These Wilder Years

It is surprising that it took so long for someone to put Barbara Stanwyck and James Cagney together in a film. This is a much different project, though, than what they may have done together twenty years earlier. Nonetheless, it is fun to watch them pair up for These Wilder Years at MGM.

The performances of the leads are surprisingly tender and subdued. This is quite significant considering that Miss Stanwyck is often given to toughness and that Mr. Cagney has a propensity for ham. But the script (about adoption) calls for a different approach, and fortunately, the director worked with the stars to play the characters instead of themselves; instead of giving what audiences have come to expect from them.

With James Cagney's gangster phase at a close, ending beautifully with 1955's Love Me or Leave Me, he turned towards a different kind of role: a regular fellow. In These Wilder Years, he plays a successful businessman who decides he has everything he could ever want except the unfinished business of his past. Without a word of explanation to anyone but his faithful lawyer, Walter Pidgeon, James leaves work and travels to a small town and visits an orphanage. Turns out, he's looking for his son, who was adopted twenty years ago.

In case this sounds a little corny, give it a chance anyway. This one is completely worth watching. The plot moves steadily along, and with old pros like James Cagney and Barbara Stanwyck pitted against each other, they each bring a lot of emotion to the table. Barbara is stronger than she looks, and Jimmy holds more secrets than he first lets on. While trying to find his son, Jimmy also bonds with a teenager, Betty Lou Keim, who's pregnant and preparing for the difficult emotional decision of giving her baby to Barbara's orphanage.

There's so much to appreciate about this movie, and if you're a fan of the leads, this is a great transition movie to see them in the second half of their careers. Depending on how sentimental you're feeling, you might want to bring along a Kleenex.

Maltin calls this a soap opera. That's what I expected it to be, but I feel that it's better than that, largely due to Cagney's performance. He's quite believable as a middle aged man who regrets the mistakes of his youth. Barbara Stanwyck is a woman struggling with an emotional and legal conflict. Throw in a good courtroom scene, and you've got a movie that holds your interest to the end. The final resolution is a bit sappy, but overall, the film is pretty good.

The two old pros, Cagney and Stanwyck are the reason to watch this one. Neither chews the scenery; there's no romantic subplot between them, yet their scenes together are wonderful. Stanwyck shows no femme fatal sexiness or been there done that humor. She's just a nice, hard working person, and when confronted with Cagney's type A "I'm used to getting what I want", she sweetly deflects it instead of the fireworks you'd normally expect from a Stanwyck character. For his part, Cagney drops his tough guy image and when faced with the pain his past misdeeds have caused, makes no attempt to evade responsibility.

They're on opposite sides, yet show a respect for each other.

No motivation is shown for Bradford's sudden desire to drop everything to find the son he abandoned 20 years before. It might have been better if a chance meeting with Betty Lou Keim's abandoned, pregnant teen had served as the spark. Clearly, she reminds him of the girl he abandoned.

The other major flaw, is that being in his 50s, it would have been more realistic if Bradford's abandonment of his newborn son been 30 years before instead of 20. The guy that plays his son (Don Dubbins) looks and acts much older than a 20 year old. Also, 20 years before, Bradford would have been in his mid 30s, way too old to be a callow college boy. And is 20 years enough time to build such a large business? I also can't help wishing they'd cast someone who looked like Cagney to play Cagney's long lost son, like Richard Jaeckel.

These Wilder Years marks the only teaming of James Cagney and Barbara Stanwyck. It would have been nice if they had been teamed for a better film. Can't you just see Stanwyck in Virginia Mayo's part in White Heat?

Still These Wilder Years is not a bad film, high class soap opera the kind of stuff that became popular on television in the Eighties.

James Cagney is a millionaire industrialist looking for the son whose paternity he denied when he was sowing his wild oats. Barbara Stanwyck runs the home for unwed mothers where the girl who Cagney was involved with came and gave up her kid for adoption.

Cagney has the resources to get his way, but Stanwyck with the confidentiality of adoption records has the law on her side. Or has she?

Walter Pigeon plays Cagney's attorney and Don Dubbins, a young actor whose career Cagney was pushing plays the son and both do well. Look for bit parts from Tom {BillyJack} Laughlin, Michael Landon, and Dean Jones all at the start of their careers.

Cagney and Stanwyck are both players with an edge to their parts. It's like they've been taken down into second gear for this film. Still it's a pleasant enough movie. Look for young Betty Lou Keim who is a current unwed mother in Stanwyck's charge. Her scenes with Cagney are quite poignant.