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When you think of James Cagney, you think of a gangster in films like The Public Enemy, where he smashed that grapefruit into Mae Clarke's face. But Cagney won his Oscar for Yankee Doodle Dandy. He also received nominations for Angels With Dirty Faces and Love Me or Leave Me.

Here he shows just how far his range extends in a romantic comedy which also includes Mae Clarke in a bigger role than you are probably accustomed to seeing her. There is a lot of action in this 76 minute film. Cagney is a theater usher who gets fired and ends up following Mae as she is trolling for suckers to get fleeced by her partners in a card game. He joins the group and they pull bigger more sophisticated cons until a trigger happy gang member kills a servant during a home robbery.

He and Mae head to Los Angeles, and when the LA police hold him for what happened in New York, Myra and one of the gang make off with Cagney's money. The LA police ultimately have to let him go, but penniless he gets increasingly shaggy and ragged looking. This causes him to get picked up for a series of bit parts by a local movie crew exactly because of his scruffy looks. One of the fascinating bits here is seeing how movies were made at the time. He hooks up with star Margaret Lindsay and uses his conning skills to make himself a star. (As an aside, Lindsey made 12 films that year, her second year as an actress.)

Soon, Mae and the gang find him and they want to pick up where they left off, using Cagney to get into posh places that they can rob. He tries to get them out of town, but they see dollars in LA and are going nowhere. How will this all work out? Watch and find out. And like I said, there's a lot of action for 76 minutes and Cagney really shows he can do romance, comedy, and gangster all in one film.

If you want to know how James Cagney become such a huge star, just watch this - not quite this story about a con man who becomes a Hollywood star but how he outshines the rest of the cast. Even though they are all passable actors, Cagney is somehow in a different league. The downside was that by outshining his co-stars, their contributions make the whole film seem a little amateurish. The upside was that to keep up with him eventually everyone had to get up to his standard but this hadn't quite happened by 1933.

This film is super-fast, super-snappy and both reasonably funny and gripping at the same time. Overseen by Warner's production head Daryl Zanuck, it was written specifically for Cagney to highlight his own particular talents and loveable rogue personality.

Warner Brothers knew exactly what they were doing - making a star and making a lot of money but didn't account for Cagney's demands for staggeringly enormous wages. They did their sums and reluctantly always gave in - just watching him in this you can see why.

If you like James Cagney, and I sure do, you'll love this comedy melodrama from the pre-code years at Warner Brothers. Cagney portrays a cheap hoodlum who falls in with a gang of petty con artists, gets wrapped on the knucklesl by the long arm of the law, and winds up becoming a movie matinee idol. It's fun all the way, with enough wise-cracking dialogue, rapid action, car chases, gunfire, and double-dealing to satisfy any fan of the early gangster films, yet it's a lively, tongue-in-cheek comedy from start to finish. Enjoy!

"Lady Killer" represents a combination of talents Hollywood will never see again. There is fast talking James Cagney, who starts the movie as a dice playing, gum chewing usher who makes wise guy, but funny, comments to everyone. In Cagney's opening scene, he just makes it to a count out of the 25 ushers, held on the roof of the movie theater they work at. All wear Warner Bros. uniforms, including a cap with the WB logo on it. As Cagney advances in life, he becomes a partner in a gambling operation. One of his confederates slugged too hard a maid and almost kills her during a home robbery, another criminal activity Cagney's gang is involved in. Cagney tells the confederate (played by a snarling Leslie Fenton), what does he think, the police are dumbbells. Dumbbell was a favorite word of screenwriter Ben Markson, who used it to good advantage in another movie he co-wrote, "Gold Diggers of 1933."

Roy Del Ruth does his usual super job, cramming a ton of action into 76 minutes. There is one scene,where the cab of Mae Clarke's character is stopped at one of those old traffic devices, which has two signal vanes, one marked stop, and the other go. The stop signal goes up, another of Cagney's partners,Douglas Dumbrille, happens to be in the adjacent cab, he gets into Clarke's. He tells her "things are plenty hot in New York, I just jumped my bail and beat it out here by plane," to Los Angeles.

Meanwhile, Cagney is being questioned by the LA police, who previously picked him up at the train station on a New York warrant. Cagney tells the police chief, he went West for the climate, on account of his asthma. This scene represents the first mention I know of asthma in a mainstream movie. Later, after Cagney is sprung loose, Brannigan, the cop (played by Robert Elliot, almost typecast to cop roles in the 30s) who first pulled him in at the train station, tells him that if he doesn't find a job, he will be picked up as a "vag" (for vagrant) and get 30 days in jail.

When you look at this scene, notice the outline of the Venetian blinds on the office wall, and the dark shadows falling on the the faces of the Chief, Brannigan and Cagney's character. This scene, and the subsequent scene of Cagney trying to keep a low profile in a pool hall, unshaven and furtive, look as if they were from a film noir movie, only these scenes were made more than 12 years before the film noir cycle started.

The scenes showing Cagney working as a movie extra show how movies were made in the early 1930s, at least according to Roy Del Ruth. There is a scene of Cagney as an Indian chief on an imitation horse riding in front of a back projection screen, the movie director shouting, with a heavy European accent, "Ride, That A Boy!" Later, on a 15 minute lunch break, box lunch in hand, Cagney identifies himself to his future girlfriend, Margaret Lindsay as a Chief with the name, said in Yiddish, Pain In The Ass. I could be off in the translation, but Cagney used a Yiddish phrase.

The movie plot has one unexpected connection to real life. In 1939, there was a New York gangster named Greenbaum, nicknamed "Big Greenie." As I recall, from reading Burton Turkus's book, "Murder, Inc." years ago, Greenbaum fled to the West Coast, where he worked as an extra in movies while avoiding Lepke's killers. Greenbaum knew too much, and Lepke eventually managed to have "Big Greenie" killed.

"Lady Killer" was made in 1933 fast, by great talents. I saw it playing the laserdisc of the movie, part of the double laserdisc of James Cagney movies that Image released in 1992. The second movie on the LD set, "Blonde Crazy," made in 1931, is good also, but the advances made in movie making in two years are really something, comparing the two movies.

There is only one slight flaw in "Lady Killer." In every other pre-Code movie I saw from Warner Bros., when someone reads a telegram, you see the telegram message on screen, the telegram made by the prop department. When the LA police chief shows a telegram to Cagney, explaining the situation, he tells him New York authorities asked him to hold Cagney's character. You never see the actual telegram message, Warners usual practice then, a practice not usually followed by other studios. Maybe Warners' prop department did prepare a fictitious telegram but movie director Roy Del Ruth thought it looked "fakey."

Lady Killer (1933)

*** (out of 4)

James Cagney plays a movie usher who gets fired and then gets mixed up with some gangster being led by Douglas Dumbrille and Margaret Lindsay. Soon a crime goes wrong so Cagney runs off to Hollywood where he starts work as an extra but quickly becomes a movie star. This is an enjoyable little comedy that works pretty well as a spoof of Hollywood and it gives Cagney a chance to make fun of his own image. Cagney is very good in his role, which once again shows him as a cocky, high tempered thug but there's also other moments including Cagney playing an Indian as well as showing off his comic side. Mae Clarke plays Cagney's love interest in Hollywood and the two are very good together with that infamous scene of Cagney dragging her across the floor by her hair. Both Lindsay and Dumbrille add nice support in their roles. One of the film's highlights is when Cagney orders two dozen monkeys to a party where they escape and cause all sorts of trouble. There's also plenty of nice gags aimed at Hollywood and directors. The film starts to run out of steam during the final act but if you're a fan of Cagney or films of this era then this is certainly worth checking out.