Captains of the Clouds (1942)

I just recently watched the 1942 James Cagney film Captains of the Clouds, and I fought it spectacular, photography-wise. James Cagney was good as Brian MacLean, the cocky Canadian bush pilot who joins the Royal Canadian Air Force and must learn to turn himself into a team player. As for the film itself, I did not care for it; I only paid attention to the wonderful cinematography that the wonderful Technicolor had to offer. Anyway, folks, this is almost my last James Cagney film review blog, so there will be a hiatus between this blog and the next James Cagney film review blog, until like next month or so, or until that yahoo on YouTube finally uploads a new James Cagney movie (or I may finally watch White Heat and do a film review blog about that). Anyhow, during that hiatus which I'm not sure is gonna exist yet, I will be writing Marx Brothers film review blogs. Just wanted to keep you folks posted for a moment there. So anyway, on with the film...
"So Full of Spectacle and Glory it Had to be Made in Technicolor!" screamed the ads for Captains of the Clouds, and sure enough, James Cagney's first color movie boasts some spectacular aerial sequences. The story follows a group of Canadian bush pilots who decide to join the Royal Canadian Air Force when WWII breaks out. It sounds simple enough, but the truth is that Captains of the Clouds was an exceptionally challenging and difficult picture to make. Warner Bros. producer Hal Wallis wrote in his memoirs that the film "proved to be by far the most extensive and difficult venture in location work undertaken by Warners since the silent period." Most of the film was shot in and around Ottawa. With difficult wartime conditions, every hotel in the area was booked, and the crew had to be housed in an army camp - with army food. "They grumbled loud and long," recalled Wallis, "and twice we came close to a strike on the picture."

One day, Cagney suffered a concussion during a stunt in which his character gets knocked into the water by a propeller. Afterwards, Wallis and director Michael Curtiz were informed by their technical adviser that in such a situation "the propeller would normally have been turned off, and we had gone through this experience for nothing." Other problems included truck crashes, plane crashes, various on-set injuries and even lightning, which one afternoon struck a camera reloading shed "and burned it to the ground."But the single hardest sequence to shoot was the elaborate "wings" ceremony, in which Air Marshal Billy Bishop's speech to the ranks on an airstrip is interrupted by Cagney's daredevil flying maneuvers. The scene took forever to nail down. Just getting the timing right was a major logistical challenge which required many attempts, but there were other problems: A sudden rainstorm. Engine trouble. Not enough sunlight. Malfunctioning cameras. The air marshal showing up late. After a week, wrote Wallis, "Rain, technical mishaps, and problems of every kind continued to dog us. We finally had to piece together fragments of footage from the many days of shooting in order to achieve a finished result. In the picture, however, it looks as if the whole sequence was shot at high noon in optimum sunny conditions."Captains of the Clouds sprang from a magazine story called "Bush Pilots" which Canadian actor Raymond Massey had brought to Wallis's attention. Cagney wasn't crazy about the script but was persuaded to do the film by Jack Warner, who told him that he would be contributing to the war effort by accepting the role. Cagney relented, but only on the condition that his brother Bill be the line producer. In his memoirs, Cagney also remembered the film as one of his most grueling, but he added, "the one consolation for all the hard work was the kind of person you worked with. Alan Hale, that big, wonderful guy we all loved. Always in a good humor. Dennis Morgan, also a nice, nice guy. As the years wear on, I look back at those people and think about them. When they were around, I really enjoyed them, but now I realize that I could have enjoyed them more. The picture business has always been such a hysterical one and the demands on attention so great that one didn't have time to savor everything to the fullest - particularly your friends. That is one of my regrets."



Reviews were mixed, but critics raved over the sensational aerial scenes. Time said, "Although Cagney is much better than his thankless role, the real heroes of Captains are director Michael Curtiz and his five cameramen, who caught the matchless greens and browns of Canada's infinite north-country." The Motion Picture Academy thought so, too, nominating Sol Polito for a Best Cinematography Oscar®. (He lost to Fox's The Black Swan, shot by Leon Shamroy.) Ironically, Polito almost didn't make it to the set. As an Italian, he had serious trouble getting across the Canadian border since Canada was already at war with Italy. He also suffered a heart attack during production.

