Sinners' Holiday

This is a fun movie. Great to see some true movie stars in their earliest roles.

But the movie suddenly ends. It's as if they realized they were down to their last reel of film and decided to jump ahead several pages to the final scene.

It's still worth seeing.

They just knew how to get down to business without wasting time in the early 1930s. In one hour flat this one has more plot and snappy dialogue and makes more sense than many films twice as long.

The film is set in a sleazy amusement park, mostly girlie shows, run by low-level grifters who tell the truth about anything only if it suits their purposes. Most are fairly innocuous but there are some hard cases ultimately leading to violence.

Although Grant Withers as drifter Angel Harrigan gets top billing, the central character is really elderly and unattractive Ma Delano (Lucille La Verne), who's in charge of the place. Though no more ethical than the others she at least tries to keep things under control while looking after her three grown children.

The eldest, Joe (Ray Gallagher in a small part) is a solid citizen but younger brother Harry (early James Cagney) is running around with hoodlums and virtuous but hot-to-trot daughter Jennie (Evalyn Knapp) wants to marry Harrigan over Ma's objections.

In a few years Cagney would be a big star while Withers' star would be fading. Whoever had the idea that in this film Withers should deliver his many wisecracks in a mock-effeminate voice did his career no favors. Cagney leaps out at you in his over-the-top hyperactive style that might have been annoying in a less talented actor but set the pace for leading men of the decade.

Knapp is fetching and convincing despite having to plow through occasional sappy dialogue. Warren Hymer is effective as a bad guy, as are Joan Blondell as Cagney's cynical girl friend and Purnell Pratt as a hard-boiled but sympathetic police detective.

Many similar films have a happy or unhappy ending that seems arbitrarily chosen but this one has a cynical finale that you won't see coming.

In 1929, James Cagney and Joan Blondell (neither of them well-known at the time) played supporting roles in a Broadway drama called "Penny Arcade". Warner Brothers bought the film rights and brought Cagney and Blondell to Hollywood to repeat their stage roles in the screen version, retitled "Sinner's Holiday". This was the first movie for both of them. (Blondell's second film, a quickie, was released before "Sinner's Holiday", a more prestigious picture.) The actual star of this film is Grant Withers, playing a gangster who's made a lot of enemies and needs a place to hide before he gets rubbed out. Withers is pretty good, and he deserves to be better known. Cagney's role is much smaller, but he's absolutely electrifying. As soon as he steps on screen, there's no question that he's the best actor in this movie ... one of the best actors in the history of films, in fact.

Joan Blondell is boring in this film, as usual. Her appeal has always eluded me. At least in her other films she usually had something to do; here, she doesn't. There are good performances by Lucille LaVerne and Warren Hymer, in his usual typecast role as a dim gangster. Hank Mann, who was one of the original Keystone Cops (and who eventually outlived all the other Keystone Cops), is excellent here in a small role.

"Sinner's Holiday" suffers from the usual Warner Brothers complaint: low budget-itis. I saw the trailer for this film before I saw the movie itself. The trailer features a shot of amusement park rides in a funfair. This is obviously stock footage, but at least I expected the stock shot to turn up in the movie itself. Surprisingly, it doesn't. There's almost nothing on screen to convince you that this movie takes place in an amusement park. It looks like a stage play recorded on film, rather than a movie in its own right. Still, "Sinner's Holiday" has much to recommend it, and Cagney's performance alone is worth your time. I'll rate this movie 6 out of 10 points, or 7 if you're a Cagney fan. If you're a Joan Blondell fan, I don't want to know about it.

Middling Pre-Coder that's notable for being the film debuts of James Cagney and Joan Blondell (with her natural hair color, no less). The plot's about a family that runs a waterfront penny arcade and the trouble the youngest son (Cagney) gets into, including bootlegging and killing a guy. One for Cagney fans to check off their list but it's really not that great. The characters are all pretty unlikable and Jimmy shows little of that trademark charm & swagger in the role of a sniveling punk. Public Enemy would play to his strengths much better and, of course, make him a star. Lucille La Verne plays Cagney's mom and she hams it up in every scene. Grant Withers is pretty good as the ne'er-do-well turned good by the love of a woman. That woman being lovely Evalyn Knapp. She was my favorite part of the whole picture. The scene with her and Withers under the pier is probably the film's highlight. It's an early talkie so it creaks and groans but at least it doesn't seem like a filmed stage play, so points for that. Still, after it's over, you won't be in any hurry to tell your friends about it.

This busy little film that was originally entitled "Penny Arcade" was retitled "Sinners Holiday" for no other reason than the fact that there were several films put out in 1930 with "Holiday" in the title that were successful. This film may have its fair share of sinners, but nobody is really on holiday in this fast-talking fast-paced little piece of Vitaphone history.

James Cagney starts out his career with Warner Brothers pretty much where he ended it - crying on his mother's lap just as he did in "White Heat" - the lap of a mother that will do anything to keep her baby out of trouble. Cagney plays Harry Delano, a tough guy who thinks he's tougher and smarter than he really is. His family runs the Penny Arcade in the amusement park. Evelyn Knapp plays his sister, Jennie. Jennie is in love with amusement park smart guy Angel Harrigan (Grant Withers), an ex-con and handyman at the arcade who has the misfortune of being at the wrong place at the wrong time when Ma Delano needs a fall guy to save her son Harry. It also doesn't help any that Ma Delano doesn't approve of Jennie's plans to marry Angel.

James Cagney gets more screen time in his first film than he does in any film until he gets his big break in Public Enemy. There is also a pretty good role for Joan Blondell in her first screen appearance as Myrtle, some-time girlfriend of Harry - also someone Ma Delano doesn't approve of. Who exactly did Ma Delano think her kids were going to wind up with while working in the amusement park? Wall Street types?

How did Cagney and Blondell end up together in this film, you might ask? Al Jolson bought the film rights to the Broadway production of "Penny Arcade" and would only sell it to Warner Brothers if Cagney and Blondell reprised their roles. Why he did this nobody knows, since Al Jolson was hardly known as a benefactor. However, in doing this he saved Warner Brothers a second time. The first time was in putting the studio on top in talking pictures, this second time he gift wrapped two actors that were perfect for the urban look and feel that the studio had been going for but had been having a rough time succeeding in getting right with the actors they were employing.

In summary, this film is full of the interesting minor characters, urban slang, and fast talking that make the early talking Warner Brothers films so much fun.