This is the iconic Jimmy Cagney of 1933, the one the impressionists used to imitate. He whirls around, dances from place to place, shrugs, gestures flamboyantly, tilts his fedora at a rakish angle, clips guys on the jaw, throws women around, speaks like a machine gun and spouts wisecracks like a gusher of oil. "Yeah, yeah. Sure, you're my pal. I'm gonna letchu have it foist." He rarely got credit for his range as an actor, either in dramatic roles, as in "The Gallant Hours", or comic, as in "What Price Glory?" Recently sprung from Sing Sing, Cagney worms his way into the job as a photographer for a tabloid newspaper in New York. He accomplishes this by visiting a grief-stricken fireman who has holed up with a shotgun, then stealing the man's wedding picture from the wall. That's the wall over the bed in which the fireman's wife was found with her lover, both dead.
The photo is published and Cagney gets a raise, although in fact his taking the photo from the man's home was an illegal act. The picture doesn't need to be copyrighted or anything. It's the personal property of the bereaved fireman, just like his chair or his five-dollar bill. I'd like to get into this issue further but I'm forbidden to do so by legal discretion, common sense, and total ignorance.
Cagney's pal on the paper is the alcoholic newsman Ralph Bellamy, ashamed of himself for working on such a rag, chasing scandals.
There is a romance thrown in between Cagney and the daughter of a police lieutenant. The cop hates Cagney, an ex jailbird, figuring he's not good enough for a daughter who is going to college. (Going to college was hardly taken for granted in the depths of the Great Depression.) Cagney wiggles and fast-talks his way out of one tight spot after another and winds up with the high-class dame. Bellamy quits boozing it up. After witnessing a spectacular shoot out, the two of them get respectable jobs at a respectable newspaper.
There is more than one improbability in the plot but before you can say, "Wait a minute!", the story has zipped along and you've forgotten what your objection was. What a tempo! Not a moment of screen time is wasted. Something that propels the story is always going on.
It's undemanding fluff. An experienced hack at Warner Brothers could have rattled off this script in the time it took to type it. But it's diverting fluff. The plot may not be exactly compelling but Cagney is. You can't take your eyes off the guy. Neither can the women. Alice White keeps throwing herself at him, kissing and mauling his face. It happens to me all the time but it's a little demanding on our suspension of disbelief because, after all, Cagney was no matinée idol and was shorter than I am. I wouldn't buy the DVD but I enjoyed watching the flick.
The photo is published and Cagney gets a raise, although in fact his taking the photo from the man's home was an illegal act. The picture doesn't need to be copyrighted or anything. It's the personal property of the bereaved fireman, just like his chair or his five-dollar bill. I'd like to get into this issue further but I'm forbidden to do so by legal discretion, common sense, and total ignorance.
Cagney's pal on the paper is the alcoholic newsman Ralph Bellamy, ashamed of himself for working on such a rag, chasing scandals.
There is a romance thrown in between Cagney and the daughter of a police lieutenant. The cop hates Cagney, an ex jailbird, figuring he's not good enough for a daughter who is going to college. (Going to college was hardly taken for granted in the depths of the Great Depression.) Cagney wiggles and fast-talks his way out of one tight spot after another and winds up with the high-class dame. Bellamy quits boozing it up. After witnessing a spectacular shoot out, the two of them get respectable jobs at a respectable newspaper.
There is more than one improbability in the plot but before you can say, "Wait a minute!", the story has zipped along and you've forgotten what your objection was. What a tempo! Not a moment of screen time is wasted. Something that propels the story is always going on.
It's undemanding fluff. An experienced hack at Warner Brothers could have rattled off this script in the time it took to type it. But it's diverting fluff. The plot may not be exactly compelling but Cagney is. You can't take your eyes off the guy. Neither can the women. Alice White keeps throwing herself at him, kissing and mauling his face. It happens to me all the time but it's a little demanding on our suspension of disbelief because, after all, Cagney was no matinée idol and was shorter than I am. I wouldn't buy the DVD but I enjoyed watching the flick.