Come Fill the Cup

Simply the best "recovery" movie! Cagney's performance is Oscar quality, as is James Gleason's. Even Phyllis Thaxter and Raymond Massey are believable in this film. The musical score is superb, with Grieg-esque overtones. Perhaps the best billboard (7 Dwarves Whiskey) in moviedom. 10/10

A few years after The Lost Weekend won Ray Milland an Oscar for playing an alcoholic writer, James Cagney made a similarly themed movie. That's the breaks of Hollywood, but sometimes it's frustrating to the cast and crew of competing studios. At least they weren't released in the same year - talk about unfair!

Rather than spending the bulk of the movie fighting his addiction, Cagney gets his act together fairly early on in the film. Veteran character actor James Gleason helps him get sober, and as an upstanding citizen, he becomes a respected and successful journalist. One good turn deserves another, and Jimmy is called upon to help another alcoholic about to lose everything: Gig Young. Gig is very young in this film (no pun intended) and eighteen years before he won his Oscar for They Shoot Horses, Don't They? He showed his acting chops and was nominated for the statue. He has some incredible withdrawal scenes with the shakes, emotional fits, and chemical outbursts - all the classic elements of one of these movies, but for some reason, he didn't win the Oscar (and neither did Susan Hayward or Frank Sinatra four years later) and Ray Mi-bland did.

Come Fill the Cup is a very solid drama with equally solid performances from everyone in the cast. It's an important story that no matter how many times it's told, shows the audience the value of hard work, discipline, honor, and selflessness. If you like this subject matter, try Richard Egan's turn in Voice in the Mirror, or of course, Susan Hayward's in I'll Cry Tomorrow.

I saw this film for the first - and, up to now, last - time just after its release in early 1952 (original English version). "Come fill the cup" is one of those films that seem to have unjustly disappeared. It has never been released in this country, Spain, nor seen in television either here, in Belgium - where I lived 1973-1993 - or several other European countries linked to Brussels TV, U.K. not excluded. After all these years, I remember that all the actors are terrific, Cagney outstanding. Young - not surprisingly - was convincing, and the music score - an unfinished piano concert - haunting. From other comments, I assume that a DVD of this noir classic would be most welcome by Cagney fans of all ages.

I'm talking about Raymond Massey as newspaper owner John Ives in my title, but I'll get to that later.

James Cagney plays Lew Marsh, a hard hitting newspaper man who just can't stay away from the bottle. The last straw is when he comes back from a bender and starts to write a story that is five days old. His long suffering editor finally cans him. He is obviously well liked at the paper, and he even has a best girl - Paula (Phyllis Thaxter), who also works in the newsroom.

After he is fired, Lew tells Paula to forget about him, to go find a young healthy guy. Time passes and we see Lew staggering down the street looking haggard and dirty. He falls in front of a passing truck, but is barely missed being hit. An ex alcoholic, Charlie (James Gleason), sees all of this. Lew is taken to the hospital and tied down to a bed until he is past the DTs. He swears off drinking because he claims he heard "angel feathers". Drunks may be running from life, but they are running from death even more, and this brush with death is what did it for Lew. Charlie, an ex drunk himself, meets him as he comes out of the hospital, gives him a home and a job doing construction. A big test of soberness is when Lew sees news of Paula's marriage to the nephew of the owner of the paper he was fired from. He passes that test - barely.

Then comes news he is wanted back on the newspaper. The owner himself, John Ives (Raymond Massey, believes Lew has changed and gives him a second chance. Years pass - six of them to be exact - and then one day John Ives calls Lew to his office. The guy who married Paula, Lew's ex-girl, has become a hopeless alcoholic, and since Lew has had so much success himself and success with picking employees for the newspaper who are ex-drunks that stay sober, he wants Lew to help straighten out the nephew, who is like a son to him - Boyd (Gig Young).

Lew says what the nephew needs are doctors and nurses. Ives is insistent on Lew being the guy to set the nephew straight. This is where my title comes in. Apparently Ives is a hands-on owner, so he has got to know something about Lew and Paula being in a relationship years before. Lew could just not succeed on purpose to get Paula back - Paula and Boyd's marriage is already on the rocks, or being around Paula that much could have Lew falling off of the wagon and being Boyd's new drinking partner. There is even an unexpected gangster angle thrown into all of this. How will all of this work out? Watch and find out.

It's funny, Cagney left skid marks on his way out of Warner Brothers after "Yankee Doodle Dandy", but that studio always seemed to have him pegged for the right roles. The stuff he did independently never seemed to work out and click, yet Warner's put him in films where he made three of his best mature performances - this film, "Mister Roberts", and "White Heat"- and in all three he plays completely different kinds of guys and plays them well.

As far as supporting performances here, they are all excellent. Thaxter is lovely but demure here, first the long suffering girlfriend of one drunk and then the long suffering wife of another. Sheldon Leonard is terrific as a gangster just shortly before he becomes the most successful producer in television. Raymond Massey is very good as gray character John Ives, giving Lew a second chance at the paper years before he knows he'll even need him, but when he needs him to reform his nephew, he rather undoes that good deed by using it to propel Lew forward to do his bidding. And then there is James Gleason in a small but vital "get wise to yourself" kind of role that he had been doing in front of the camera so well for twenty years.

"The Lost Weekend" it is not - but just barely. It does stress the point that alcoholism is a permanent disease, one that the alcoholic is always battling. As Lew Marsh says "One drink is too many, and all the drinks after that are the second drink". Highly recommended if you can ever find it.

Come Fill The Cup is Warner Brothers answer to Paramount and The Lost Weekend. Come to think of it, the film could literally be where the Paramount classic left off.

Imagine James Cagney as the Ray Milland character as The Lost Weekend concluded. Remember both of them are writers, Cagney however was a newspaper reporter. He loses his job due to his alcoholism, but gets the same kind of wakeup call Milland got and goes back to working for the paper that hired him in the first place.

Flash forward about five years and Cagney is now city editor and the big boss, publisher Raymond Massey calls him in. Cagney has hired several former drinkers who are making a success on the paper and he thinks that Cagney is just the man to help straighten out his nephew Gig Young who is going down the same path. Young is a promising composer who has let his talent go to waste in a sea of booze.

Two things complicate the picture for Cagney. First Young is married, but separated from Phyllis Thaxter who used to be Cagney's girl. But also Young is now getting himself involved with Charlita, a little chanteuse from south of the border who gangster Sheldon Leonard has put his brand on. And to top that all off Leonard is the target of Massey's newspaper. It gets positively incestuous in Come Fill The Cup.

Gig Young got an Academy Award nomination for his role and his scenes of inebriation and withdrawal are every bit as good as the ones that got Ray Milland his Oscar for The Lost Weekend. Young lost in the Oscar sweepstakes to Karl Malden for A Streetcar Named Desire. The guy who should get some acclaim here is James Gleason who plays Cagney's roommate and sponsor in helping to kick the booze habit. Gleason's death scene and Cagney's reaction to it are the dramatic high points of the movie.

As for Cagney a lot of his usual mannerisms that sometimes carry along a bad film and make it better are missing. But he doesn't need them in playing this part.

I had not seen this film in several decades and quite frankly had forgotten how good it is. Demand that TCM show this one and demand that Warner Brothers get this out on DVD.