La blonde framboise

Very entertaining, funny, and well acted movie. A great cast including a young George Reeves (Superman). It starts out as a comedy but has a lot of serious moments without being preachy. It is hard to believe that Cagney would come in second in anything in life but he plays the part perfectly.

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.

Julius Epstein (the man who gave us Arsenic and Old Lace) excels with his adaptation of James Hagan's play One Sunday Afternoon. (For those who think the credit belongs with the playwright not the scriptwriter, I refer you to the 1948 remake One Sunday Afternoon.) The script is crisp and witty, one liners abound, and I found myself laughing out loud often.

The film gains its strength from the morals of a bygone era, as men and women struggle to find love without overstepping the bounds of decency. Yet it holds up well more than 60 years after it was made. The themes of love and happiness are timeless.

Cagney is excellent as jailbird-turned-dentist Biff Grimes. His famed tough guy persona bubbles not very far below the surface but we are reminded that this actor is much more multi-faceted than history sometimes remembers him.

The female cast members are outstanding. The beautiful Susan Hayworth plays the title character Virginia Brush superbly, showing every nuance of the shallow yet ultimately dissatisfied wannabe socialite. Her best friend, Ann Lind, provides a great showcase for Olivia de Havilland's talent, moving from the brash, forward suffragette to the devoted wife, showing her vulnerability as well as her strength along the way.

Some of Hollwood's fine character actors get a chance to impress too. The hard-working Jack Carson impresses as Hugo Barnstead, the charming womanizer turned sleazy tycoon. George Tobias has plenty of scene-stealing moments as Grimes' good friend, Nick the barber. (Look closely and you may recognize him as Bewitched's Abner Kravitz.) Alan Hale is at his best as Grimes' irrepressible Irish father. Keep your eye out for TV's Superman George Reeves as Harold, the Yale student neighbour.

This film provides an amusing reminder that beauty and wealth do not always bring happiness.

Enjoy Strawberry Blonde. I did.

What an enjoyable movie with the three stars making it so! James Cagney as Biff Grimes, the local dentist, is a joy and shows how well suited he was to this type of serio-comedy, and what a pity he did not get the opportunity to play this type more in his early days at Warners. I think Olivia de Havilland is the real surprise as Biff's wife and she also showed a wonderful gift for comedy mixed with minor drama - her very special "wink" added so much - she was just great! As the Strawberry Blonde, Rita Hayworth in one of her earliest roles was excellent, and was well supported by Jack Carson, while "Superman" George Reeves had a cameo role early & late in the movie. If you see this, make sure you watch the very end for the sing-a-long, it certainly leaves you with a very good feeling. Alan Hale as Biff's father was a bit over the top, and his scenes dragged a little, but that is irrelevant in the total package.

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.