If Cagney made Westerns, Allen Jenkins would have been his permanent sidekick. He's in so many of Cagney's early flicks that I come to rely on his showing up with each one I watch, so I wasn't disappointed here. He makes his first screen appearance with a black eye, courtesy of his buddy Eddie Kennedy (Cagney) always getting into scrapes, with Buck Willetts (Jenkins) usually getting the short end of the stick.
You know, that town name of Ostopolis managed to bug me enough I had to do a quick internet search on it. As I suspected, none of the hits produced a town with that name, although one of them brought up this movie title. So I guess you could go from St. Louis to Chicago without ever showing up there.
As in most of Cagney's early flicks, he's got that brash, fast talking manner here, compounded by a quick head butt when his fists are out of order. Did you catch that quick shoulder shrug of his when he made it down the stairs after rescuing Ann Reid (Patricia Ellis) from the room she was locked up in? That was a nifty preview of his gangster character Rocky Sullivan from "Angels With Dirty Faces", my favorite Cagney film.
I liked Patricia Ellis in this picture, she had sort of that Ann Sheridan kind of sass going for her which made me wonder why she didn't have more of a career, although she mostly appeared in B pictures and never really had a breakout role. A year prior to this picture, she was Cagney's 'real' girlfriend in 1933's "Picture Snatcher", while also appearing as Joe E. Brown's pretty girlfriend in the baseball story, "Elmer, the Great".
What really cracks me up with these early films are the prices one gets to compare against today's cost of living. At Ann Reid's Elite Grill you could have had pea soup for a dime, calf's liver or wheat cakes for thirty five cents, oyster or Irish stew for thirty cents, and if you were really hungry, ham and eggs with toast and coffee for a buck! I was all ready to see what that gas fill up would have been but then Eddie threw that match and things got a bit hairy. I'm guessing about a buck and a half if the tank was real low.
Well chalk up another Thirties Cagney film for this viewer, I've pretty much seen them all now and have enjoyed every one. It helps that the popular hoofer is one of my all time favorites, speaking of which, did you catch that nifty shuffle he did for Ann at the dance? If his pal Buck could have moved like that he would have avoided half his black eyes.
You know, that town name of Ostopolis managed to bug me enough I had to do a quick internet search on it. As I suspected, none of the hits produced a town with that name, although one of them brought up this movie title. So I guess you could go from St. Louis to Chicago without ever showing up there.
As in most of Cagney's early flicks, he's got that brash, fast talking manner here, compounded by a quick head butt when his fists are out of order. Did you catch that quick shoulder shrug of his when he made it down the stairs after rescuing Ann Reid (Patricia Ellis) from the room she was locked up in? That was a nifty preview of his gangster character Rocky Sullivan from "Angels With Dirty Faces", my favorite Cagney film.
I liked Patricia Ellis in this picture, she had sort of that Ann Sheridan kind of sass going for her which made me wonder why she didn't have more of a career, although she mostly appeared in B pictures and never really had a breakout role. A year prior to this picture, she was Cagney's 'real' girlfriend in 1933's "Picture Snatcher", while also appearing as Joe E. Brown's pretty girlfriend in the baseball story, "Elmer, the Great".
What really cracks me up with these early films are the prices one gets to compare against today's cost of living. At Ann Reid's Elite Grill you could have had pea soup for a dime, calf's liver or wheat cakes for thirty five cents, oyster or Irish stew for thirty cents, and if you were really hungry, ham and eggs with toast and coffee for a buck! I was all ready to see what that gas fill up would have been but then Eddie threw that match and things got a bit hairy. I'm guessing about a buck and a half if the tank was real low.
Well chalk up another Thirties Cagney film for this viewer, I've pretty much seen them all now and have enjoyed every one. It helps that the popular hoofer is one of my all time favorites, speaking of which, did you catch that nifty shuffle he did for Ann at the dance? If his pal Buck could have moved like that he would have avoided half his black eyes.