Happy Thanksgiving!!

FROM JAMES CAGNEY!!!

AND

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:

He Was Her Man (1934)

I just watched the 1934 James Cagney movie He Was Her Man, and it wasn’t very good. James Cagney was kinda boring as Flicker Hayes, the completely reformed safecracker who goes on the lam to San Francisco and its outskirts; he didn’t really yell or punch anybody! Again, he wore that stupid mustache but it didn’t bother me as much as it did in Ceiling Zero. Joan Blondell was also pretty good but she seemed pretty sad throughout the film, like I am when I get preoccupied. Alas, this would be their last film together—and this was kinda a bad excuse of a film to end their seven-film partnership. (I wish their on-screen partnership gained as much recognition as Tracy and Hepburn’s, Astaire and Rogers’, and Bogart and Bacall’s.)
This film was the first to bump off James Cagney since The Public Enemy, and the characters and the endings could not be more dissimilar. Flicker Hayes was Cagney’s first ex-criminal to reform completely. After doing his time, he returns to society to put the finger on mobsters, aid a young woman in distress, act with consideration toward others and—ultimately—sacrifice his love and life. Perhaps Cagney’s constant complaining [for better scripts] finally resulted in this script; and though he again plays a cocky wiseguy, he achieves true redemption by the film’s end. James Cagney actually commits no real criminal acts in this film; he only flees to San Francisco since the gang he formerly worked with conspires to kill him.

At least He Was Her Man worked a few changes on the gangster formula. Much of the film is set in a California fishing village where Cagney hides out and much of the action revolves around his flirtation with a reformed streetwalker engaged to one of the fishermen. At least Cagney made his character, Flicker Hayes, noticeably different from the cocky gunmen who had made him a star. Since Hayes spends much of the film in hiding, Cagney toned down his performance, only allowing the occasional sneer to remind viewers that he was playing a man living outside the law. He also grew a mustache for the role.

Providing strong support in He Was Her Man was Victor Jory, who had moved into character roles after being unsuccessfully groomed for stardom at Fox (where, admittedly, he played leading roles primarily in low-budget films). Jory’s role as the decent fisherman who almost loses Blondell to Cagney was different from the more villainous roles, like Jonas Wilkerson in Gone with the Wind (1939), for which he would be best remembered.

Despite the talent assembled, He Was Her Man was not among Warner’s or Cagney’s most successful films. Critics were decidedly mixed, many complaining that Cagney’s new mustache was far from flattering. He Was Her Man would fade from public view quickly, though not because of the mixed reviews. It was released in May 1934, just three months before the industry agreed to stricter enforcement of their self-censoring Production Code. The film’s clear depiction of Blondell’s character as a prostitute was a violation of the Code, which would keep Warner Bros. from re-issuing the picture after its initial run. It also kept the film off television for years, depriving fans of a chance to see Cagney in a different type of gangster role. I wouldn’t really recommend this film for any James Cagney fan since it’s so bleak and depressing and a real turkey. Happy commenting!!

(Next blog: Something to Sing About [1937])

He Was Her Man trailer:

Videos Related to Yankee Doodle Dandy

A video montage about James Cagney and love, which has nothing to do with this film but has a few clips from it (the song's from the musical Chicago):

A news profile about James Cagney from 1986, when he died, which is not related to this film but its star: