White Heat (1949)

I just finally watched the 1949 James Cagney movie White Heat, and it was cool. James Cagney was great as Cody Jarrett, the crazy, madman (Hitler-like) criminal who has an obsessed and less than healthy relationship w/ his mother (an Oedipal mama's boy). Brutal, psychotic criminal Cody Jarrett trusts no one, least of all his unfaithful wife Verna and overly ambitious right-hand man Ed Sommers; no one, that is, except his equally criminal mother, the only one who can soothe the blinding migraines that plague him. Sent to jail on a charge he fakes to avoid conviction for the more serious crimes of train robbery and murder, Cody takes into his gang smalltime crook Vic Pardo, who is in reality undercover cop Hank Fallon, sent to infiltrate the Jarrett gang. Cody controls his gang from prison via instructions passed to his mother. Later, in the prison mess hall, Cody learns of Ma Jarret's murder. He goes berserk, and it takes several guards to restrain him and drag him screaming from the room. He's put into a straitjacket and placed in the prison clinic, from which he engineers an escape, taking "Pardo" along with him. After a botched payroll-robbery at an oil refinery, Cody learns Pardo is a special agent and tries to kill him.

An exciting, dynamic film in its own right, White Heat also stands out as the flaming finale to the era of stark, fast-paced crime films made famous by Warner Brothers and James Cagney (among other stars) from the 1930s on ­ films in which the focus was on the often violent but charismatic gangster rather than the law enforcement officials who hunt him. It was also the apotheosis of Cagney's brilliant career, a kind of summing up of the memorable outlaw characters he had created. His projects that followed in the 1950s were mostly lackluster affairs, and the cocky, pugnacious star audiences had come to love was glimpsed infrequently in such films as Love Me or Leave Me and Mister Roberts (both 1955). His last big film before retirement was the Billy Wilder Cold War comedy One Two Three (1961). He returned to the screen twenty years later as the turn-of-the-century New York police chief in Ragtime and made one more film, the TV drama Terrible Joe Moran (1984) before his death in 1986.

White Heat, then, is a chance to catch Cagney one last time as the no-holds barred gangster he created in such pictures as The Public Enemy (1931) and Angels with Dirty Faces (1938). Here, however, the character has been pushed to the extreme, and the progression to Cody Jarrett can be traced through a trio of gangster films made by director Raoul Walsh, of which this was the last. In The Roaring Twenties (1939), Cagney's criminal is seen in the context of history and society, a man whose ambition and drive is put to service on the wrong side of the law by the circumstances of time and place. In High Sierra (1941), Walsh cast Humphrey Bogart as Roy "Mad Dog" Earle, a troubled man on the run, the gangster as the last individual in an increasingly soulless world. With White Heat the archetype is pushed to the very edge, depicted as a vicious man gripped by insanity. It's fitting that the image Cagney was so identified with should go out with such a bang.

The spectacular ending aside, the most famous scene in White Heat is undoubtedly the one in which Jarrett gets the news in prison of his mother's death. The news is passed down from inmate to inmate at the prison mess hall tables until it finally reaches Jarrett, who explodes into psychotic grief, staggering around the room landing punches on everyone who gets in his way while letting out a kind of strangled, primal cry. Cagney was once asked by a reporter if he had to "psych" himself up for the scene. Cagney responded, "You don't psych yourself up for these things, you do them," reiterating his very non-Method philosophy that working on inward emotional motivation is a waste of time leading to a performance solely for the actor himself. According to Cagney, an actor shouldn't psych himself up to be the character, he should simply understand the character and play it for the audience. His only preparation for the scene, he later said, was remembering a visit as a youngster to see a friend's uncle who was in a psychiatric hospital. "My God, what an education," he said. "The shrieks, the screams of those people under restraint. I remembered those cries, saw that they fitted, and I called on my memory to do as required."

In some ways, White Heat is also a swan song for Warner Brothers, the studio that had become known for quickly produced, gritty action-oriented pictures with a social conscience. By the time this film was released, the Supreme Court had forced the big Hollywood studios to divest themselves of their lucrative theater chains, and the stock company that had made Warners so successful in the 1930s and early '40s had either left the studio or were on their way out. Several stars had already made their last movies under their long-term contracts: Ida Lupino in 1947, Olivia De Havilland in 1946, Ann Sheridan in 1949 and "Little Caesar" Edward G. Robinson in Key Largo (1948). Humphrey Bogart's last Warners picture would be The Enforcer (1951), and Errol Flynn would exit in 1953. Even 'Queen of the Lot' Bette Davis was history, storming out of her contract after the over-the-top melodrama Beyond the Forest (1949), and not to return until Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962).

Cagney had already quit the studio after his Oscar®-winning turn as George M. Cohan in Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942). "Movies should be entertaining, not blood baths," he said in the last days of his Warners contract. "I'm sick of carrying a gun and beating up women." He formed his own production company with his brother William, and for the next five years their pictures were distributed by United Artists. There were, however, only four films in those years, none of them very successful financially. So Cagney returned to Warner Brothers with a degree of autonomy (his production company remained intact) and made the kind of "blood bath" he had turned his back on seven years earlier. "It's what people want me to do," he grumbled. "Someday, though, I'd like to make just one picture kids could go see."For all his grumbling, though, White Heat remains one of the crowning achievements of Cagney's career. It's hard to imagine another actor of the time convincingly pulling off this all-stops-out portrayal of Cody Jarrett. And this is no mere farewell or throwback to another era. It has the volatile dynamism of the best gangster flicks of the '30s and '40s, but it mixes in important tendencies taking shape in post-war cinema. The train robbery heralds the attention to the logistical details of a crime that would play such a vital element in films like John Huston's The Asphalt Jungle (1950) and Stanley Kubrick's The Killing (1956). It displays elements of the documentary style made popular by Naked City (1948) and similar movies. And it shares something of the film noir style in its often shadowy cinematography and focus on its lead character's twisted psychology.

White Heat was Raoul Walsh's best film since High Sierra, another powerful thriller set in the same vicinity. But he directed another Warners star famous for playing gangsters, his first work with Cagney since The Strawberry Blonde (which I personally prefer to this movie) in 1941. (Of course, he directed both Cagney and Bogart in The Roaring Twenties.) White Heat is arguably the finest work of Walsh's impressive career, and the director always gave credit to Cagney for adding fascinating layers of depth to the character. Perhaps the richest performance of his career, it--like Rocky Sullivan in Angels with Dirty Faces--should have brought Jim an Oscar; but, as in 1938, the Academy still didn't give Best Actor awards for gangster portrayals (ha-ha). Cagney's Academy Award for Yankee Doodle Dandy was won as much by the patriotic character and subject matter as by the actual performance (but Jimmy Cagney preferred that way, and so do I). White Heat was the six Warners film to depict a relationship between a Cagney character and his mother. Interestingly, it was the first to bump off Mom, a character who would never again appear in a Cagney film released by Warners.

As we all know, like many other classic films, this film is not safe from the parodying clutches of some TV shows such as The Simpsons. In The Simpsons, Bart paraphrases Cody Jarrett's famous quote "Made it, Ma! Top of the world!" while riding a globe in an episode from season 10 called The Wizard of Evergreen Terrace.

I didn't really watch the shooting scenes because they were too dramatic. Anyway, this film is a must for any James Cagney fan, but I have a legitimate reason for such procrastination: I never really liked James Cagney's famous films, including Yankee Doodle Dandy. I really preferred films like Footlight Parade, Taxi!, Hard to Handle, some of his underrated works. I do not care for the famous ones, especially Angels with Dirty Faces. Happy Commenting!!!
(Next blog [for sure]: Monkey Business [1931])

Clips from White Heat:

The St. Louis Kid (1934)

I just recently watched the 1934 James Cagney film The St. Louis Kid for the first time, and it was good. James Cagney was good as Eddie Kennedy, the pugnacious truck driver who always finds himself in jail and uses a new method of punching guys--using his head (literally)! In The St. Louis Kid (1934), his nineteenth picture, James Cagney plays a truck driver who gets embroiled in a "milk war" between a trucking company and striking dairymen - a topical subject of the time. The trucking company is determined to maintain its milk shipments even though the dairymen are on strike. When a dairy worker is murdered, Cagney is accused of the crime and must find the real killer to clear himself. He also must rescue his kidnapped girlfriend (Patricia Ellis) in this zippy little film which runs barely over an hour.

Production began on July 16, 1934. On July 19, Warner Bros. production chief Hal Wallis sent director Ray Enright a memo, which read in part: "Your first two days' dailies, generally, look very good. The action is good and your set-ups are OK but there is one major criticism and that is in Cagney's characterization... I know that, when he first read the script, he objected to playing another tough character and I can see that he is doing his best to soften him up and make him as much of a gentleman as possible...It is true that we don't want to play him as tough as he usually plays these things as there is naturally an objection to slugging dames and all of that stuff today but, at the same time, we don't want to lose Cagney's real characterization which is a semi-tough character... It is going to hurt the picture considerably unless you change immediately." In a follow-up memo, Wallis wrote: "I want you to call me...when you get this and let me know if you are directing the picture or if Cagney is directing it." A snide remark, to be sure, but it illustrates the power struggle that often went on as both the studio and the star battled over shaping the star's on-screen persona.

In this film, it is said that James Cagney's character is 24 years old; Cagney himself was already 35 years old (already entering middle-age) when he did this film. However, because of his baby face, he could easily have gotten away with playing someone 11 years younger than himself!! And Cagney the country gentleman is made obvious by his lines in which he speaks highly of the countryside and praises the farmers of America (I'm pretty sure he ad-libbed those lines)! Speaking of which, some critics complained that the picture would have been far more interesting if it had delved more deeply into the politics of the milk wars, but almost all admired the film's fast pace. Many also noted that the movie inverts a memorable feature of some of Cagney's previous films: "The St. Louis Kid shows James Cagney receiving a cuff on the jaw from his leading lady instead of giving her one," observed Time. "He can take it as well as dish it out," said The New York Times. "He permits himself to be slapped vigorously by Patricia Ellis, [and his] response is limited in violence to what the cinema literateurs picturesquely refer to as a dirty look."And Cagney seemed to use that dirty look rather mischievously and cutely!

Supporting player Allen Jenkins, a fixture in working-class Warner melodramas and comedies of the era, appeared with Cagney five times, usually as the comic sidekick. In the book Warner Brothers Presents, film historian Ted Sennett wrote vividly of Jenkins: "Cabbie, gangster, manager, sidekick, he had the battered but tenacious look of the urban animal who had been around - and intends to stay around." (And besides seeing him in Cagney pictures, I think I remember seeing Allen Jenkins in one episode of I Love Lucy as well. For those of you who are also big fans of I Love Lucy, you should know what I'm talking about.)

Co-star Patricia Ellis, a now-forgotten actress of low-budget 1930s Warner Bros. movies, was a last-minute replacement for Ann Dvorak, who had herself replaced Margaret Lindsay. Speaking of which, I enjoyed the fact that Cagney and the actress started out as backstabbing enemies (in one scene, she puts Tobasco sauce on his toast and I just love it when he goes outside and spits it out) but became rather disappointed when they became boyfriend and girlfriend.

The St. Louis Kid was supposedly Cagney's first "Code" film, while according to most sources, that honor belongs to Here Comes the Navy (fun fact: Cagney became one of the Top 10 box-office draws during the year 1934, next to Shirley Temple and Clark Gable). It was a project apropos of his recent election to Vice President of the Screen Actors Guild. Anyway, in the end, the Cagney couple get married and spend their honeymoon in jail after being busted by an innkeeper. This ending is an obvious example of the type of film Warner Brothers began producing after the Production Code was enforced.

The St. Louis Kid is a prime example of the studio's blend of compromised liberalism, cocky tough-guy action and situation comedy that emerged after mid-1934. Hollywood liked to place the blame for labor troubles in the 1930s when it could, so that it did not have to confront corporate American responsibility labor violence (I've notice that the same evasion marks Taxi!), but still, the picture was very occasionally funny plus lively.

And I almost forgot to add that Jimmy Cagney dances a little in this film at a local dance--and that's where his girl-enemy falls in love with him. (She is also attracted by his incendiary charm, which is what I'm also attracted by.) And I also almost forgot to add that I was both amused and surprised when Cagney escapes from his handlers after being accused by doing the personally unspeakable: Smoking a cigarette at a gas station in the scene.
Anyhow, before watching this film, I couldn't understand any of its plot or itself, and I doubt if I could understand it when I watched it. It was a Jim Cagney movie that I wasn't so crazy about seeing but then again, I really wanted to see it! As for the head blows, suitably enhanced by the sound department, they were very surprising and funny, and Cagney would repeat this bit later in a scrap with Bette Davis in The Bride Came C.O.D. (1941). I would recommend this movie for any James Cagney fan who loves seeing him in lively comedy-dramas.

(Next blog [for sure]: The Bride Came C.O.D. [1941])

Clips from The St. Louis Kid:

Great Guy (1936)

I just recent watched the 1936 James Cagney movie Great Guy, and it was okay but the film quality was poor and grainy and so was the sound. James Cagney was good as Johnny Cave, a deputy in the New York Department of Weights and Measures who chases crooks and cheats. It is, to say the least, a comedown from the FBI. There is a difference in one's level of involvement when one is watching public enemies being run to the ground, and when one is watching petty crooks, like butchers who put their thumb on the scale or gas station attendants who give short measure to their customers, being brought to justice. Cagney's character is congealed by the desire to not resort to violence or even a wisecrack in fulfilling his duty for the public's well-being.

Mae Clarke, who was his leading lady in The Public Enemy (1931) and Lady Killer (1933), is back as his girlfriend in this film and even though I'm jealous of any Cagney romance, I'm not jealous of this one. Rather I'm relieved for her, as she does not get pushed around or bullied by Jimmy Cagney. After getting smashed in the face by a grapefruit and being dragged across the room by the hair by Cagney, Clarke finally gets to bully him so it's sort of revenge on her part! She is the straight-laced girlfriend who insists that they eat in a cafeteria less fancier than the Ritz so they can save money for their stash (and during the Depression, it was very wise to do so). This, like most of their other scenes, amounts to premarital nagging, and one gets the impression that if any grapefruit is going to be thrown in this relationship, she will be the one doing the throwing. I especially like the scenes where they kiss and talk on a sofa that looks like it's in their home but is actually in a furniture store!! That is so like The Simpsons and Family Guy, where it seems like they're doing one but they're actually doing another.

As for the supporting cast, they are adequate, but they are generally overshadowed rather easily by Cagney. Mae Clarke is relatively appealing as Cagney's fiancée, but she mostly has to react to situations, since the script and dialogue don't give her much more to work with. The movie as a whole largely follows a familiar pattern, and with a lesser star it would have been a rather routine affair. Cagney brings it up a couple of notches, and his own performance certainly won't disappoint anyone either. And of course, the Cagney acting style is unchanged. All the gestures are in place, but particularly the floating, air-sculpting hands, this time not overdone. In later years the use of his hands as dramatic punctuation dimishing considerably, but in this yet early phase of his career they are deftly and fascinatingly employed. (But I swear to God, they annoy me in general. I heard that he uses them all the time in Hard to Handle.) He seems to be at ease and enjoying himself tremendously--the performance turned in here is intelligent and crackles with his unique energy and surefire charisma. Mae Clarke's presence lends a definite Warner's feel to the overall production, and the story moves along smartly after a rocky introduction that seems to begin three or four reels into the story.

James Cagney made this movie after winning a contractal battle with Warner Brothers. According to the book "The Complete Films of James Cagney" by Homer Dickens (or Simpson?):

When Great Guy was released in, in December 1936, Cagney had been off the screen
for one year. During this time he and Warner Bros. battled in court, with Jimmy
finally becoming victorious. This was his first picture (in a two-picture-a-year
deal) with the independent outfit Grand National, and was based on the "Johnny
Cave Stories" by James Edward Grant that had been appearing in the Sunday
Evening Post. John G. Blystone neatly directed on a shoestring budget, which was
all too apparent, since a Warners picture had definite production values that
were missing here. But, despite the budget, Great Guy, or Pluck of the Irish as
it was called in England, was a nifty an exciting melodrama. It was fun seeing
Mae Clarke back in a Cagney picture.

I didn't really watch the fighting scenes because they were too dramatic. I would recommend this film for any James Cagney fan who likes watching him in melodramas. Happy commenting!!!
(Next blog: The Fighting 69th [1940])

Clips from Great Guy:

The Roaring Twenties (1939)

I just recently watched the 1939 James Cagney movie The Roaring Twenties (sorry it took me a while before writing it), and it was very dramatic. James Cagney was great as Eddie Bartlett, the former World War I veteran/cab driver who goes from being a big shot Prohibition-era bootlegging gangster to a poor, disheveled drunkard bum. (For those of you who are Simpsons fan, you gotta admit that the last name Bartlett is pretty sweet.)

Characters in The Roaring Twenties were based loosely on actual Prohibition-era personalities, such as nightclub hostess Texas Guinan ("Hello, sucker!" was her refrain to club patrons) and New York gangster Larry Fay, who was reportedly the model for the literary character Jay Gatsby.) Incorporating newsreel clips and popular music from the period, and a voiceover by an omniscient reporter who assures the audience that what theyare about to see is based on true events, The Roaring Twenties has something of a pseudo-documentary feel.

Humphrey Bogart was also terrific in this film; two years later, he would get his famous big break in his role as detective Sam Spade in the film The Maltese Falcon—which is another film that I had to watch in film class—and in his role as a gangster on the lam in High Sierra (the character's name in that movie escapes me at the moment). This was Cagney and Bogie's last film together; the other films they made together were Angels with Dirty Faces—which was made the year before—and The Oklahoma Kid.

Cagney found that the freedom to improvise that Walsh allowed him helped boost the script into an above-average genre film. Cagney recalled the collaborative atmosphere on the set, remembering how one actor, Frank McHugh (who was back as Cagney's faithful sidekick), suggested a different opening scenario than the one provided in the script. All agreed to trash the opening scene and go with McHugh's suggestion, thus providing the irreverent banter between Cagney and Bogart, who meet as doughboys in a World War I foxhole.

Cagney reminisced later about the little touches that he felt "added flavor to bland writing," including the addition of the hilarious exchange between his character and Priscilla Lane's, in which his advances are turned down in humiliating fashion. In another scene, Cagney spiced up a run-of-the-mill fight by positioning one opponent to accidentally hit another adversary after being punched by Cagney's character. The film also benefits from an able supporting cast -- notably Gladys George (who inherited the part from Ann Sheridan) as the Texas Guinan character, plus McHugh and Lane, as Cagney's romantic interest.

I didn't really watch the shooting scenes in this film because I thought they were too dramatic. And I didn't feel sorry for Cagney when Priscilla Lane dumped him and went for Jeffrey Lynn instead; he didn't deserve her. (And there is an awkward scene where Lane climbs into Cagney's cab years later and she tells him about her present life while he just grunts in reponse because he doesn't forgive her for dumping him years ago. What an awkward reunion!) And the ship scene, where Cagney and his gang are trying to bootleg liquor, in this film reminded me of a scene in a Simpsons episode (which is on a post on my Simpsons blogpost) where Homer, Bart, and a group led by Mr. Burns travel to an island holding sugar to smuggle it into Springfield after Marge declares a war against sugar products when the city is declared "America's Fattest Town!" by a world records book.

The film did extremely good at the box office and Cagney won a Best Actor award from the National Board of Review -- quite an accomplishment in a year that saw the premieres of such classics as Gone With the Wind, Mr. Smith Goes To Washington, and Stagecoach.
The Roaring Twenties turned out to be a transitional film in Cagney's career; his subsequent roles during the 1940s would focus on his song-and-dance talents in such movies as Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942). Walsh would work with Bogart again in They Drive By Night (1940) and High Sierra (1941), in which Bogart started to create the world-weary character that would be most identified with the Bogie legend. Ten years after The Roaring Twenties, Cagney would reunite with Walsh for White Heat (1949), in which he would revive the gangster character that put him on the map. (And as an end-of-the-year present for you folks, I'll probably do a review blog on that film. ) I would recommend this film for James Cagney fans who love to see the guy in gangster films. And again, folks, happy commenting!!!

(Next blog: Yankee Doodle Dandy [1942])
Clips from The Roaring Twenties:

What Makes James Cagney So Great?

I'm taking a break between James Cagney film reviews to do what seems to be another James Cagney blog. Now I ask you, ladies and gentlemen, what makes James Francis Cagney, Jr. so great? Well, for one thing, it's his amazing ability to do a wide variety of roles; another thing is his amazing charisma and the fact that he could spark up the the screen with his personality and his lightning energy (does that make sense?) Orson Welles once said that "watching James Cagney acting was like watching a bunch of firecrackers going off." James Cagney probably could do every genre possible: drama, war, gangster, musical, crime, comedy, adventure, Western, biopic, epic, film noir, etc. And somehow his proficiency (did I spell that right?) as an actor ranged as far as Shakespeare, which he had no experience in, but conquered (not so well) in A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935). (And let me tell that that movie is the only thing do with Shakespeare that I would ever touch.) And it seems ironic that even though we know Jimmy Cagney as a tough guy, he won his only Oscar™ for his portrayal of song-and-dance man George M. Cohan in Yankee Doodle Dandy. So, tell me, folks; what do you think makes James Cagney so great. Please comment w/ your input. Thanx.