Captains of the Clouds was completed before Pearl Harbor and released in January 1942. In hindsight, the picture is an interesting precursor to the WWII combat film genre that would soon get underway. Intended also as a rousing "war preparedness" film for American audiences, by the time it played, the U.S. was already at war, but it did serve as a showcase of the Canadian war effort. Released in an era of patriotic films that skirted propaganda themes, Captains of the Clouds received an enthusiastic public acceptance. Although it was a "Hollywood" production, the film premiered simultaneously on February 21, 1942 in New York, London, Ottawa, Cairo, Melbourne, Toronto, Winnipeg and Vancouver with RCAF pilots transporting film copies to all these cities. The public reaction can be partly attributed to the plot line that revolved around the unique Canadian wilderness and the enigmatic bush pilot mystique. The vivid aerial scenes filmed in Technicolor were another aspect of the expensive production that garnered critical attention. Although reviews were mixed especially in regards to the stagey plot and forced "romantic" overtures, the aerial scenes were considered the film's redeeming feature.

The description of the film's production is detailed in an article at http://www.pastforward.ca/perspectives/august_292003.htm

Much of
the crew stayed at the Empire Hotel and at Len Hughes Camp Champlain during
their stay here. The big stars spent very little time here but some of the crew
remained for several weeks shooting the bush plane scenes. Cagney hated flying
and did not fly as was the case with the other actor pilots. Hollywood stunt
flyers were brought in. The close-ups of the cabins of the planes were shot
later in Hollywood in mock up cockpits. Of local interest is the fact that well
known North Bay businessman Harry Mulligan, who had some Hollywood connections
was instrumental in bringing the movie to North Bay. He loaned his carrier
pigeons to the director to send messages to North Bay for transmission to
Hollywood and elsewhere. Trout Lake was just in the early stages of its
development and there were no phones and the roads were very rough. Yvette
Gravelle Boyce who lives on Nipissing's south shore and her sister Jeanette
worked as cooks at Len Hughes Camp Champlain in 1941 and fed the staff and crew
of the film on several occasions. Cagney and others had cabins there for
convenience. The sisters and a brother were asked to be a part of a scene where
people were needed in the background and their brother caught a rope thrown from
a docking plane in one scene. Stand ins were often used until a scene was
actually shot and before the stars stepped in and sometimes a double that looked
like the star was used where a close up was not required. Mildred "Middy"
Morland, daughter of the owner of North Bay's Morland real estate company was
chosen to be a double for Brenda Marshall. In one scene she stands on a
wagonload of hay while Cagney's bush plane buzzes the wagon. The scene was shot
several times and the star was nowhere in sight until she comes down off the
wagon and is seen in a close up. Mildred married Jack Gorman, a young reporter
at the Nugget who covered the shooting of the film. They live in North Bay. She
recalls the good pay and the trips to work in a Deluxe taxi.

The film obviously recycles elements of both Devil Dogs of the Air and Ceiling Zero (in a very clumsy attempt), but without O'Brien (regrettably), and neither color nor the addition of an awful (I'll say) title song could freshen it. Anyway, Captains of the Clouds was Jimmy Cagney's second Warner Bros. aviation picture in a row (you see, it was made after The Bride Came C.O.D., and it was his fourth overall), but his very first to feature material connected to World War II. After directing this film, Michael Curtiz directed two of the generally best films in American film history which make this film look like crap: Casablanca (which I like very much since it doesn't overpraise the US unlike the latter film) and Yankee Doodle Dandy.

Anyway, I did not really watch the fighting scene at the end and some of the flying scenes since they were too dramatic. I would recommend this film for James Cagney fans who enjoy watching him in war films. Happy Commenting!!
(Next blog: A Day at the Races [1937])

Clips from Captains of the Clouds:

The Bride Came C.O.D. (1941)

I just recently watched the James Cagney/Bette Davis movie The Bride Came C.O.D., and it was pleasant if not totally great! James Cagney was lovable as Steve Collins, the scrappy aviator who must collect $1,180 to pay off his plane so it doesn't get reposessed by kidnapping Bette Davis. This is one of the few Bette Davis films that I have seen, besides that clip from All About Eve (1950) that I watched in film class last year. In fact--and don't take this to heart--I'm not really a big fan of Bette Davis. (There! I said it once again!) For some reason, I find her acting to be really disturbing! Nevertheless, I do think that she and James Cagney were very similar, as both were dramatic and could act in a wide range of film roles. Still, there is something about her that I just don't like. But before I prattle on about my feelings for Bette Davis, I should really focus on the film! So anyway...
Bette Davis and James Cagney went for a change of pace in The Bride Came C.O.D. (1941), a slapstick comedy about a runaway heiress kept from marrying a band leader when her father (Eugene Pallette) hires Cagney to kidnap her. They got the hit they were hoping for -- it was one of the year's top 20 box-office films -- but a year later the studio gave them the bird, quite literally, when Chuck Jones spoofed their film in the Conrad Cat cartoon "The Bird Came C.O.D." For Davis' part, she would later complain that all she got out of the film was a derriere full of cactus quills.

Warner Bros. had developed the project for Cagney, who was gradually moving away from gangster roles. (I personally think that Jimmy Cagney's label as a tough guy could not be more wrong! He was a very versatile actor, just like Johnny Depp and Meryl Streep!) He was making the romantic comedy The Strawberry Blonde (1941), and advance word on the film was quite good, so another comedy seemed the perfect choice. Cagney was eager to break into independent production at the time, so he insisted that his brother, William, who was set to be his partner once he went independent, serve as associate producer.

Originally the studio considered a number of established comedic actresses for the female lead. They bypassed the likes of Ann Sheridan, Ginger Rogers and Rosalind Russell, however, in favor of rising star Olivia de Havilland. Then Davis expressed an interest in the part, and Hal Wallis went to bat for her. Both had read critics' complaints that she needed a break from serious dramatic roles. In addition, she was eager to re-team with Cagney, who like her had a history of battles with the Warner Bros. management. They had not worked together since 1934, when they teamed for the minor comedy Jimmy the Gent. Some biographers have suggested that the studio was punishing her with the film because of her notorious temperament, while others have suggested she may have wanted to emulate Katharine Hepburn, who had been equally successful in serious and comic roles. Also possible is that she was drawn to the film's obvious similarities to It Happened One Night (1934), another tale of a runaway heiress saved from a bad marriage by the love of a simple working guy. Director Frank Capra had tried to cast Davis in that film, but Warners didn't want to loan her to another studio on the heels of her loan-out to RKO for Of Human Bondage (1934). Instead, the role had gone to Claudette Colbert, who ended up winning the Best Actress Oscar® most critics think should have gone to Davis for the RKO film.

Any hopes of scoring another It Happened One Night were dashed, however, when production started and the promised re-writes from twin writing partners Julius and Philip Epstein did little to improve the script. (Director William Keighley described the atmosphere on the set as funereal.) Nor were matters helped by ten days of location shooting in Death Valley in January. When Cagney complained about the heat, with temperatures climbing to 100 degrees each day, Keighley could only console him that they hadn't shot during the summer, when the highs hit 130.As for the cactus quills, studio publicity claimed that Davis actually got them by accident when she was told to jump out of Cagney's downed plane into a sand dune that concealed the offending flora. The incident was then added to the script. By other accounts, there was a stunt woman on hand to perform the bit, but when Davis got into the cactus patch for the next part of the scene, she got "quilled" nonetheless. A doctor had to be brought in to remove 45 of the things from the star's stern. Her painful situation got worse a few days later when the script called for Cagney to fire a sling shot at the injured body part.

Although most critics welcomed the comic about face for Davis and Cagney, some were quick to point out that the property itself was hardly up to their talents. The New York Times dismissed it as "a serviceable romp," while Archer Winston in The New York Post pleaded "Okay, Jimmie and Bette. You've had your fling. Now go back to work." More recent fans have looked on the film as one of the low points in both stars' careers, though acknowledging that their first love scene, set in a mine shaft, is a standout for both. Davis would fare better the following year in the more sophisticated comedy of The Man Who Came to Dinner, also written for the screen by the Epstein brothers (adapted from the 1940 Hart/Kaufman play where the Monty Woolley character is based on Alexander Woolcott play and the character Banjo is based on Harpo Marx [True!] ) while Cagney would have a much better role as a flyer in the wartime drama Captains of the Clouds (also 1942).

And while this film is definitely not one of James Cagney's or Bette Davis' best, it is enjoyable when you watch it for the first time but when you watch it for the second or third time...Well, let's just say it all goes downhill from there. Plus I might add that in one scene Cagney and Davis sing to each other discordantly through a closed door. That scene was entertaining in the trailer but in the actual film, it was awful and obnoxious! Although some of you folks may think that Bette Davis can do anything, one of those things is obviously not singing!

