O Mulherengo

For anyone who enjoys James Cagney, this is a must-see. Yes, it's early in his career, but it's vintage Cagney: cocky, quick-tempered but humorous and likable as always. I am excited to see it finally coming out on DVD in March of 2008.

Instead of being a gangster throughout the story, he starts off that way in New York, runs off to Los Angeles and then goes straight after being hired as a Hollywood extra in a movie. He becomes a star but then his old gang catches up with him and he has to deal with them.

Along the way, three of the supporting actors combine with Cagney to make this a very fast- moving 74-minute film. They are Mae Clark, as the female villain "Myra Gale," Margaret Lindsay at the good woman "Lois Underwood," and Douglass Dumbrille as "Spade," the former leader of the New York gang. All are very convincing in their roles under the able work of director Roy Del Ruth.

You can tell this was a pre-code film just looking at Lindsay's ample cleavage, something that would have been covered up a bit more if the film had been made the following year. Other than that, and a few minor innuendos, the film is pretty clean, morally speaking.

One thing you certainly wouldn't see in today's films was the scene showing Cagney grabbing Clark by the hair and dragging her across the room, then booting her out in the hallway! (This is the same actress who received the famous grapefruit-in-the-face from Cagney in "Public Enemy.")

Anyway, yes the film is dated in much of the dialog and attitudes but it's so entertaining, so much fun to watch that it would still appeal to a good-sized audience today, too.

Lady Killer (1933)

I love these multi-part stories, where one set of scenes shifts to a whole new set, and then they eventually intertwine. And I also love movies that show the inside of Hollywood, with actual recreations of movie sets and movie shoots.

Lady Killer has both, and James Cagney, too. It's fast, furious, funny, and shot with a bright, glinting intelligence. Not quite a gangster film, it does have crime and some crooked thugs. And not quite a comedy, it pulls out quite a few laughs, mostly because Cagney is a card. There are two fabulous first ladies (and they naturally must view for our man), Mae Clark and Margaret Lindsay, and a slew of second men who hold up their characters with caricature.

In all, there is no Warner message here, except maybe the virtue can sometimes prevail. It's just a lot of great scenes, witty dialog, and a play of good guys against bad guys. Look for some stunning rain scenes in California (yeah, I know), and for a huge range of interior and exterior set ups, fairly elaborate for Warner Bros. budgets.

For Cagney fans, it's a riot to see him take on, briefly, a series of roles as Indian chief, Italian lover, and prisoner on work detail. The latter, of course, is close to the real roles that made him famous, and his role here is actually a little lighter than that, a bad guy who is all wisecracks and cheerfulness. Look for some insider jokes, like the poster (and mention) of the Edward G. Robinson film, and the movie ushers wearing hats all with the Warner Brothers logo on it.

Great stuff. I loved it even as I knew it wasn't quite a masterpiece. Oh, and the new (2010) Warner DVD is sparkling, a first rate print!

Look out, world! Jimmy Cagney's coming to Hollywood and whether they use bullets or make-up the con artists haven't got a chance, in this raucous send-up featuring a New York crime boss who lands himself where the real action is – on a theater marquee.

Cagney is a wise guy named Dan Quigley who can't make it as a movie usher, so he raises his sights from lavatory dice games to breaking into rich folks' homes with the help of a nasty gang. When that goes bad and the gang leaves him flat, Quigley finds a new line in Hollywood, first as an extra, soon after as a "Famous He-Man of the Screen." But what will happen when the old gang shows up for a piece of the action?

The marquee in lights near the start of the film advertises someone called "The Prince Of Pep." He might as well be Cagney in this streamlined star vehicle, written entirely to showcase his fast patter and easy charm. Cagney's so good they don't even bother to build a coherent film around his character, and it hardly matters.

If you want to see a great Cagney film, there are perhaps a couple dozen better candidates. But if you want to see why the guy clicked so hard in the days of early sound, and still packs a punch 80 years later, this should be on your short list.

Cagney's lines here are priceless. To a dog being held by a theater manager who just fired him: "Listen, Fido, this guy's got a wooden leg. Try it sometime!"

To a group of card sharps who just cleaned him out: "I think I'll stick to checkers."

To the same group, after he's figured out their scam: "You kick back with my fifty bucks, or I'll fold your joint like an accordion!"

Just seconds later, he proposes a partnership. "You got a sweet racket here. Maybe I can show you a few new wrinkles."

"Lady Killer" was made just before the Hays Code was seriously enforced, which makes for interesting viewing. Reviewers here have already pointed out a scene when we see Quigley sneak Mae Clarke's character Myra a peck on the breast. The film takes even greater advantage of the liberal mores then still in effect by letting Quigley get away with his crimes. Sure, he goes straight, sort of, but only because he finds a better racket than potentially homicidal B&Es. There's no moment of Quigley coming to regret his wicked past, as censors would have required just months later.

That makes for a more entertaining Cagney vehicle, but a somewhat disjointed film. Director Roy Del Ruth keeps things moving quick, but in odd directions in tone, turning "Lady Killer" from a semi-serious gangster story to a genially goofy Hollywood satire. In his DVD commentary, Drew Casper calls "Lady Killer" a "shyster satire." It might also be called a "crooked comedy;" no one is on the level, whichever side of the law they're on.

So in Hollywood, we see Quigley break big after really slugging an extra in a mock prison break scene, and further his path toward stardom by faking fan letters. It's shallow stuff, but fun, especially as it all plays so fast. Other than the star, pacing is "Lady Killer's" ace in the hole.

Clarke should have graduated from the grapefruit league with this performance. She and Cagney resume their fireworks from "Public Enemy," this time with even more outrageous stunts, but Clarke, here the first- billed female, does wise work making sure we enjoy her comeuppance. Even her catty asides to Cagney, or the way she shamelessly plays with her hair while shaking him down for (more) dough, is on par with Barbara Stanwyck's star-making wickedness.

But make no mistake, "Lady Killer" is Cagney's baby, and he makes it work, despite the tone shifts and the odd title (Quigley's not a killer himself, and doesn't play with women's affections). You root for the guy despite his crookedness, and that's all that matters in the end.

"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."

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!