The Strawberry Blonde

I have a soft spot for this movie, it makes me cry and it challenges me. It hovers eagle-like over other pieces of quaint, nostalgic Americana in its brilliant mise-en-scène by overlooked film-maker Raoul Walsh, its crisp and very acute script, and its wonderful acting.

James Cagney is the small-town dentist, just out of jail, having been framed by his business partner and boyhood best friend, Jack Carson. Carson married the local beauty, Rita Hayworth of the film's title, and left Cagney with Hayworth's best friend, the free-thinking, no-nonsense Olivia De Havilland. And now, after all these years, Cagney learns that Carson is on his way to his dentist's practice with a bad tooth-ache. What to do ...?

There is such pain underlying all the ebullient humor of 'The Strawberry Blonde', and as usual Walsh gets away with superlative results from mixing genres. From the first frames of the bulldog chasing the cat and the two different social environments on each side of the garden wall, on one side throwing horse-shoes, on the other playing cricket, Walsh wastes no time and is always to the point, telling his story.

Everybody in this movie is perfect. Hayworth waltzes through it all by way of her radiant looks, but Cagney surpasses himself as this charming bigot, always with a black eye to show for the numerous scrapes he gets into.

Olivia De Havilland deserves a whole chapter to herself. I doubt if she was ever better than as the tough kooky, Amy, who never tires of preaching women's lib to Hayworth's Virginia ("I refuse to listen to advanced ideas!"). "What did we come for if not to be trifled with?", she asks, indignantly, of Virginia, seated as they are on the bench in the park, waiting for their beaus. She calls marriage "an institution started by the cavemen and endorsed by florists and jewelers" and insists on her right to pick up men by winking at them. De Havilland is hilarious, and you also notice the vulnerability beneath the feminist swagger.

Not everybody will care for 'The Strawberry Blonde'. If you only give it a superficial look, you will find it dated and cutesy, whereas it is everything but.

Cagney departs from his tough, street smart persona to play the gullible, not so tough Biff Grimes. Notice how he loses fight after fight; in one scene he's a barroom bouncer tossing his drunken father out asking his father not to put up too much of a fight "I'm supposed to be a tough guy".

He gets suckered time after time by Hugo and Virginia. That wouldn't have happened to other Cagney characters! His best scenes are with Olivia DeHavilland. What chemistry. Sometimes no dialog, just glances.

The main characters play off each other phenomenally. Even the minor characters are superb. Who was that fat German who blew beer foam into Cagney's face? He was great! The period music is so woven into the story that the movie almost becomes a musical. The lovely theme that's played whenever Olivia DeHavilland come into the scene is "When You Were Sweet Sixteen". Unlike the title song "Strawberry Blonde", it's never sung in the movie but it was popular at the turn of the century. Perry Como made it one of his hits in the early 1940's.

The movie is such a nostalgic, funny, (sad at times) look back at the turn of the century that you wish you could go back there with them.

It's amazing that director Raoul Walsh also made the brilliant, violent, cynical "White Heat" with nary a sentimental, lovable character.

Charming turn-of-the-century romantic comedy gives Rita Hayworth her breakthrough role as the flirtatious town siren who gets her comeuppance when she ditches James Cagney for Jack Carson. Her best friend Amy (Olivia de Havilland) marries dentist Biff (Cagney) after an unusual courtship which provides some amusing scenes between the outspoken miss and her boyfriend. The plot thickens when Cagney's best friend Hugo (Jack Carson) uses him in a shady business scheme that leaves Cagney taking the blame and serving time in prison. He resolves to get even with Hugo one day--and gets his chance when Hayworth brings Hugo to his dental office to have a tooth pulled. It's all done with a light touch and played to the hilt by an engaging cast. Rita shines in the title role but it is Olivia de Havilland who really walks off with the film as Cagney's sweetheart. Time magazine reported that she stole the film from both of them with her "electric winks". Only flaw is the occasional emphasis on comedy scenes with Alan Hale (as Cagney's father) that tend to drag. George Tobias has a good supporting role, as does George Reeves ("Superman") who appears at the beginning and end of the story as Cagney's belligerent neighbor. Cagney is his usual blustery self but shows a nice flair for comedy. Entertaining and a great film to watch on a rainy afternoon.

Trivia note: Compare this with the musical remake Raoul Walsh directed in '48 called ONE Sunday AFTERNOON with Dennis Morgan, Dorothy Malone and Janis Paige in the three central roles. Painfully bad and painfully dull with terrible songs and lackluster work by Morgan as Biff Grimes.

Almost all of Cagney's early roles were that of a gangster or a fast-talking con-man. Starting in the 40's as the major studios ramped up their production of patriotic films in anticipation of war, Cagney starred in some military roles such as "The Fighting 69th" and "Captains of the Clouds". However, it was still the same old wise-cracking gangster or con-man - he was just in uniform. Don't get me wrong, I never get tired watching Cagney play these kinds of parts, but I've read that the typecasting was a source of friction between himself and Warner Brothers.

This film is a real departure from the kind of role that Cagney had grown tired of by 1934. In it he plays Biff Grimes, a dentist at the beginning of the 20th century. Biff has had a series of misfortunes heaped upon him throughout his life. To begin with his Dad (Alan Hale) is a ne'er-do-well, and he has a "friend" Hugo F. Barnstead (Jack Carson) who is always managing to get the best of him and then some. Hugo works up from small slights such as not paying back money or leaving Biff with the tab to stealing and marrying Biff's ideal girl and finally setting Biff up to take the fall in some substandard work Hugo's company has done for the city. After Biff gets out of prison after serving time for a crime he didn't commit, he has a chance to get even with Hugo -as in killing him - and make it look like an accident. Since most of the movie is told in flashback, and Cagney is playing a likable if somewhat gullible fellow who has been deeply wronged, you don't know how it will end or what he will do. The supporting cast is great in this one. Jack Carson was always playing the slippery type in Warner films around this time, and he does the job of playing Hugo with believable gusto, always making excuses for his part in Biff's predicaments. Rita Hayworth is cast as "the strawberry blonde" that Biff loses to Hugo, and Olivia De Havilland plays the girl Biff ultimately marries. She turns out to the one piece of good luck that Biff has as she is tough and loyal in a crisis.

A bittersweet romantic comedy, this is one of my favorite post-code Cagney films.

Biff Grimes (James Cagney) struts around like a pugnacious, vainglorious banty rooster in this piece of wartime escapism that harkens back to Victorian America. He has his eye on Virginia Brush (Rita Hayworth), but so does his buddy Hugo Barnstead (Jack Carson). One of them weds Virginia and the other "settles" for her girlfriend Amy Lind (Olivia de Havilland).

The story follows the two couples through good times and bad in an absolutely charming recreation of turn-of-the-century society. The music includes all of the classics of that earlier time, including the enchanting "When You Were Sweet Sixteen." Costumes by Orry-Kelly help revive the formality and stiffness of Victorian manners, but also accent the beauty of Hayworth and de Havilland. If only they had been shot in color!

Miss de Havilland is a revelation as an unconventional young woman who challenges the headstrong Biff. Her role might not have been extremely challenging, but she rises above the script and creates a persona that viewers could fall in love with.

This is not a spoiler, but the end of the film includes an audience sing-along that would have allowed viewers to fully indulge in memories of better times. One can easily imagine their voices rising as one in the darkened theaters of 1941.