Now you folks may think that I judged Bette Davis rather unfairly earlier on, and I probably did, so I thought I could watch perhaps some of her best films just to see that she ain't so bad. But I can't force myself to like her. I've discovered over time that I don't have to go with the flow and that it should be okay if I don't like Bette Davis. Now I'm not complaining or anything but it seems that around here, you folks seem to have uniform interests: You all love the same actors like Bette Davis, Humphrey Bogart, Cary Grant (by the way, did any of you know that Cary Grant was Jewish?), etc, and the same films like The Thin Man, Dark Victory, Alfred Hitchcock films, etc. (And besides, we all know you can't have too much of a good thing! ) At this moment, I should stop before I get too preachy or self-serving, but all I'm saying is we should diversify our interests! To explain my point, just as an example, I have seen no one mention, or express interest in, King Kong (1933).
To make a long story short, I personally prefer Jimmy the Gent to this film but in any case, I would recommend this movie for James Cagney fans who love seeing him in comedies and who are also Bette Davis fans. Happy commenting!!!
(Next blog: A Night at the Opera [1935])

Clips from The Bride Came C.O.D.:

Ceiling Zero (1936)

I recently watched the 1936 James Cagney movie Ceiling Zero, and it was kinda good. James Cagney was great as Dizzy Davis, the playboy aviator who creeps me out. But he was annoyingly cocky to the point where I couldn't stand him. He wore that stupid mustache again and it drove me crazy! He was also pretty weird. But still, I couldn't stop looking at him for some reason. Pat O'Brien was also pretty good as the head pilot and the paterfamilias of James Cagney; I think I liked him better than James Cagney in this movie, which isn't really unusual because he's my favorite of Jimmy's male co-stars!


Ceiling Zero was a successful Broadway play and the film version was directed by Howard Hawks. Hawks, himself a pilot with combat experience win WWI, selected Ceiling Zero for its nostalgic appeal. The film's action is chiefly the changing weather. "Ceiling zero" meant total fog or similar atmospherics that prevented flight but that some daring flyers ignored, usually to their peril. One such is Dizzy Davis (Cagney), who is chief pilot and frequent heartache for Federal Airlines and is underling of old flying comrade Jake Lee (Pat O'Brien), head of the company's Newark, New Jersey airfield.

The critics ranked Ceiling Zero as near-prime Cagney and certainly a good example of its genre. A forerunner to Hawks' Only Angels Have Wings (1939), Ceiling Zero, though dealing with aviation, is a very stagebound exercise primarily confined to an unconvincing airport control room. (God, was that set fake! You could easily tell it was shot in a studio or on the backlot! But I don't really care because that at least tells me how or where the film was made. Remember that I like learning how films are made; I don't, however, like learning about the literary symbolism in a film.) Frantically parrying loads of the original production's dialogue at each other, Cagney and (especially) O'Brien nearly chew the bad set to its very foundations.

James Cagney's characters was also pretty childish. According to the book "James Cagney: A Celebration" by Richard Schickel:

Actually, that pencil-thin mustache [that Cagney wore] spoke, if not
volumes, then paragraphs, about Dizzy Davis, the dashing flyer he portrays.
Cagney was trying to vary the characters he had been doing since Here Comes the
Navy, draining it of heroic overtones, and the facial decor said something about
the childishness of his vanity. So did the inveterate womanizing the script
called upon him to undertake. So did a line Cagney insisted on writing into a
scene where O'Brien, as usual representing maturity and responsibility, is
dressing him down. The script permits him to expose the fact that, without
family, and given the wandering nature of his barnstorming career, the
characters played here by O'Brien and Stu Erwin constitute the only family he
has [ever] known. 'I'd cut my heart out for you,' the script has him say. After
which comes the line, lovely in the simplicity with which it reveals the
permanent childishness of his nature and which, the minute he heard it, Hawks,
himself an inveterate scribbler [of] improvised dialogue on the set, told
Cagney to write in. It is: 'Please don't be mad at me.' And it is, of
course, a line most of us start practicing on our parents almost as soon as we
can talk, but which we hesitate to use once we've grown-up. To hear it here, in
this bustling, bristling all-male world is a shock. And a subtle blow for
psychological truth in a unlikely context.

I didn't really watch the crashing scenes because I thought they were too dramatic. And I did find one scene real amusing; it's James Cagney's introductory scene where he jumps out of his plane when he lands at the airport after doing some aerial acrobatic stunts. In a joyous reunion, he is tossed around like a football by the other pilots for hugs. I found that pretty funny; I'd toss him around like a football any day. I didn't feel for Cagney when his friend's widow yelled at him for how his irresponsiblility and recklessness caused her husband's death (he faked a heart attack get out of a mail run to Cleveland so his friend volunteered to take over for him) but I did feel sorry for him when he lost his license. This is one of the James Cagney movies I desperately wanted to see and I can't tell you folks how happy I was I first watched this film: I was overcome with euphoria!! Anyway, I would definitely recommend this film for any James Cagney fan--unless you hate seeing him in a mustache. Happy commenting!!! And have a Happy Thanksgiving and a Happy Holiday season!!


(Next blog [for sure]: Something to Sing About [1937]) Clips from Ceiling Zero: