned out 6 movies for Warner Bros! That’s an insane amount of output. But this same rapid-fire outpouring of movies included the likes of Public Enemy, Night Nurse, and Safe in Hell, just for starters.

If we were to scour this movie for a conventional throughline, it would start with our protagonist, a cheeky railroad hand (Grant Withers), bright-eyed and generally contented with the life he leads. His best friend in the engine room is Jack (Regis Toomey), and they have an inseparable camaraderie together. In what world is Toomey lifted out of the periphery and promoted to a primary role? Here he is as living proof.

He brings his good friend home to his wife Lily (Mary Astor). She’s playful and warm. There’s a lovely affability filling up the spaces and planted in the gardens with the flowers. Their next-door neighbor is a kindly man with a peg leg, and they have built for themselves a fine slice of tranquility. It’s innocent until it’s not. In the kitchen Withers and Astor alone. And they don’t realize it until it’s too late.

They look and they kiss — almost on accident it seems — but they love each other. It’s irrevocable. There’s no taking it back, and it pains them both. If this is the film’s menage a trois, it’s the most devastating of outcomes. They never meant to hurt anyone. But then nobody ever does.

The two friends wind up slugging it out on their locomotive overturning their friendship and livelihood in one fell swoop. A stake is forever driven between them. But there’s more. Jack’s life is beset with personal tragedy. Bill is ridden with the ensuing guilt. He never wants to see either of them ever again. It’s too much to take, looking them in the face — especially knowing he can never have Lily.

Whereas the amended title looks to capitalize on the more scandalous element, the original title: The Steel Highway might fit the picture equally well. These are before the days of Le Bete Humaine or Human Desire, but there’s something elemental about a man and the railroad. Like the western, there’s a mythos attached — a historical shorthand — evoking something of expansion and progress.

As such it flits back and forth between its two spheres. That of the man’s working world out on the rails where life feels itinerant. There’s a danger but also a freedom and a mystique about it. The home life is sweet and domestic until it’s not.

The picture also boasts some of the best rain sequences I remember in recent memory. They are worth mentioning in how they augment Wellman’s film in its latter stages. It becomes expressionistic not merely through the illusions of light and dark, smoke and shadow, but the sheets of raindrops showering down. It adds yet another contour, another layer of emotional atmosphere to this film’s final act.

Jack sloshes around in the downpour helplessly as Bill hurtles toward his resolved conclusion. The climax is fated and fittingly catastrophic. Then, days later, he’s back in the old haunts, sitting at the same cafe pit stop, with a different waitress behind the counter, only to cross paths with an old friend…They share a smile, a few words. Does it really matter for us to have this? I don’t think so. It’s spelled out on their eyes.

Then, Jack does something unexpected. He hops back on his train and begins sprinting over the top. Where is he going? He’s got to get to the engine room — to bring it to a halt. We never see it, but we know he’s staying put. My thoughts linger on Wellman again with his camera perched in such a place where he captures his hero sprinting off into the distance. Yes, movies are alive thanks to people like him.

What a curious wrinkle it is to have James Cagney and Joan Blondell off-center with supporting assignments. That very same year they would be spotted together as leads but such is the studio system they could pull duties in a 70-minute railroad thriller like this. Cagney showing off his dancing and that swell-guy charisma of his. Blondell’s got that spark and spunk in spades. They’re equally delightful, and this isn’t even their movie. They provide yet another reason to enjoy the fundamental pleasures of Other Men’s Women.

3.5/5 Stars

City for Conquest (1940): James Cagney, Ann Sheridan, and Arthur Kennedy

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Upon being immersed in City for Conquest, it feels like a cast of millions because so many familiar faces make an appearance for any given amount of time. Surely, the most important coupling is James Cagney and Ann Sheridan who are paired much in the same way as Angel With Dirty Faces (1938), playing childhood sweethearts who end up growing up together.

The picture also provides a scintillating film debut for young Arthur Kennedy, forerunning his turn playing the younger brother to another boxer in Champion (1949), opposite Kirk Douglas. Cagney’s not a bad man to have for a brother either and their dynamic is one of the most compelling aspects of this relatively slight drama.

It all begins with a rather peculiar framing device with an all-knowing drifter (Frank Craven) posing his commentary on “The Big Apple” and the world of interpersonal relationships that exist all around him. Because each individual has different talents and aspirations, at its most instinctual level, City for Conquest is about the trajectory of each character in tandem to one another. Thus, the story is most concretely driven by its characters while being enriched by that prototypical Warner Bros. grit and street corner brand of atmosphere.

For one, Danny Kenny (Cagney) tries his luck in the boxing ring taking on the name “Young Sampson,” not necessarily because of ambition but for the pure fact, it puts grub on the table and provides means to pay for his little brother’s musical education. Backed by promoter Scotty MacPherson (Donald Crisp) and supported by buddies Mutt (Frank McHugh) and Pinky (George Tobias), he tenaciously makes his way up the ranks toward the welterweight title.

Although he has nothing to show for it yet, Eddie Kenny (Kennedy) has a knack for compositions and he’s moved his brother with his city symphony, despite his lack of musical knowledge, because music has the power to speak to even everyday folks on a visceral level.

Meanwhile, Peg Nash (Sheridan) is terribly smitten with Danny and yet in the same breath aspires to be a first-class dancer. She meets an arrogant yet talented bloke (Anthony Quinn) out on the dance floor and is enticed with a career just like she’s always dreamed about.

The girl breaks his heart as much as you can break Jimmy Cagney. He takes it like a man while still feeling betrayed. To add insult to injury, his climactic bout is rigged due to the resin dust illegally sprinkled on his opponent’s gloves. Not only does Danny unfairly lose the fight but his career is permanently terminated with his eyesight impeded for good. Eddie shouts for the senseless beating to end as Peg cries to herself over the radio broadcast besides herself over Danny’s loss. It affects Danny physically while the others are casualties of a different kind.

It’s all but inevitable that the picture will end in some gangster knockoff job with the boy’s big shot pal Googie (Elia Kazan) seemingly ready to give the crooked wrenches who tampered with the fight their comeuppance. And the side of the underworld set on the east river with bodies to dispose of certainly has its place. But the underlining factor is despite their struggles, our three protagonists are allowed to find a swatch of contentment.

Eddie is finally able to realize his musical ambitions and gain the repute of the masses in his first show while Danny and Peg are reunited to live life as they were always meant to — together. Though her dancing aspirations have been curtailed and his sight lost, their future remains shimmering with hopefulness.

One could easily comment that City For Conquest‘s themes riff off of Golden Boy in the way music and the boxing ring are juxtaposed, one next to the other. In this case, it’s the two brothers who represent the two seemingly incongruent worlds. And yet the biggest implication is that a rough and tumble guy like Cagney can still have a beating heart and a sensitivity for song even as he goes day in and day out pounding people in the ring. The two worlds are not mutually exclusive by any means.

We certainly know who our main players are but again it’s the robust and jovial nature of the full ensemble making it even more diverting. Ward Bond shows up as a disgruntled cop there, Charles Lane as a no-nonsense promoter here, and Jerome Cowan is ready to rib his competition over a few boxing ring bets. They don’t have to be the focal point because that’s not requisite for being entertaining. I greatly admire the character actors of old for what they are able to create even within meager means.

3/5 Stars

Footlight Parade (1933)

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Though it still came out in the middle of The Depression, there is a sense that Footlight Parade does not confront the contemporary issues head-on and maybe that causes it to lose some potential power. Because, in a sense, it’s a period piece even if that period is only a few years prior when talking pictures were taking the world by storm. Of course, many audiences will be far more acquainted with Singin’ in the Rain (1952), which arguably did much the same and even a better job in its homage than this effort.

Likewise, a bigger bankroll for the movies at Warner Bros. meant they got longer, which wasn’t necessarily all that advantageous. As far as stories go, this one is pretty much on par with its predecessors (42nd Street and Gold Diggers of 1933) though, rather surprisingly, the cast doesn’t run as deep.

Now we have James Cagney, of course, and what makes Footlight Parade deserving of a special side note is the fact that it would serve as the Warner Bros. gangsters first chance to hoof on screen. Because he wanted to prove that he was more than a thug and boy was he ever, even if the picture never really stretches him. Above all, he’s Jimmy Cagney, through and through.

John Wayne makes a picture-within-a-picture cameo in The Telegraph Trail which is shown to Chester as a demonstration of the imminent reality. Silent pictures are totally on the way out and this new attraction will grab audiences away from the stage. With the changing industry goes Chester’s livelihood. His galling wife isn’t too understanding calling for a divorce rather than wait around for him to be completely destitute.

However, Cagney’s able to capitalize on his newest doozie of an idea that comes to him after a mundane visit to his local drugstore. He translates it to talking pictures. He pitches it to his two boob bosses and they bite on his vision to develop live “prologues” that can then be showcased in movie theaters all around, making them lots of money. It’s a good idea but their closest rival Gladstone has already jumped on the wagon. It’s no small coincidence that Chester’s longtime assistant jumps ship and conveniently leaves behind another parasite to swipe ideas.

The one person who stands by him through everything is his loyal and lovestruck secretary Nan Prescott (Joan Blondell), who nevertheless uses her acumen and street smarts to keep the utter insanity of his current work life tolerable. With the wolves primed to devour him, she’s just as feisty, out to protect his interests (and hers as well).

In the end, Chester smells a rat and puts the studio on lockdown as they race against the clock to churn out the three numbers they need to showcase to their potential backer, Mr. Apolinaris, who, despite ongoing indigestion, is a generally agreeable audience.

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Ruby Keeler is hidden behind a pair of specks to play up unwarranted stereotypes in a generally uninteresting role. Meanwhile, Dick Powell and his huffy patron have little to do. You understand why Powell wanted a different career trajectory because there’s nothing to stretch him.

His patron’s bubble-headed brother, played by Hugh Herbert calls to mind later types paraded in front of the screen by Billy Gilbert. He relies on her sway, otherwise, he wouldn’t be able to hold onto his position as the resident content watchdog who constantly badgers Chester only to get the brush. Frank McHugh cultivates his gray hairs exasperated as the dance choreographer continually bombarded by incoming stressors on the eve of the big performances. He’s teetering dangerously on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

When the first line of an audition is, “show me your legs” and obviously it’s only for the gals, it just rubs the wrong way. There’s also an inherent sense that there needed to be more dancing and less plot, as much as I would follow James Cagney to the moon and back, figuratively speaking. Even “Honeymoon Hotel’s” repetitive cadence gets tedious and it feels more cutesy than a prime showing of Berkeley’s usual visual inventiveness. It’s the same issue I had with earlier numbers like “Pettin’ in the Park.”

However, the subsequent waterfall number gets us back to his element, by some unimaginable feat, we end up at a lavish pool gilded with finery. In an instant synchronized swimming was born (or at least promoted) and for some inexplicable reason, those overhead shots capturing the unified motion and shapes of the swimmers still blow my mind even today like a huge crowd creating shapes at a football game. What we receive is sensory overload of gestalt principles executed beyond what could possibly be imagined in terms of meticulous intricacy.

With “Shanghai Lil” Cagney gets in an excuse for a choreographed brawl which he handles ably and we do see him dance. It’s difficult to put into words completely but it seems a very sturdy approach with his feet working hard while his torso remains all but inert. It’s like there’s business on top and a party going on down below which gives him a fairly unique mechanic on the floor, resurrected from his earlier days in vaudeville.

What comes last is an ending meant to rival Gold Diggers fo 1933, still impressive but not nearly as meaningful. The “Shanghai Lil” trades out the stirring nationalism and triumph of the human spirit to cater to a number about a Chinese streetwalker played by Ruby Keeler in yellow face. Even with a turn toward the patriotic, it just can’t quite compete. But as always, it’s hard not to simply fall back on Cagney and praise him for guiding the picture with that surehanded tenacity of his that sees us through to the end.

4/5 Stars

Taxi! (1932)

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Taxi! is indubitably parked in the pantheon of misquotes and few people probably realize it. Yes, this is the film where Warner Bros. tough guy James Cagney purportedly sneered, “You dirty rat, you killed my brother!” I remember hearing the line in everything from The Monkees to M*A*S*H and it no doubt showed up in just about every show from here to eternity. Right up there with Cary Grant’s apocryphal line “Judy, Judy, Judy.”

But none of that speaks to this film or what it’s actually about. Well, the title says it: Taxicab drivers. So let’s talk about the talent instead and when I say talent that mostly means two people, James Cagney and Loretta Young. They’re the main draw.

In the opening gag, we see James Cagney using his Yiddish to placate a customer who can’t seem to get any help from a policeman. But he’s also back to running off his mouth and throwing his fists because after all, this is the same man that electrified the world with his portrayal of a gangster in William Wellman’s Public Enemy (1931) of the previous year.

The crucial event in this film is a rash of strong-armed maneuvers pulled by a taxi conglomerate in New York City looking to shoulder their way into the industry through scare tactics and willful sabotage of their competitors.

One of their victims is a veteran cabbie (Guy Kibbee) who isn’t about to take this lying down and he guns down one of the perpetrators of injustice. Justice is swift and he is given a prison sentence in lieu of death. But it might as well have been. His life is all but over.

In the wake of this outrage, Cagney begins a call-to-arms for his fellow colleagues to fight back and fight fire with fire as it were. The incarcerated man’s daughter (Young) stands tall as well and calls for action by peaceful means. She receives the disdain of Nolan for behavior that he sees as selling out her own father. Of course, he doesn’t know the whole story.

For some inexplicable reason, maybe it’s his animal magnetism, Sue falls for the cad of a cabbie. What follows are dates at the picture show which provides some free publicity including a weepy starring Donald Cook and a poster for The Mad Genius (1931) starring John Barrymore.

Sue’s fellow waitress at the local grub hub, the oddball chatterbox Ruby (Leila Bennett) even makes a passing comment to her beau about Frederic Marc though Joe E. Brown is still here personal favorite. It makes sense.

Next, comes a Peabody contest at the nightclub, featuring an appearance by George Raft, where the fiery Cagney tries to wail on his real-life friend. If it’s not that then it’s a fat man in an elevator or most obvious of all Buck Gerrard the big oaf who had a part in the shady tactics that landed Sue’s father in jail.

Matt’s not a happy camper for most of the film and yet he still manages to keep his gal. After a lover’s quarrel, a silky smooth Cagney takes his love in his arms and they dance while he slips a ring on her finger. He’s also a self-confident son-of-a-gun.

But as electric as Cagney is, one of the best to ever light up the screen — there’s no doubt about that — I’m not sure if I can forgive him slapping around someone as loving and as innocent as Loretta Young. Especially today, it just doesn’t come off very well. She deserves someone better.

3/5 Stars

The Strawberry Blonde (1941)

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The opening shots of The Strawberry Blonde are not unlike Easter gatherings at my family’s house. Croquet in the backyard…well, that’s about it. But that’s precisely the distinction that’s being made as Raoul Walsh develops a dichotomy between two societies on either side of a brick wall.

On one side the Yale college boys play guitar as their gals all gussied up sing “Meet Me in St. Louis” after a rousing game of croquet. They are eye-catching and the frivolously well-off members of the elite. We think of them and their gayly prim and proper ways when we conjure up archetypal mental pictures of the so-called “Naughty Nineties.”

On the other end, two working men play a good old-fashioned game of horseshoes. They’re a different type of folk. A Greek barber (George Tobias hidden behind an accent and a mustache) and our pugnacious protagonist Biff Grimes. It’s not a typical Cagney picture but it’s still a typical hard-nosed Cagney and that’s the joy of it.

To use his vernacular, he’s a real hairpin. The kind of guy who never takes nothin’ from nobody but has made a habit of getting stepped on his entire life. Whether it’s the girls he’s missed out on or the fights he’s lost or any number of other footfalls. A 5-year stint in prison springs to mind.

Still, he can’t believe he missed out on the flirtatious, bodacious strawberry blonde Virginia Bush (Rita Hayworth), what seems like so many years ago now. But as was his habit, Biff’s friendly rival Hugo Barnstead (Jack Carson) ended up the lucky man.

Following their fateful first encounter, Biff gets continually saddled with Amy Lind (Olivia De Havilland) which obviously would be far from a disappointment with any sensible man. That doesn’t stop Biff from being sore. He needs a house call to get it through his thick skull that he really has a life to be grateful for.

This is the Epstein Brothers’ glorious revamping of a failed Gary Cooper vehicle from 1933, in this case, made to tailor fit James Cagney. The actor returned to his old studio, Warner Bros., looking for a change of pace to get him as far away from gangster fare as possible. Likewise, director Raoul Walsh was looking for a change after the riveting but tragic drama High Sierra (1941).

Given the results, it’s little surprise that the director considered it one of his personal favorites among the many pictures he helmed over the years. The quality cast starts with Cagney but we really have four superb talents at its core rounded out by Olivia De Havilland, a vivacious Rita Hayworth, and that old happy-go-lucky jokester Jack Carson. Alan Hale fills in as Cagney’s derelict father who’s always finding himself getting thrown out of the local saloon by the ear.

By now I all but take James Wong Howe’s photography for granted but as per usual, The Strawberry Blonde looks two-tone drop dead gorgeous as it lights a world with nostalgic hues of turn-of-the-century New York. Whether moonlight, streetlights, or candlelight, it is a film that is totally evocative of a bygone era.

Where men removed their coats to partake in fisticuffs. The same men humored their best girls with Sunday walks in the afternoon while local bands paraded through the park their brassy tunes wafting through the air. The barbershop subculture was in full bloom, quartets and all. Likewise, modernity was coming into its own with nitrous oxide, horseless carriages, electric lights, women’s suffrage, and the art of spaghetti imported from Italy.

In some paradoxical way while being nostalgic it still finds a way to feel surprisingly progressive particularly through the character of Olivia De Havilland with all her so-called improprieties. A nurse who winks, smokes, and whose mother was a bloomer girl and her aunt was an actress. At least on the surface. Maybe she’s not quite like that.

Meanwhile, Biff is always trying to save face his entire life and as a married man, he’s trying to save face with his concerned wife. He lives with discontentedness instead of satisfaction but just as the times keep on changing, Biff does too, realizing how lucky he is.

What makes the film itself a charming change of pace is the fact that it’s not concerned so much with one singular defining moment of drama but an entire life and it elicits a connection with a time and place even as we feel a sense of pity for Biff. It’s not a bleak film, more of a wistful one, and with wistfulness, a lighter more nostalgic tone can still be evoked.

Even to the end when Cagney takes on the masses it’s great sporting fun and he gets in his licks like any of his gangster pictures but he does it with a loving wife and a life to be wholly satiated by.

4/5 Stars

“Don’t be a hypocrite Virginia. Spiritually you winked.” ~ Olivia De Havilland as Amy Lind

Review Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942)

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James_Cagney_in_Yankee_Doodle_Dandy_trailer“My father thanks you, My Mother Thanks you, My Sister Thanks you, and I Thank you.” – James Cagney as George M. Cohan

I write this on Yankee Doodle Dandy’s 75 Anniversary on Memorial Day and I can say with much regret in my heart that it’s probably not nearly as resonant now as it was back in 1942. Perhaps, as it should be, because we are not living in the thick of WWII in a recently post-Pearl Harbor society. This was a film meant for a very particular cultural moment and it functions as such.

We look at the musical numbers and some are impressive routines with a full array of song and dance sprinkled throughout but there’s nothing outstandingly eye-popping about any of it. It’s true that this musical biography does suffer from a bit of Biopic Syndrome. By now we have been inundated with so many renditions that this version of George M. Cohan’s life is hardly revolutionary.

At best it’s a beaming tribute to an American icon with a bit of palatable wartime propaganda that never does anything unusual nor does it attempt to. At worst you could call Yankee Doodle Dandy overlong with a stiff script that lacks a lot of invention and shows more and more chinks in its armor over the excessive run time. But like Cohan himself, it’s an unabashed flag-waver and in that arena alone it does do some justice to its hero.

Certainly, none of these initial assessments can take away from the great appeal of the main players. More on James Cagney later but for now let’s just say he is incomparable and leave it at that. But we also have the estimable Walter Huston who had a notable career in his own right before being slightly overshadowed by his son John. In Yankee Doodle Dandy he plays the patriarch of the Cohan family, married to a lovely and talented woman (Rosemary De Camp) who is his partner and equal in both wedded life and on the stage. They are loyal All-Americans and they raise up their son and daughter to love their line of work and their country just as they do.

Thus, the Cohans are born as a collective entity, precocious Josie (Jeanne Cagney) and her ever cocksure brother George (James Cagney) who has a big head to go along with a load of talent. While his attitude gets him ostracized, his persistence as a songwriter ultimately earns him success after he unwittingly joins forces with another struggling writer Sam Harris (Richard Whorf). Somehow together they find a winning formula that for decades thenceforth makes George M. Cohan into a household name and subsequently an American legend. He is the undisputed king of unabashed, feel-good, good old-fashioned entertainment.

America’s favorite wartime ingenue Joan Leslie falls easily into the role of the love of George’s life, Mary, the impressionable young gal who fell for him at an early age and stayed by his side as the years rolled ever onward. Everything else changed but her love and faithfulness remained steadfast. With Mary by his side, she sees him through a string of successes, a few minor failures, the birth of WWI with the sinking of the Lusitania, and even the inevitable deaths of his kin. When it’s all said and done, he’s christened by FDR himself with a Congressional Medal as one of the great patriots capable of catalyzing the American Public with nationalistic fervor. So he serves a very important purpose on the Homefront.

The fact that Cohan’s life was practically born and lived out on the stage makes it perfectly suited for a musical adaptation allowing Michael Curtiz to seamlessly segue between vaudeville and Broadway routines and the formative moments that make up George’s life. They all fit together in a fairly straightforward manner that nevertheless is bolstered above all by the talent.

But the opening and closing framing device is unforgivably corny and is probably hampered most by a President Roosevelt lookalike who is so artificial it makes the genuine vivacity of James Cagney all the more disarming. It works the other way too. Cagney feels like he’s acting opposite a lifeless mannequin. And it’s true that as he always seemed to have the habit of doing Jimmy Cagney steals the whole picture.

He had left the gangster fare that had made him famous behind and in pictures such as Strawberry Blonde (1941) and Yankee Doodle Dandy he was given a true chance to strut his stuff and what dynamic stuff it is. Now I’m not much of a dance connoisseur so I have no reference point on where Cagney’s dancing could possibly begin to stack up to the likes of Astaire or Kelly, men who also performed their own choreography. Still, if anything, Cagney’s feet are constantly lively and self-assured as is his entire performance.

He seems like the perfect man to embody Cohan himself an Irish-American who started out as a song and dance man on the stage and whose blood ran red, white, and blue. First and foremost, he is a performer and his performance turns Yankee Doodle into something special, despite its various shortcomings.

Curtiz is a highly capable director but Cagney is the one we have to thank. Because while the film is never daring he always is and my estimation of him grows exponentially every time I see him act. Some performers have the knack of making every scene they’re in better by doing something exceptional that you remember — something that really catches your eye whether minor or grandiose. You only have to watch him tap his way down the White House stairwell to know James Cagney is one of the special ones, no question.

4/5 Stars

White Heat (1949)

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james_cagney_in_white_heat_trailer_cropWhite Heat burns like hot coals even today as the epitome of incendiary cinema. It’s a gangster picture from master Warner Bros. craftsman Raoul Walsh that’s volatile and intriguing, highlighted by the always fiery James Cagney as a crazed man-child with a mom complex.

Cagney had stayed away from gangster pictures that made him a star for nearly a decade and it’s true that now it’s easy to label this a film-noir given the sweeping tide of the times including other pictures like The Killers, Brute Force, and so on.

Still, everything that is truly inspired from this film stems from Cagney’s performance because we have seen gangsters before, bank jobs, inside men, gun molls, and the like but Cody Jarrett is one for the ages. He throws a twisted wrench into what is already a quality thriller by going absolutely ballistic and simultaneously jolting it in the most peculiar ways.

Before Norman Bates was even whispered on the lips of audiences Cagney burst onto the scene with his demonic characterization, very plainly evil personified as the psychotic Cody Jarrett. He smacks policemen, guns down the worthless, and schemes incessantly. However, he also has a strange sense of family and friendship. He’s prone to crippling migraines like his insane father and still parks himself on his mother’s lap. He even befriends a copper, except he doesn’t know it. He gets duped like a two-bit stooge.

Edmond O’Brien was on the rise at this point following such films as The Killers and The Web. He still owns a supporting role in the sometimes thankless job as the decent heartbeat of law and order. But he has so much more character than all the other stiffs with their fine looks and chiseled jawlines who simultaneously faded into the annals of history.

Although he’s playing support to Cagney, there are a lot worse gigs and the pair works well with each other. At one time strangers, confidantes, and finally bitter enemies in the constantly seesawing dynamic that comes when an undercover agent looks to get buddy-buddy with a certifiable psychopath. Not surprisingly it makes for a thoroughly engaging crime film because the characters actually have something to them.

The iconic Mess Hall sequence brimming with Cagney’s explosive bravado is representative of his flair throughout the entire picture. It just won’t let up. It never lets up. A line of “telephone” takes a message down the row of inmates (including sports icon Jim Thorpe) before reaching the waiting ears of the hardened criminal. Like a stick of dynamite, he goes off and becomes possessed by some unnamed force. It represents the manic, off the wall style of Cagney that still compels audiences today. It’s no longer a simple performance. This is not acting (or it doesn’t seem like it). This is feeling, hate, anger, rebellion, and violence all channeled into a transcendent moment where the man has completely lost himself in a role. No one can touch him. It’s fantastic.

Virginia Mayo finds herself portraying her particular sultry siren accustomed to mink and bubblegum. While Steve Cochran stands tall as the main crony with big ideas, the aptly name Big Ed who is looking to worm himself in on Jarret’s territory (and female company), while he’s incarcerated. Meanwhile, Margaret Wycherly who was previously known as the angelic mother of Alvin York takes on a maternal role on the complete opposite spectrum and she does a fine job as a woman modeled after the notorious Ma Barker.

Any great crime story needs a final set piece where everything can culminate in one ultimate crescendo. White Heat does not disappoint in this regard as Agent Hank Fallon looks to tip off his colleagues following the inception of a big heist of a chemical plant in Long Beach. What follows is a tense dragnet and shootout and it’s a fitting place for Jarrett to meet his maker or in his case his mother. He literally goes into the inferno, blowing up and entering the conflagrations of hell in the most startling of fashions — still clinging doggedly to his mom–his twisted guardian angel of death. It’s a curtain call worthy of such a performance and knowing it can do no better, the film ends there, no fanfare just a grimy picture where criminals aren’t as cut and dry as Hollywood once supposed.

5/5 Stars

Angels with Dirty Faces (1938)

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angelswithdirtyfaces-theatricalposterWhaddya hear, whaddya say ~ Jimmy Cagney as Rocky Sullivan

If he hadn’t been on the stage and screen, it’s easy to get the sense that James Cagney, born and bred on the streets of the Lower East Side of Manhattan could have easily been a gangster. And it’s true that in films like Public Enemy and White Heat he embodied gangsters for ensuing generations solidifying his own legend.

Angles with Dirty Faces features another stellar performance as Rocky Sullivan, but what makes it truly unique are the intertwining worlds of faith and crime that meet and ultimately provide the major conflict in the narrative. It’s at these crosswords — the moral fabric of the film — where things get fascinating and to understand those things it’s necessary to see where Angel with Dirty Faces opens.

Two young hoodlums get caught in the act of snitching from a train car and in the ensuing chase one gets nabbed by the cops while the other slips away from their clutches to live another day. This succinct scene is a fitting reflection of all that happens thereafter. The one fellow will grow up to be the notorious gangster extraordinaire Rocky Sullivan who will be at odds with the authorities from his first moments in juvie to his final days.

Meanwhile, Jerry (Pat O’Brien) becomes a local priest who makes it his life’s work to reform the young men in the community who are more than likely destined for the life of Rocky and his fellow gangsters. Through a certain amount of kindness and quiet strength, he attempts to mold the boys through constructive activities like basketball, choir, and other extracurriculars. However, the bad boys (the real life Dead End Kids ensemble, less actors than personified hellraisers) are not quite swayed by his regimen, more content rough-housing, causing mayhem, and idolizing their rebellious hero the great Rocky Sullivan.

When he finally gets out of his stint in prison, Rocky has some choice words for his crooked lawyer (Humphrey Bogart) who hands over a load of cash to save his neck although he’s not looking to be swindled. But although he continues to have his hand in the local corruption and crime scenes, Rocky still maintains his ties with his old friend while renting a room from the girl he used to rib, the now stunning Laury Martin (Ann Sheridan). Here the core relationship between Rocky and Jerry becomes paramount as Jerry vows to tackle corruption in the city with the help of a local paper, even if his old buddy gets in the way.

So Jerry begins his full-fledged crusade against vice because he sees it as a threat to his parish — made up of the impressionable boys in his stead. But just as crucial is the boy’s idol worship, namely of Rocky. This is Jerry’s final goal to bring their idol tumbling down and it doesn’t involve simply destroying the aura surrounding a gangster — it involves two old friends making one final promise. The crime syndicate is thrown into an uproar as Rocky is wanted for murder, cornered, and finally apprehended.  Oh how the mighty have fallen, although he’s not about to go yellow because that’s the only thing he has left–his own bullish sense of moxie.

Still, Jerry asks him to imbue a different kind of courage (Not the courage or heroics of bravado but the kind that you, me, and God know about). And as the electric chair looms in front of Rocky as an arbiter of justice, you could easily make the claim that this is his modern-day cross with him as the martyr. But this gets into the ultimate dilemma where everything begins to break down. Either Rocky committed his final act out of undying affection for an old friend (and not remorse) or more feebly still he was not repentant at all but was, on the contrary, legitimately groveling in the face of death.

The first time seeing this film I mistakenly mistook Rocky’s actions as heroic in the end because as our protagonist that’s what we like to project onto him but it simply does not line up. The way he’s so belligerent before breaking down as he gets ready to meet his maker. The way the priest looks on with tears in his eyes, newspaper men too awestruck to jot down a single note. I mistook Cagney’s astonishing acting for Rocky’s own showmanship. However, the more astounding conclusion is that Rocky is hardly high and mighty in the end. His rough veneer is equally easy to shatter as his being is brought to the ultimate low, death.

It reflects the moral ambiguity of man that these angels with dirty faces are not in the singular sense but the sum of man in his plurality. We are all prone to evil just as we are all capable of good. But we can hardly save ourselves just as we are not always wholly good or wholly evil. The best we can do is make the way better for other people. If this film is any indication sometimes it’s extremely difficult to parse through the differences between the altruism versus the evil versus just plain cowardice.

Films about friends on diverging paths have continued to exist from Cry of the City to Mystic River but Angels with Dirty Faces is arguably one of the most compelling. Once again, Cagney steals the film with his usual no holds barred approach.  It electrifies the screen like very few others, making Angels with Dirty Faces an undisputed gangster classic and one of his very best.

Furthermore, the often discounted Michael Curtiz shows his versatility with the foremost of Warner Bros. winning craftsmen including directors William A. Wellman and Raoul Walsh. Notably, each man paired with Cagney with great results, because, after all, he is without question the king of the gangsters.

4.5/5 Stars

One, Two, Three (1961): Coca Cola and Communism

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onetwothree1“On Sunday, August 13th, 1961, the eyes of America were on the nation’s capital, where Roger Maris was hitting home runs #44 and 45 against the Senators. On that same day, without any warning, the East German Communists sealed off the border between East and West Berlin. I only mention this to show the kind of people we’re dealing with—Real Shifty.” ~ James Cagney as C.R. MacNamara

I love Billy Wilder. It’s as if he’s a lightning rod for all things controversial, biting, and politically charged, and he’s got a wicked wit. Thus, a cultural moment such as the Berlin Crisis must have been a juicy piece of material for him. Since it was, after all, his native land before the war, and he fills the frame with all the necessary touchstones. His collaborative script with I.A.L. Diamond carries a similar frenetic rapid firepower to Hawk’s His Girl Friday while maintaining a point of view relevant to that moment in time. The East Germans march in anti-American parades with signs plastered with the faces of Khrushchev and Castro. We pick out words like Little Rock, U2, Kennedy, and so.

This is really a film about Coca-Cola, capitalism, and Yankee ingenuity as it rubs up against the Soviet philosophy, where both sides end up getting poked at. It’s the arena of the Cold War played for comedic effect.

C.R. MacNamara (James Cagney) is an ambitious established Coca-Cola exec who is used to working all across the world with his wife (Arlene Francis) and children being towed along with them. He’s looking for the next big job to propel his career even higher and Berlin is his latest stop. Our first trip to his office offers a bit of the comedic corporate hierarchy of The Apartment.

There are the rather sardonic post-WWII sensibilities that the Germans are a new people, not to be implicated in the crimes — even going so far as to not acknowledge the name of an infamous Adolf. Although his heel-clicking righthand man Schlemmer furiously denies it, there’s a sense that he’s a closet Gestapo (a less crazed version of Dr. Strangelove). He cannot deny his conditioned urges after all.

onetwothree2When he’s not getting English lessons or doing dictation with his shapely secretary (Liselotte Pulver), Mac is trying to swing a deal to start selling his billion-dollar beverage in the Soviet sector. He’s met by three bumbling boobs led by the portly Peripetchikoff (Leon Askin), who feel like heirs apparent to Ninotchka’s Russian trio.

Once again underlying their entrance are the political sentiments at the time. After offering Mac a cigar, they giggle that they traded the cigars for some lousy missiles (The future Cuban Missile Crisis springs to mind). There also intent on winning the Space Race.

If these were the mains concerns of Wilder’s narrative it would be at least historically fascinating, but he gives us more. One of Mac’s higher-ups Mr. Hazeltine, based in good old Atlanta Georgia dials him up on the telephone to inform him that his little angel Scarlet (Pamela Tiffin) is coming for a stay in Germany. It becomes Mac’s duty to watch over her and keep her out of trouble. At first, things seem to be going beautifully, until Scarlet disappears only to return with a boyfriend (Horst Bucholtz) from the eastern sector. A bamboozled Mac tries to figure out how to get rid of the Commie only to find out the two contrarian lovebirds are married and there just might be a child on the way!

To add to the ruckus, Mr. and Mrs. Hazeltine abruptly decide to come visit their baby to see how she’s getting on across the pond. Being the clever capitalist that he is, Mac hatches a plan to dump Scarlet’s Soviet beau and get her back to her parents. But it’s not that easy. It means dealing with his three Communist counterparts, giving them what they want, in the form of Fraulein Ingeborg, and getting Scarlet to her parents in good health.

onetwothree3The monetized mayhem is complete with car chases, Soviet torture involving “Its Bitsy Teenie Weenie Polka Dot Bikini,” and a scramble to turn the belligerent Otto Piffl into a respectable capitalist. It’s a brilliant escapade blending social commentary and narrative hiccups as only Wilder could.

And, boy oh boy, can Jimmy Cagney deliver dialogue. He’s as dynamic as ever with every phrase and movement, snapping all the while with entrepreneurial abandon. Meanwhile, the score is constantly clapping, bouncing, tap tap tapping away in the background.

There are nods to Gunsmoke and Little Caesar all in the same scene. We get allusions to the Algerian situation, Freedom buses, Grace Kelly, Spartacus, Nat King Cole, Duke Snider, and columnist Ear Wilson — the only one I had to look up. There’s even a cuckoo clock that plays Yankee Doodle Dandy. If I’m not mistaken James Cagney was in a pretty decent film involving that song at one point in his career.

The film’s wicked wit is perfectly illustrated by the following bit:

“My father is an S.N.O.B.”

“A what?”

It’s a film that has a playful sensuality and potential rudeness that is all the while veiled behind 1960s sensibilities like Coca-Cola and baseball. Wilder was the master at subverting the norm and making us laugh the whole time. One, Two, Three is a blast from the past that is as refreshing as a sip of Coca-Cola, while also carrying a political charge.

“I wouldn’t touch the Russians with a ten foot Pole and I’m not interested in the Poles either!” ~ Mr. Hazeltine

4/5 Stars