This Winter I’ve been watching James Cagney movies.
I’ve switched the movie I was going to write about last week with the one I was going to write this week because I was going to watch the DVD of Angels With Dirty Faces I picked up, but I’ve been waiting for a night to watch it with The Husband, and that hasn’t come.
In the end, I decided to wait to watch that movie with him because he would like to see it as well, and it will be fun to watch together.
Angels with Dirty Faces stars Cagney with Humphrey Bogart, and Bogie is one of my husband’s favorite actors.
The Bride Came C.O.D. with Cagney and Bette Davis was a perfect substitute for this week, though.
It was a delightfully fun movie, and I needed it this week, so I’m glad I made the trade.
I will be watching this movie again with him soon, though, because it was just too much fun and should be watched with others.
This is a slapstick comedy where Cagney and Davis were both trying their acting talents at something a little different.
First, the premise: Davis is playing Joan Winfield, an heiress who makes impulsive decisions, and her latest impulsive decision is marrying Alan Brice (Jack Carson), a famous singer and band leader. The marriage announcement comes at just the right time for gossip and entertainment broadcaster named Hinkle who needs a big story.
He talks Brice into marrying Joan right away because it will make a great story for his broadcast.
The only issue is that Joan is on the phone with her father when Alan announces his engagement to Joan to the audience at the club and she is trying to work up the courage to tell her father she’s engaged.
Their call is cut short and she never tells him, but Hinkle arranges for her and Alan to go to a small airport to be flown by a private plane to Las Vegas where they can be married.
Steve Collins, a notorious womanizer who pretends he is married with children so he doesn’t get roped into marriage by women who like to date married men, owns the airport and the main plane. He’s never paid for the plane though and the finance company now wants it back. Steve’s handy man, Pee Wee (George Tobias) tells him that Hinkle has arranged for their plane to take a famous couple to Las Vegas and Steve wonders if they will even have a plane to take them in.
Collins tries to think of a way to get the money and has no ideas until Joan’s father, oil tycoon Lucius K. Winfield (Eugene Pallette) calls the airport to try to reach his daughter and Collins strikes up a plan with Winfield to make sure his daughter doesn’t make it to Las Vegas to marry Alan Brice.
If Collins pulls off the delay, meeting Winfield with his daughter in tow in Texas instead, Winfield will pay Collins the money he needs to pay off the plane and keep the airport in business.
The first task at hand is to get rid of Hinkle and Alan which PeeWee helps Collins with. With them out of the way, Collins jumps in the plane and takes off with Joan, his plan to fly her to Texas. Unfortunately, Joan isn’t too happy with this arrangement and tries to escape, causing the plane to crash in the desert.
Here we will be introduced to Pop Tolliver (Harry Davenport), who I just loved.
I loved a lot about this movie.
It was very witty and fun, with some great lines.
Bette Davis was supposed to be 23 in the film which I found a little unbelievable but then again, Bette always looked older to me than she was.
She was actually 33 when this movie was made.
According to Frank Miller from TCM (yes, my go-to-source), Cagney made the movie on the heels of Strawberry Blonde because he wanted to break out of gangster roles.
Ann Sheridan, Ginger Rogers, and Rosalind Russell were considered for Davis’s role but when she expressed interest in trying out, Hal Willis, the producer of the movie, went to bat for her.
“In addition, she was eager to re-team with Cagney, who like her had a history of battles with the Warner Bros. management,” Miller wrote. “They had not worked together since 1934, when they teamed for the minor comedy Jimmy the Gent. Some biographers have suggested that the studio was punishing her with the film because of her notorious temperament, while others have suggested she may have wanted to emulate Katharine Hepburn, who had been equally successful in serious and comic roles. Also possible is that she was drawn to the film’s obvious similarities to It Happened One Night (1934), another tale of a runaway heiress saved from a bad marriage by the love of a simple working guy.”
There was a lot of trouble with the movie, including the writing and the fact Cagney wasn’t a fan of the sweltering heat at the shooting location of Death Valley.
Davis also wasn’t happy because while a stunt double was supposed to take the fall into a cactus for her, she had a fall of her own and ended up with 45 cactus quills having to be removed from her behind.
Neither actor was very fond of the movie years down the road and even critics bashed it with one saying, “Okay, Jimmie and Bette. You’ve had your fling. Now go back to work.”
As for me, I found the film a lot of fun and ended up snickering at the silliness and the exchanges between our main characters.
And as I said above, Harry Davenport really added some charm to the film for me.
Have you ever seen this one?
I found it for rent on Amazon Prime but it is also available on HBO Max, Hulu, YouTube, and AppleTV.
Next week I’ll wrap up my Winter of Cagney with Angels With Dirty Faces and two weeks after that I’ll start a bi-weekly movie watch of Bette Davis films.
If you want to catch up on the other Cagney films I’ve watched this winter you can do so here:
If you enjoy the kind of content on my blog and all that goes into it, you can support my writing for $2.99 a month or a single donation. Learn more here: https://lisahoweler.com/support-my-writing/
I’m watching James Cagney movies this winter and last week I watched one of his most acclaimed movies — White Heat (1949).
The movie is considered by film critics to be one of the best gangster films of all time.
As I often do, I’ll start this post with an online description of the movie:
“Gang leader Cody Jarrett (James Cagney) lives for his mother, planning heists between horrible headaches. During a train robbery that goes wrong, Cody shoots an investigator. Realizing Cody will never be stopped if he knows he’s being pursued, authorities plant undercover agent Hank (Edmond O’Brien) in Cody’s cell.”
This description is wrong, though, because the investigator is shot after the robbery. But the conductor is shot by Cody.
All that aside, the robbery does go wrong, partially because a member of the gang is horribly burned. The gang has to hide out and we learn that Cody is very close to his mother, who helps him plan crimes. Closer than he is to his wife who is very lazy and sleeps a lot.
This isn’t an inappropriate relationship like Hamlet or Macbeth or whichever play that was, but Cody relies on Ma for a lot — including helping him when raging headaches hit him and practically debilitate him. The gang believes his headaches are the same mental illness his father had.
His mother doesn’t want him to let the gang see him that way because he will look weak.
It doesn’t matter if he looks week because his gang is ready to turn on him and take the money they stole from the train and cut him out of the deal no matter what.
He doesn’t know this, but he does know they have to split so the police don’t find them.
They have an injured gang member whom Cody orders one of his men to shoot. The man can’t do it, though, and leaves the burned man. The man still dies, and when he is found it is reported to the police, who eventually connect him to the gang.
A police officer sees Cody’s mom out by chance and they try to follow her back to the motel Cody, his mom and wife are staying at. She loses them but the police eventually find her car and corner Cody who shoots the investigator in the arm.
Cody is able to escape with his mom and wife, but finally decides if he really wants to shake the police, he will have to give himself up. He’s not going to admit to the big crime, though. He’s going to say he committed another crime that another criminal he knows pulled. He’ll only get about two years for that crime and it will be his alibi for the other crime. He couldn’t have robbed the train if he was committing a less serious robbery in another state, he says.
His wife and mom don’t like the idea, for different reasons.
His wife likes the idea a lot more when she realizes that her husband being in jail in another state will give her time with her husband’s second hand man, who she’s been having an affair with.
Cody’s plan works — sort of. The police figure out what he is trying to do, though, and still want to pin the first crime on him so they send an undercover cop into jail with him to try to make friends with him and find out where he hid the money from the train heist.
I’ll leave it there, so I don’t spoil what happens, but I am going to have to give a big spoiler here to discuss in the paragraph following this next one so if you don’t want to know, you need to stop here.
This movie was dark, intense, and while Cody Jarrett was a horrible man and easy to hate, I also couldn’t help feeling a little sorry for him because he felt crime was the only way to make a living.
SPOILER ALERT!!
Also, the one person who loved him and he loved dies halfway through the movie. I won’t say how his mom dies but it is her death that leads to a much-talked-about scene where Cody absolutely flips out after he finds out she’s gone.
What is interesting about this scene is a couple hundred extras were used as the inmates inside the cafeteria and none of them were told what Cagney was going to do. Most of the shocked faces focused on during that scene were authentic because they were kept in the dark about Cagney’s plans. Some of them really thought Cagney had flipped out.
Another scene we need to talk about happens at the end. Throughout the movie Cody’s mom always ends their conversations by saying, “Top of the world, son! Top of the world!”
This is a line that has been used in pop culture references and parodies for years and I never knew what it was. Now I do and it’s honestly quite heartbreaking. There is so much Cody could have done with his life and not only did he choose crime but his own mother encouraged him to do so.
Cagney came back to Warner Brothers for this film after leaving for several years to start his own movie-making business with his brother. When that failed, he accepted an offer from Warner Brothers, even though Jack Warner really didn’t want him back — mainly because he needed the money.
Warner famously called Cagney, “that little b******.”
Cagney famously said of Warner in Rolling Stone Magazine, “I used to like to walk out on him, frankly, whenever my contract didn’t suit me. I’d cuss him out in Yiddish, which I had learned from Jewish friends in my days at Studyvesant High School. Drove him wild. ‘What’d he say?!’ he’d yell. ‘What’d he just call me?!’”
Their arguments mainly started over Cagney’s contracts in the 30s.
Rob Nixon wrote for TCM.com that White Heat is considered Cagney’s last good gangster film.
“An exciting, dynamic film in its own right, White Heat also stands out as the flaming finale to the era of stark, fast-paced crime films made famous by Warner Brothers and James Cagney (among other stars) from the 1930s on films in which the focus was on the often violent but charismatic gangster rather than the law enforcement officials who hunt him,” Nixon wrote. “It was also the apotheosis of Cagney’s brilliant career, a kind of summing up of the memorable outlaw characters he had created. His projects that followed in the 1950s were mostly lackluster affairs, and the cocky, pugnacious star audiences had come to love was glimpsed infrequently in such films as Love Me or Leave Me and Mister Roberts (both 1955).”
The film was directed by Raoul Walsh and in addition to Cagney it starred Virginia Mayo, Edmond O’Brien, and Margaret Wycherly as Ma.
Many scenes, such as the one mentioned above were adlibbed by Cagney or Walsh.
One of those was when he got annoyed at Mayo (his wife) and he was supposed to just glare at her but instead Walsh told Cagney to kick her off the chair she was standing on. For me, this showed how nasty and heartless Cody really was – as if the opening scenes hadn’t already shown that.
The story for the movie was written by Virginia Kellogg and she was nominated for an Oscar for it, but didn’t win and no one else was nominated. Over the years, though, the film has been praised and named as the fourth best gangster movie by the American Film Institute, has been quoted or parodied too many times to count and in 2003, the American Film Institute named Cody Jarrett in its list of the best heroes and villains of the past 100 years.
I have to be honest and say that the end of the movie annoyed me. I don’t want to give it away but it was a typical movie from the 40s and 50s with the whole idea of the bad guy suffering and the “good guys/cops” being the heroes was very cliché.
In many ways there was nothing good that was going to come for Cagney’s character, though, so things ending badly for him was probably the only way for things to go.
Next week I will be watching Angels With Dirty Faces with Cagney and Humphrey Bogart. To end the event I will be watching The Bride Came C.O.D. (which will move me into my Spring of Bette Davis).
You can read about the other movies I watched by clicking the links below:
If you enjoy the kind of content on my blog and all that goes into it, you can support my writing for $2.99 a month or a single donation. Learn more here: https://lisahoweler.com/support-my-writing/
For the next month or so I will be sharing posts here and there about The Thin Man movies with William Powell and Myrna Loy.
The series is my favorite movie series of all time. The six movies kick off with The Thin Man (1934).
The Thin Man will be 91 years old this year and, to me and many others, it still holds up.
This cozy mystery masterpiece has hit the Top 100 movies list from a variety of film organizations and critics over the years and for good reason. My family owns the DVD set of all six movies so we can watch any of the movies any time we want.
If you haven’t seen this movie or the five sequels involving witty, often intoxicated, private detective, Nick Charles (William Powell), and his equally witty and mouthy wife, Nora Charles (Myrna Loy), then you’re missing out.
Each of the six movies is full of mystery, zaniness, misunderstandings, mishaps, and hilarious interactions between Nick and Nora and everyone else. Oh and a crime or two is mixed in too.
The crimes themselves, and how they were committed, are a bit dark at times, but never graphic or gruesome and the darkness is always overshadowed by the Charles’ antics.
The pairing of Powell and Loy was the ticket for success in the 1930s as they were in a number of movies together and are still considered one of the best movie couples of all time.
Their first film was Manhattan Melodrama (1934) and directed by the same director of The Thin Man, W.S. “Woody” Van Dyke.
The Thin Man is based on a book by Dashiell Hammet and as the movie starts, we find Nick has retired from being a Private Investigator in New York City to help oversee Nora’s wealth as an heiress in San Francisco. This leaves Nick with a lot of time on his hand to go drinking, goof off and do some general carousing, though never with women because he is completely and utterly devoted to Nora.
Nora would like him to get back to work, though, so when they go back to New York for a visit and Nick’s former client, Clyde Wynant (who is later described as simply a thin man — hence the name of the book/movie), goes missing. His daughter Dorothy comes to Nick for help, Nora gently, and later not-so-gently, suggests he help.
What makes this movie such a fun one that might bring an occasional gasp from viewers is that it is a pre-Hays Code movie. That means it was filmed before a bunch of rules went into affect about what can and cannot be shown or said in movies. That’s why there were a couple comments from some of the characters in this that had me gasping and then laughing.
For example:
Nick: I’m a hero. I was shot twice in the Tribune.
Nora: I read where you were shot 5 times in the tabloids.
Nick: It’s not true. He didn’t come anywhere near my tabloids.
Before I forget, what makes these movies even more fun is the addition of Asta, the couple’s wife-fox terrier, who also acted in Bringing Up Baby with Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn and The Awful Truth with Irene Dunn and Cary. He’s a fun addition who always adds to a scene. At one point Nick tells a criminal, (Summarizing here): Stay right there or my dog will get you. He’s vicious.”
All the while Asta is finding a place to hide under a table.
Asta’s real name was Skippy, by the way, and there are some fun stories about him, but I will share more about Asta/Skippy in future posts about the series.
So back in the beginning of the movie, before we even see Nick and Nora, Dorothy Wynant goes to her inventor father to tell him she’s getting married.
During that conversation we learn that Clyde cheated on Dorothy’s mother years ago with his secretary and they are now divorced. Later we will see that divorce really wasn’t such a bad thing because the ex-wife is absolutely batty.
Anyhow, shortly after Dorothy told her father she was getting married, we learn that Clyde Wynant’s former secretary and mistress, Julia Wolf, has stolen $50,000 worth of bonds from his safe. Those were going to go to Dorothy for her wedding gift. Clyde immediately suspects Julia, goes to her apartment, and finds her with a man named Joe Morelli.
Julia confesses she took the bonds, but she can’t give them back. She already spent $25,000 of them.
Clyde isn’t a very nice man and tells her she better get the $25,000 back or she’ll pay. He then leaves for a business trip and presumably never returns because three months later, Nick is out at a bar back in NYC for a visit when he runs into Dorothy who tells him her father is missing. She asks if Nick will help find him but Nick brushes her off by saying he’s sure her father will show up.
Things change later while Nick and Nora are throwing a party and Dorothy shows up to say Julia has been murdered and she truly feels her father is in danger. Now Nora pushes Nick to help out.
“You know, that sounds like an interesting case,” she says to Nick. “Why don’t you take it?”
Nick chuckles. “I haven’t the time. I’m much too busy seeing that you don’t lose any of the money I married you for.”
The really quirky and memorable characters show up when Dorothy goes to visit her mother, Mimi, who — like I said above — is crazy, but also is married to a loser, jobless husband named Chris. Living with her mother is her Mama’s Boy macabre-obsessed brother Gilbert.
Gilbert is a bit of a nerd who walks around with a book and shows everyone how smart he is by using very big words and even bigger theories about things. He’s also a smart mouth.
At one point, he asks one of the cops: “Could I come down and see the body? I’ve never seen a dead body.”
The cop asks why he’d want to, and he says, “Well, I’ve been studying psychopathic criminology and I have a theory. Perhaps this was the work of a sadist or a paranoiac. If I saw it, I might be able to tell.”
Dorothy’s mother, Mimi, is self-focused and selfish and though she was cheated on and might have been a victim in any other movie, she’s a total mess in this movie. Her biggest worry is losing access to her ex-husband’s money, which she has been able to hold on to through alimony. When Julia is murdered, she sees an opportunity to get even more of her ex-husband’s money.
Going back to Nick and Nora … What makes them so memorable, beyond their amazing banter, is how they show that adventure, sex, and adoration doesn’t end after the wedding bells ring. I love how affectionate and playful they are throughout the series.
The writing for them is absolutely outstanding, which is probably because the screenwriters (Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett) were told to focus less on Hammet’s story and more on the banter between the couple.
Some of my favorite exchanges:
Nora Charles: How many drinks have you had?
Nick Charles: This will make six Martinis.
Nora Charles: [to the waiter] All right. Will you bring me five more Martinis, Leo? Line them right up here.
——————
Nick Charles: Oh, it’s all right, Joe. It’s all right. It’s my dog. And, uh, my wife.
Nora Charles: Well you might have mentioned me first on the billing.
______________
Lieutenant John Guild: You got a pistol permit?
Nick Charles: No.
Lieutenant John Guild: Ever heard of the Sullivan Act?
Nora Charles: Oh, that’s all right, we’re married.
______________
Nora Charles: Pretty girl (about Dorothy Wynant)
Nick Charles: Yes. She’s a very nice type.
Nora Charles: You got types?
Nick Charles: Only you, darling. Lanky brunettes with wicked jaws.
_______________
Nora Charles: All right! Go ahead! Go on! See if I care! But I think it’s a dirty trick to bring me all the way to New York just to make a widow of me.
Nick Charles: You wouldn’t be a widow long.
Nora Charles: You bet I wouldn’t!
Nick Charles: Not with all your money…
According to information online, Hammett based Nick and Nora’s banter upon his rocky on-again, off-again relationship with playwright Lillian Hellman and the book itself on his experience as a union-busting Pinkerton.
MGM tried to prevent Myrna Loy from being cast in The Thin Man by telling director Van Dyke that he could have her “only if she was finished in three weeks to begin shooting Stamboul Quest (1934),” according to TCM. Van Dyke not only completed Loy’s scenes but all of the production somewhere between 12 and 18 days.
“Known as “One-Take Woody,” Van Dyke often did not bother with cover shots if he felt the scene was right on the first take, reasoning that actors “lose their fire” if they have to do something over and over,” Rob Nixon wrote for TCM. “It was a lot of pressure on the actors, who often had to learn new lines and business immediately before shooting, without the luxury of retakes, but Loy credited much of the appeal of The Thin Man to Van Dyke’s pacing and spontaneity.”
It was Van Dyke, with that whole desire of his to create natural reactions, who worked out Loy’s classic entrance into the bar and restaurant at the beginning of the movie — all her packages spilling on to the floor as Asta pulls her down the hall toward Powell.
Loy was told about the scene right before they shot it.
Van Dyke took a similar approach with Powell by telling him to take the cocktail shaker, go behind the bar, and walk through one of the early scenes while the crew checked lights and sound.
Powell did so and ad-libbed some comments to the crew as he worked out the scene. Before he knew it VanDyke yelled “That’s it! Print it!”
The director had had the cameras rolling the whole time.
He liked his actors as relaxed and natural as possible which is why a scene of Nick shooting the ornaments off the tree was added into the movie because “Powell playfully picked up an air gun and started shooting ornaments that the art department was putting up.”
I couldn’t find quotes from Powell about working with Van Dyke but there are quotes about working with Powell because he loved working with her.
“When we did a scene together, we forgot about technique, camera angles, and microphones. We weren’t acting. We were just two people in perfect harmony,” he said. “Myrna, unlike some actresses who think only of themselves, has the happy faculty of being able to listen while the other fellow says his lines. She has the give and take of acting that brings out the best.”
You can find plenty of opinions and articles about this movie online, most of them positive.
The Blonde at the Film wrote on her blog in 2014, “The Thin Man (1934) is a truly delightful mystery-comedy chock full of snappy dialogue, fantastic stars, art deco sets, magnificent costumes, enough mystery to make it suspenseful, and enough alcohol to give you a sympathy hangover.”
Christopher Orr wrote for The Atlantic: “As Nick and Nora, Powell and Loy subverted the classic detective film with comic aplomb and presented an impressively modern vision of marriage as an association of equals. They were also cinema’s most glamorous dipsomaniacs, a reminder of a bygone era when Hollywood could still imagine that charm, taste, and good humor might go hand-in-hand with the copious consumption of distilled spirits.”
His opinion of the mysteries in this movie and the others is fairly accurate, even though not altogether positive: “The mysteries themselves tend to be somewhat disappointing–needlessly convoluted, with solutions that often hinge on a last minute revelation or “clue” of dubious import (for example, whether or not someone announced themselves before opening a door). Rather, the chief pleasure of the films is in spending time with Nick and Nora as they tease, cajole, and romance their way toward the conclusion.”
Film critic Roger Ebert wrote of The Thin Man, “William Powell is to dialogue as Fred Astaire is to dance. His delivery is so droll and insinuating, so knowing and innocent at the same time, that it hardly matters what he’s saying.”
He continued: “Powell plays the character with a lyrical alcoholic slur that waxes and wanes but never topples either way into inebriation or sobriety. The drinks are the lubricant for dialogue of elegant wit and wicked timing, used by a character who is decadent on the surface but fundamentally brave and brilliant.”
Have you seen The Thin Man? What did you think of it?
Up next (at some point) I will be writing about the next movie in the series, After The Thin Man.
This past year I watched 84 movies, some long and some short, the majority of them made before 1960.
At the end of this post, I’ll list them all, but for now, here are my favorites from the bunch. I did not include any movies that were rewatches for me in my favorites list, but I did include rewatches in the overall list.
For winter this year, I am watching James Cagney movies.
First up is Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942) which Cagney won an Oscar for.
This is a biopic about the entertainer George Cohan. Actually, though, he was more than just an entertainer. Under that umbrella, he was a playwright, lyricist, actor, singer, dancer, and theatrical producer.
Don’t think you know who Cohan is?
Well, if you’ve ever heard the songs “You’re A Grand Old Flag”, “Over There”, “Yankee Doodle Dandy Boy,” or “Give My Regards to Broadway,” then you have heard some of George’s work.
Yankee Doodle Dandy is his story, but . . . with some poetic license from what I’ve been reading. Cohan comes out looking a bit better than he might have been in real life, considering his first wife divorced him for adultery and that mysteriously didn’t make the movie. The movie did portray him as a bit of an arrogant kid who pushed his way to stardom, so he wasn’t portrayed as totally perfect, however. Plus, Cohan had the final say on the movie so maybe that’s why he looked a bit better in the movie. *wink*
Cohan was born July 3, 1878 according to baptismal records but according to him and his parents, he was born on the Fourth of July. This “fact” would be used throughout his career as he asserted his bold patriotism for the United States of America.
“I’m a Yankee Doodle Dandy A Yankee Doodle, do or die A real live nephew of my Uncle Sam Born on the Fourth of July I’ve got a Yankee Doodle sweetheart She’s my Yankee Doodle joy”
From the musical Little Johnny Jones
Cohan’s was an Irish immigrant named Jeremiah (Keohane) Cohan. His mother was Helen “Nellie” Costigan Cohan, and his sister was Josephine “Josie” Cohan Niblo (1876–1916). Together the four of them would form a Vaudeville act called The Four Cohans.
George began singing and playing the violin at the age of 8 and toured with his family from 1890 to 1901.
During these years, he made famous a speech at the end of their show that you might have heard over the years, or even said yourself as a joke: “My mother thanks you, my father thanks you, my sister thanks you, and I thank you.”
The Four Cohans with George on the left.
He and his sister made their Broadway debuts in 1893 in a sketch called The Lively Bootblack.
I won’t give you his entire biography here, so if you want to know even more about his life, the movie will fill you in or there is a ton of information about him online.
Many people think of James Cagney with a New York accident asking questions like, “You talking to me?” because of the many mobster-themed movies he appeared in in the 1930s. (I don’t think he actually ever said that line, though. Much like he never actually said, ‘You dirty rat! The quote was actually longer and included the words “You yellow-bellied dirty rat” in the movie Taxi, 1931.)
“There is a story that James Cagney stood on his toes while acting, believing he would project more energy that way,” Roger Ebert wrote. That sounds like a press release, but whatever he did, Cagney came across as one of the most dynamic performers in movie history–a short man with ordinary looks whose coiled tension made him the focus of every scene.”
Yankee Doodle Dandee showed there was lot more to Cagney than many moviegoers realized.
For one, Cagney could dance, which he had showcased in other movies but really was able to showcase in this movie.
Cagney could also be funny and charming — which moviegoers had seen in other movies but really saw in Yankee Doodle Dandy.
Cagney almost didn’t get the role that he would later call his favorite, according to an article on TCM.com.
Originally Cohan and MGM had combined to make a film that would cover when Cohan had toured with his family. It would have starred Mickey Rooney. The deal collapsed because the studio head, Louis B. Mayer, refused to let Cohan have the final cut on the film.
Samuel Goldwyn then expressed an interest in making a movie with Cohan and planned on giving the role of Cohan to Fred Astaire.
Astaire turned it down, and Warner Bros. picked up the rights and cast Cagney, who at the time was being suspected of being a communist sympathizer due to being president of the Screen Actors’ Guild a — gasp! — union!
“He wanted to show his patriotism on screen,” the TCM article reads. “And the George M. Cohan story was the perfect vehicle to do that.”
Cagney broke into infamy with this movie. I am sure many of you have seen one of his most famous scenes — when he tap dances down a long flight of stairs while leaving the white house after talking to President Franklin Roosevelt. This scene, like many others in his career, was improvised by Cagney, who called it his favorite moment in the movie.
“I didn’t think of it till five minutes before I went on,” Cagney later recalled. “And I didn’t check with the director or anything; I just did it.”
Yankee Doodle Dandy was directed by Michael Curtiz (most well-known for directing Casablanca).
According to TCM and other sources online, Curtiz letting Cagney have free rein in the role is what made it such a success and made him so enamored with Cagney as an actor.
“The ordinarily hard-boiled Curtiz was so moved by the scene in which Cohan bids farewell to his dying father (Walter Huston) that he reportedly ruined a take with his loud sobs,” reads the article on TCM.com. “According to Cagney biographer Michael Freedland, tears streamed down Curtiz’s face as he stumbled away to find a handkerchief and exclaimed to Cagney, “Gott, Jeemy, that was marvelous!’”
I can speak from the experience of seeing the movie that that scene was heartbreakingly marvelous. I wasn’t super emotionally invested in the movie as I watched it, but during that scene, I teared up and failed to hold back a small sob. Maybe it’s because my parents are older, so I could relate to that scene more than I might have been able to if I had watched this when I was younger.
Critic Brenden Gill said of Cagney’s role in the film: “George M. Cohan was by all accounts something of a scoundrel. He was an impossible human being, but he was a tremendous actor, comedian, showman, and he wrote great popular songs. He exists in our memories now not as George M. Cohan but as James Cagney in the movie.”
“Cagney managed to capture this persona that Cohan created,” another critic I heard (but couldn’t find the name of) said. “It was brash. It was pushy. It was aggressive. It was funny. Very American. Very New York. And Cohan created this character as his own persona on stage, but it really became the emblem of Broadway itself.”
Cagney, according to TCM.com writer Jeremy Arnold, wanted to portray Cohan correctly, not only because Cohan — 63 at the time the movie was made —had final approval over the film, but for accuracy.
“To perfect Cohan’s distinctive, strutting style of dance,” Arnold writes. “Cagney rehearsed with choreographer John Boyle, who had worked with Cohan extensively in the 1920s. Cagney also channeled Cohan’s singing voice, which was more like rhythmic speaking, and brought his own charismatic talent to the romantic, comedic, and dramatic scenes.”
There were liberties taken with Cohan’s life, as I mentioned above. For instance, his two wives were combined into a single character. Also, the chronology and order of his parents’ death was also switched around (probably to make that death bed scene even more emotional). Additionally, in one scene when he suffers a flop with a non-musical drama called Popularity, a newspaper seller announces the torpedoing of the Lusitania. The play flopped in 1906, but the Lusitania sunk in 1915, according to TCM.
Despite these changes, most critics agree that the movie captured Cohan’s life and music perfectly.
“Yankee Doodle Dandy, with its many flag-waving musical numbers, proved just the ticket for World War II-era audiences and became the top-grossing movie of its year, as well as Warner Bros.’ top-grossing movie to that time,” Jeremy Arnold wrote for TCM.com.
In addition to Cagney, the movie also starred Joan Leslie, Walter Huston, Richard Worf, Irene Manning, Rosemary Decamp, Jeanne Cagney (Cagney’s sister who played his sister Josie in the movie), and Eddie Foy Jr as Eddie Foy Sr.
So, a pause here. Eddie Foy Sr. was another entertainer of a similar style and also performed vaudeville with his family, The Seven Foys.
There is a movie called The Seven Little Foys (1955) starring Bob Hope as Eddie Foy Sr. and in it there is a cameo by Cagney, who portrays George M. Cohan, reprising his role from Yankee Doodle Dandy.
The two dancers face off in a very fun tap-dancing routine on a boardroom table. You can catch that here:
As for what movie watchers or critics now think of Yankee Doodle Dandy, you can find a variety of opinions online — some calling it satire to make fun of capitalism and nationalism while others say it is a disgusting display of support for capitalism and nationalism.
Some love the over-the-top patriotism and some absolutely hate it.
I guess you’ll have to make up your own mind what it promotes or represents and what it doesn’t, but what many can’t deny is the talent Cagney displays in the movie.
I definitely enjoyed seeing Cagney’s talent, but at first glance didn’t enjoy his dancing style. It was floppy and lanky instead of smooth and debonair like Gene Kelley or Fred Astaire, who I am more used to, but after seeing footage of Cohan, I now get that Cagney was imitating Cohan’s dancing style.
After hearing and seeing recordings of Cohan this week, I realized how perfectly Cagney nailed Cohan in the movie. No wonder he won the Oscar for best actor that year. It was also his only Oscar, incidentally.
Cagney pulled the role off even though “he (couldn’t) really dance or sing,” observed critic Edwin Jahiel, “but he acts so vigorously that it creates an illusion, and for dance-steps he substitutes a patented brand of robust, jerky walks, runs and other motions.”
Ebert wrote in his review of the film : “Unlike Astaire, whose entire body was involved in every movement, Cagney was a dancer who seemed to call on body parts in rotation. When he struts across the stage in the “Yankee Doodle Dandy” number, his legs are rubber but his spine is steel, and his torso is slanted forward so steeply we’re reminded of Groucho Marx.”
I’ll have to check out Cagney’s dancing in other movies to really get an idea of his actual style.
Cohan saw the picture shortly before he died in November 1942, by the way, and reportedly said afterward, “My God, what an act to follow.” The next morning, he sent Cagney a congratulatory telegram. And then he died. Ha! Kidding. I have no idea when he actually died but I do know he was only 64 so it was shortly after the movie was released.
I was amazed by the amazing sets for the incredible musical scenes in this movie. The scenes — which included moving sets and fireworks, and a floor like a conveyor belt that made the actors seem like they were continuously marching toward the audience — were way ahead of moviemaking at that time
Maybe that is why the movie cost so much to make, which was $1.5 million and well above the standard for the time.
Luckily, it grossed $6 million.
You can catch some of that movie/Broadway magic here:
As for Cagney’s acting in the movie, I thought it was great and engaging. Even parts that could have been a bit cheesy were enhanced by Cagney’s performance.
I loved the dancing and singing sequences throughout the movie. Those snippets were perfect introductions to the style of musicals and Broadway at the time, though that style became the style of Broadway in the future as well, thanks to Cohan.
Have you seen this one?
You can learn a bit more about Cohan in this clip:
If you want to see Cohan himself perform “Over There,” you can see that here:
And for a sneak peek of the movie, here is the trailer from when it was released:
When people think of the actor James Cagney, many might think of his roles as gangsters, bad guys, and double-crossers. He was much more than that, though, in his acting roles and in his life.
This month I am watching James Cagney movies as part of my Winter of Cagney movie event.
To kick it off, I thought it might be good to share a little about the actor’s life.
Cagney was born to an Irish bartender father (James Francis Cagney) in the rough lower east side of New York City. His father, who Cagney says was an alcoholic, was also an accomplished boxer and at the age of 14 Cagney followed his footsteps and became one of Yorkville’s best fighters. James’ mother was Carolyn Elizabeth Cagney (my mom’s name is ironically Carolyn Elizabeth..but not Cagney).
“My childhood was surrounded by trouble, illness, and my dad’s alcoholism,” Cagney wrote in his autobiography, Cagney on Cagney. “But as I said, we just didn’t have the time to be impressed by all those misfortunes. I have an idea that the Irish possess a built-in don’t-give-a-damn that helps them through all the stress.”
While in high school, Cagney worked wrapping packages at Wanamaker’s Department Store, for $16 a week. His introduction into entertainment came when a fellow employee at Wanamaker’s told him a vaudeville troupe paid its players $35 a week. When Cagney auditioned, he told them he could sing and dance. He couldn’t do either, but he still had a successful audition. It was while working in Vaudeville that he met Frances Willard. They married in 1922 and remained married until his death 64 years later. She lived until 1994.
Cagney’s big break on the stage came in 1929 when he acted opposite Joan Blondell in Penny Arcade.
His big screen debut came in 1930 with Sinner’s Holiday, and he made four more films that year. Public Enemy (1931) and Taxi (1931) are two movies where the world was introduced to him as a gangster.
Growing up, I heard a lot of impressions of Cagney and those always claimed he said, “You dirty rat….” Or “All right, you guys.”
For the record, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica website, Cagney never actually said the words “You dirty rat,” or “All right, you guys” in any of his movies. Wow. Talk about a disappointing revelation there. Ha!
He did, however, say, “Come out here and take it, you dirty yellow-bellied rat or I’ll give it to you through the door,” in the 1931 movieTaxi.
According to The Kennedy Center website (he was honored there in 1980), “The unforgettable ‘fruit facial’ scene, in which he rams a grapefruit into Mae Clarke’s nose is exemplary of Cagney’s spontaneity, for the script called for him to slap Clarke with an omelet.”
Eventually, though, Cagney would tire of “packing guns and beating up women,” as he said in his autobiography, and after a string of movies where he played a gangster type figure, he did try some different roles, including the one he won an Oscar for — playing George M. Cohan in Yankee Doodle Dandy.
“No matter the genre of the film he was in, James Cagney always brought unique, riveting energy to the screen,” writes Jeremy Arnold for TCM.com. “Known best for his tough-guy and gangster roles, a persona cemented by his fourth picture, The Public Enemy (1931), Cagney had actually started his showbiz career in 1920s vaudeville as a song and dance man, and to the end of his life he thought of himself primarily as a hoofer. Hollywood didn’t give him a chance to show off those talents until his fourteenth film, Footlight Parade (1933), and even after that movie’s success, Cagney went on to make surprisingly few musicals.”
In 1934 and 1940, Cagney was accused of being a communist sympathizer and many say this is why he took the part in Yankee Doodle Dandy — to attempt to clear his name and show that he really was a true patriot. His brother, in fact, urged him to take the part for that very reason.
Information online from various sources also suggests Cagney once had a hit on him by the mafia for work he did against the Chicago Outfit and the Mafia because they were extorting money from Hollywood studios by threatening to strikes by a mob-controlled labor union.
Cagney once shared that a hitman was sent and a heavy light was dropped on his head but it didn’t kill him, and the hit was eventually dropped when actor George Raft made a call to have the contract canceled. Raft was an American actor who played mobsters in movies and was (apparently) connected to the mob as well.
Some of Cagney’s most famous movies, besides the ones already mentioned, include:
White Heat (1949), Come Fill the Cup (1951), Love Me or Leave Me (1955), Mister Roberts (1955), and Man of a Thousand Faces (1957).
White Heat is one film that Cagney enthusiasts say you have to watch (and I will be). One reason is for the scene where Cagney breaks down after finding out his mother has been killed. The scene was shot with 300 extras in a prison cafeteria and none of the men knew what Cagney was going to do. Many of the men in the scene actually thought he had lost his mind which is why their reactions in the background are so real.
“I didn’t have to psych myself up for the scene in which I go berserk on learning of my mother’s death,” he wrote in his autobiography Cagney by Cagney. “You don’t psych yourself up for those things. You do them. I knew what deranged people sounded like. As a youngster I had visited Ward’s Island. A pal’s uncle was in the hospital for the insane. My God, what an education that was. The shrieks. The screams of those people under restraint. I remembered those cries. I saw that they fit the scene. I called on my memory to do as required. No need to ‘psych up.’”
White Heat is also where Cagney uttered one of his most famous lines, “On top of the world, Ma!”
After playing the manic Coca-Cola executive in Billy Wilder’s One Two Three in 1961, Cagney retired from acting and moved to an 800-acre farm in Dutchess County, NY with his wife where he relaxed, read, played tennis, raised horses, swam, and wrote some poetry.
It was on that farm where he died on Easter Sunday, 1986, of a heart attack at the age of 86.
I was saddened to read from a couple of sources that he did have adopted children, but the relationships with them fell apart, and his adopted son died of a heart attack when Cagney was 84, without them really speaking to each other for years..
Many actors and famous people have commented on Cagney, his acting, his movies, and his life in general.
One of those actors was George C. Scott who never worked with him but met him toward the end of Cagney’s life and borrowed a quote about General Robert E. Lee that Scott said fit Cagney as well: “What he seemed he was, a wholly human gentleman. The essential elements of whose positive character were two and only two — simplicity and spirituality.”
Scott said he was “perfectly himself” and “he was what he seemed to be.”
I will be watching the following movies for my Winter of Cagney:
A vlogger I watch recently suggested watching Meet Me In St. Louis as a Christmas movie, mainly because of the song Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas, which is sung toward the end of the movie.
I had never watched the movie because I’ve never felt like I was a big fan of Judy Garland, even though I haven’t seen her in much other than The Wizard of Oz.
I decided to give the movie a try a couple of weeks ago, though, and it turns out I don’t mind Judy as much as I thought and the movie does have a few Christmas-themed scenes (including a Christas Eve dance at the end), but it is much more than a Christmas movie.
The movie is funny, fun, warmhearted, and full of really sweet or fun songs. The dresses worn by the young women are gorgeous and it was shot in technicolor which makes all the beautiful dresses even more captivating.
The movie is a musical, which I didn’t know when I started it. I didn’t even know that this is where the song Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas came from. I also didn’t know this is where The Trolly Song (which I thought was just called Clang, Clang, Clang Goes the Trolly) came from. (That’s the song my husband always sings when he pretends he’s looped out from a knock on the head or when he is super tired. I’d say when he is drinking, but he doesn’t drink enough to get that drunk. I told him this movie is where the song he sings is from and he said he thought it was from The Simpsons. Ha! I think Homer does sing part of it in an episode.)
Yes, I have been living under a rock for my entire life.
If you’ve seen this movie you can skip over the next paragraph where I share what the movie is about.
The movie follows the Smith family, primarily Esther Smith (Judy) and her siblings as they grow up in St. Louis. The movie shows a year in the life of the family and there isn’t really a deep plot to the movie other than Judy trying to catch the eye of the college boy next door — John Pruitt — and her sister trying to get married. I don’t find the lack of a plot a detriment of the movie, by the way. The majority of the movie follows the different situations the youngest girls get themselves in, as well as the love life of Esther and her sister, and it is a fun journey.
The movie takes place in 1903.
The parents, grandfather, and housemaid are really all secondary characters but still very fun additions.
The youngest sisters, played by Margaret O’Brien (Tootie) and Joan Carroll (Agnes), are absolutely hilarious. The scenes with them are the funniest scenes in the movie. There is one that takes place on Halloween that is so insanely crazy I found myself gasping at the verbal “brutality” of these kids. (Written with a laugh, just to explain.)
If you’ve seen the movie, you know what I’m talking about. If you haven’t seen the movie, you’ll need to watch and find out.
In addition to Judy, the movie also stars Lucille Bremmer, Mary Astor, Leon Ames, and Harry Davenport.
The musical was released in 1944 and based on a series of short stories by Sally Benson.
Her stories story first appeared in the New Yorker magazine between June 21, 1941 and May 23, 1942. The twelve installments were published under at The Kensington Stories with Kensington referring to the fictional street address of the “Smiths’s” house.
Benson sold the rights to MGM in 1942 and was hired to work on the screenplay, which was ultimately written by Irving Brecher and Fred F. Finklehoffe with her help.
Benson published the stories as a novel of the same name with each chapter covering one month of the year the same year the movie came out.
According to AFI.com, Benson’s story was based on her own experiences growing up in St. Louis. “Tootie” was based on Benson, while “Esther” was inspired by her older sister.
The movie, incidentally, was directed by Vincent Morelli, who married Judy a year later. That marriage is a whole crazy story for another day.
Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas was written by Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane who originally wrote it to be about celebrating Christmas during wartime. At the request of Judy, though, the lyrics were tweaked and the mood of the song was uplifted a bit. Judy, who was supposed to be 17 in the movie, is singing the song to her younger (5-year-old sister) in the movie and didn’t feel it was appropriate to sing a sad song at Christmastime to a little girl.
Meet Me In St. Louis was the second-highest grossing film that year behind the Bing Crosby movie Going My Way (the prequel to The Bells of St. Mary).
According to TCM.com, Meet Me in St. Louis received a very large amount of awards in 1944 and beyond. Here are some of those:
It was nominated for four Academy Awards including Best Cinematography, Best Original Song (for “The Trolley Song”), Best Musical Score and Best Writing, Screenplay.
In 1989 it won an ASCAP Award for the song “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” which they named the Most Performed Feature Film Standard.
The National Board of Review named it one of the top ten films of 1944.
In 1945 the Library of Congress selected it as one of 7 films to be the first inclusions in the library’s film collection.
In 2005 the American Film Institute ranked it the 10th Greatest Movie Musical of All Time.
In 2004 the American Film Institute ranked “The Trolley Song” from it as the 26th Greatest Movie Song of All Time.
In 2005 Time Magazine named it as one of the Top 100 All-Time Movies.
An interesting story I read while researching this movie was that Margaret O’Brien’s juvenile Oscar was stolen by a former maid of her family’s. The Academy gave her a replacement Oscar, but she still hoped to one day have her original Oscar returned to her. She used to search flea markets and collector auctions for it.
The story is a bit long, but the Oscar was eventually found and returned to her during a special ceremony held by the Academy.
At the time she said, “For all those people who have lost or misplaced something that was dear to them, as I have, never give up the dream of searching—never let go of the hope that you’ll find it because after all these many years, at last, my Oscar has been returned to me.”
This post is part of the Comfy, Cozy Christmas feature hosted by me and Erin at Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs. If you have a blog post that you would like to share as part of this annual link-up, please find out more here.
I’ve been watching less popular Christmas-themed movies around Christmas for the last couple of years. One of those movies was It Happened on Fifth Avenue (1947).
I truly thought I’d written about this movie in previous years, but I can’t find it when I search so I am writing about it now.
The movie is about a group of people who are sort of thrown together but it starts with a man named Alyosius T. McKeever (Victor Moore) who sneaks in the mansion of businessman Michael O’Connor (Charlie Ruggles) in New York City early in November when O’Connor goes to his home in Virginia for the winter.
McKeever is a “vagabond” or homeless man.
He lives in the home, wearing O’Connor’s clothes, and eating any food left at the house in the pantry.
The movie opens with him sneaking inside through the back fence and will later learn that he’s been doing this for some twenty years.
I, of course, am surprised that no one has ever seen him or seen the lights on in the house but, it’s a movie. Let’s suspend belief.
There are police who patrol the grounds, but McKeever has a system where he hides in the icebox (or a room they call the icebox) until the police have passed by. He also has the lights hooked up so they will shut off as soon as someone opens the front door.
One day McKeever meets Jim Bullock played by Don DeFore, sleeping on a park bench. Jim, a veteran, has been evicted from his apartment building because it is being torn down. Michael O’Connor is putting up an 80-story building in its place.
When Jim gets to the mansion and is settling in, he sees an award shaped like a boat with the name Michael O’Connor on it and accuses McKeever of taking over homes of people who can’t afford to live in family homes like his.
McKeever tells Jim he’s not really O’Connor, but a friend of his. Jim accepts this explanation easily
Jim isn’t sure what to think of this arrangement, but he needs a place to stay so he accepts it.
Soon we see Michael O’Connor, who is in Virgina having a board meeting. During the board meeting he gets a call from his daughter Trudy’s school and been told that it’s possible she’s run away.
Michael looks at a photo of two women and asks his assistant if he thinks that she has run off to her mother in Florida.
The man doesn’t know so Michael orders him to hire a private investigator and find his daughter (played by … get this name…Gale Storm).
His daughter, though, is already found for us viewers. She is at her father’s mansion looking for her clothes when Jim finds her. He demands to know what she’s doing there and suggests she is stealing from the mansion. He threatens to call the police.
Trudy, apparently smitten with Jim merely based on his appearance, decides not to tell him who she really is and tells him to go ahead and call the police.
McKeever pulls Jim aside and confesses all. He is not a friend of O’Connor, but is, instead, simply someone who takes advantage of the home being empty for a few months out of the year. When O’Connor leaves, he moves in and when O’Connor leaves Virginia, McKeever hitches his way to Virginia and moves in that house until it’s time to come back to New York.
(Again…suspend belief).
Jim isn’t sure what to make of the arrangement, but is amused and impressed that McKeever hasn’t been caught yet.
Trudy listens in and overhears what McKeever has been doing and smiles in an amused way. She decides she will find a way to stay on with the men since it will be a way to hide from her father for a while. She tells the men the truth, which is that she’s going to get a job at a music store so she can get back on her feet again. She then says she only broke into the house because she was hungry and desperate and then does a lovely fake faint to add to her story.
The men agree that she can stay. From here the movie will start to get a bit more complicated as more people are invited to stay at the mansion, including a family with small children. What could make all of this even more chaotic? Add in Michael O’Connor returning to New York to try to find his daughter and planning to return to the mansion.
One little thing that bothered me about this movie was how young Gale Storm looked and was supposed to be. She was supposed to be 18 but a romance develops between her and Jim and he seems considerably older than her. That was…awkward at times. However, I’m not sure how old Jim is actually supposed to be so maybe it isn’t so awkward. Gale was 22 at the time the film was made.
The screenplay for this movie was written by Everett Freeman. The original story was created by Herbert Clyde Lewis and Frederick Stephani.
Harry Revel wrote the songs “It’s A Wonderful, Wonderful Feeling.” “That’s What Christmas Means to Me” and “Speak My Heart” for the movie, according to the opening credits, but I wouldn’t call this movie a musical. One of the main characters simply sings a bit.
Gale Storm thought she’d be singing the parts in the film, but, unfortunately, she was told her voice would be dubbed over.
She later wrote in her memoir: “I couldn’t believe it. I thought that maybe the director didn’t know I’d been singing and dancing in films, and that if I spoke to him he’d let me do my own numbers. Well, I asked him, and he said no. I asked him to look at some of my musicals, and he said no. I asked him if I could sing for him, and he said no. His theory was that if you were a dancer, you didn’t sing; if you were a singer, you didn’t dance; and if you were an actor, you didn’t sing or dance. It was humiliating.”
Another song in the movie is “You’re Everywhere” sung by The King’s Men at 1930s/1940s barbershop quartet.
According to TCM.com, Frank Capra originally acquired the rights to the movie but passed it on to Allied Artists, a new subsidiary of Monogram Pictures, which used to develop B movies. It Happened on Fifth Avenue was the companies first major motion picture and was developed by Roy Del Ruth.
Not only was Gale upset about not being able to sing in the film, but she also was disappointed Capra didn’t direct it, according to the TCM.com article. She felt the movie was decidedly “Capra-esque” — “a warmhearted human story about the little guy with underlying social and political commetary. She said that she felt Del Ruth didn’t make the most of the story’s potential, but she may have been holding a grudge since he didn’t let her do her own singing.
Gale said Del Ruth wasn’t easy on anyone.
“I wasn’t the only one Del Ruth humiliated,” continued Storm in her biography. “Victor Moore was a dear, sweet old man who was kind to everyone; we all loved him. Except Del Ruth. Whatever Victor did, the director made him redo it — again and again. And Del Ruth never told the old man what he might have been doing wrong.”
Despite these complaints from Gale, the movie did well when it was released, with the actors receiving praise by reviewers and critics. It has now become a beloved classic as well.
Is this one you’ve ever seen? What did you think about it?
This post is part of the Comfy, Cozy Christmas feature hosted by me and Erin at Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs. If you have a blog post that you would like to share as part of this annual link-up, please find out more here.
If you write book reviews or book-related blog posts, don’t forget that Erin and I host the A Good Book and A Cup of Tea Monthly Bookish Blog Party. You can learn more about it here.
This post is part of the Comfy, Cozy Christmas feature hosted by me and Erin at Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs. If you have a blog post that you would like to share as part of this annual link-up, please find out more here.
A couple years ago, I decided to look for Christmas movies to watch that are not as well known or popular or maybe not exactly “Christmas movies” but are considered Christmas movies by those who have viewed them.
Alas, Die Hard is not on this list. Die Hard 2 isn’t either.
These are older, more classic films — though some might say Die Hard is old now and a classic.
Still…no Die Hard here.
Beyond Tomorrow/Beyond Christmas
Beyond Tomorrow, also called Beyond Christmas in later years after it was colorized, was released in 1940. It is quirky, but also very sweet.
The movie starts with the story of three old men (Michael O’Brien, George Melton, and Allan Chadwick) who served together in the army and are living in the same house and looking back on their lives with some sadness and regret. They want to help others to make up for some of their regrets and we learn that they have tossed wallets with money in them out into the street for Christmas. They want to see if anyone will be honest and return the money. Two people do. Schoolteacher Jean Lawrence (Jean Parker) and cowboy James Houston (Richard Carlson).
The three men begin to conspire how to bring the young man and woman together as a couple but in the middle of their matchmaking, they tragically die in a plane crash.
Stay with me here — the men come back as ghosts and work from the afterworld to keep the couple together.
Where you can find it: Tubi, Amazon Prime and Hoopla.
We’re No Angels
We’re No Angels is certainly an out-of-the-box Christmas movie and a lot of fun. The subject matter and some of the lines were actually jaw-dropping to me and weren’t something I would have expected in a movie made in 1955.
The movie stars Humphrey Bogart (Joseph), Peter Ustinov (Jules), and Alto Ray (Albert).
The men are escaped convicts on an island called Devil’s Island off the coast of France. There are other convicts on the island in prison uniforms but they are on probation or parole, working at local businesses. The fact there are so many convicts wearing the same uniforms makes it easy for the men to blend in.
They make a plan to find a business they can rob and get money from so they can leave the island on a boat. A chance meeting with a doctor on a ship who needs to deliver a message leads them to a clothing store where they meet Felix Ducotel and his family. Felix is managing a store and they offer to repair his roof as a way to get their foot in the door, so to speak, so they can rob him later that night. He accepts and from the roof the three men begin to learn about Felix’s family – including his wife, Amelie and daughter, Isabelle.
Soon they are wrapped up in the family’s drama. They learn the business, owned by Felix’s cousin, is failing. Isabelle is in love with a man named Paul. Her mother wants to know why she isn’t married and giving them grandchildren already (umm…because she’s only 18. Hello??!) and the couple is stressed because the business is failing.
I will not spoil the movie but I will say that the men end up deciding to cook Christmas dinner for the family and steal most of what they need to do so. They keep offering to help the family, partially because they would like some of that dinner too, and partially to build trust so they can . . . um…kill and rob them. Ahem.
Where you can find it: YouTube, AppleTV, Amazon Prime Video, Fandango
Holiday Affair
This movie stars Janet Leigh, Robert Mitchum, and Wendell Corey.
Leigh plays Connie Ennis, a widower, whose husband died in World War II. She has a 6-year-old son, Timmy played by Gordon Gerbert , (ironically I worked with a man named Tim Ennis and my husband still works with him). She is dating a man named Carl (Wendell Corey) who is predictable and safe. You know, the ole’ boring boyfriend versus the dashing and bold potential boyfriend trope.
Mitchum plays Steve Mason, whom Connie meets at a department store when she’s there as a comparison shopper for another store. Steve pegs her in her role right away but doesn’t turn her in because she tells him she’s a single mom and her son’s only support.
That move gets him fired and one would think that means he is out of Connie’s life. On the contrary, they continue to have interactions when Connie goes to apologize to him and then he ends up helping her out on her next shopping trip.
That encounter leads to Steve meeting Timmy, who is enamored with Steve – much more so than Carl, who he knows wants to marry his mother.
Timmy acts out with Carl and is sent to his room and this leads to a heart-to-heart with Steve who learns Timmy wants a train for Christmas.
Steve makes this happen and yet another interaction occurs between him and Connie.
There is a lot of back and forth in this film and more than one interaction between Connie and Steve when she walks away from him angry and he just watches her walk away with a smug grin.
This is a movie with a definite love triangle, of course, and you’ll have to watch to see how all that works out. Some of the movie is predictable but some of it isn’t. There are plenty of surprises to make this movie a unique and non-traditional Christmas watch.
Where you can find it: Amazon, YouTube, Apple TV, Google Play, Fandango
Bells of St. Mary
I couldn’t believe it took me so long to watch this movie.
I ended up loving it when I did last year. The chemistry between the main stars, Bing Crosby and Ingrid Bergman, was outstanding. It was also nice to see Ingrid in a role with some humor because I’ve only ever seen her in more serious roles. And, of course, I love that Bing sang in this movie, even though it wasn’t a strict musical.
Bing Crosby arrives as the new priest at the St. Mary’s parish and is immediately told of how the former priest aged quickly because he had to help oversee a nun-run, school that is run-down and in the inner city.
The former priest also had to deal with Sister Superior Mary Benedict (Bergman), a woman with a strong personality who runs the school.
“I can see you don’t know what it means to be up to your neck in nuns,” the rectory housekeeper says.
Father O’Malley admits he doesn’t and the woman advises him to “sleep well tonight” as if implying it will be his last good night of sleep for a while.
Father O’Malley and Sister Benedict butt heads more than once but in passive-aggressive ways. One way they butt heads is in how to educate the children at the school. O’Malley is much softer in his approach while Sister Mary prefers levying harsher punishments.
There isn’t a ton of “Christmas” in this movie other than in the middle of the movie, there is an adorable rehearsal of the Christmas/nativity story with the cutest little kids – probably 5 to 7. Still, many consider this a Christmas movie.
“The Bells of St. Mary’s has come to be associated with the Christmas season,” a Wikipedia article states. “Probably because of the inclusion of a scene involving a Christmas pageant at the school, a major plot point involving an unlikely (yet prayed for) gift, and the film’s having been released in December 1945. In the 1946 film, It’s a Wonderful Life, in which Henry Travers, a co-star of The Bells of St. Mary’s, plays the guardian angel Clarence Odbody, the title of The Bells of St. Mary’s appears on the marquee of a movie theater in Bedford Falls, New York. In The Godfather (1972), Michael and Kay see The Bells of St. Mary’s at Radio City Music Hall.”
Where You Can Find It: Amazon Prime Video, Tubi, YouTube, Apple TV, Google Play, Roku Channel, etc.
A Christmas Carol Goes Wrong
Shortly after we moved to our current house, my son and I were looking for a show to watch late at night and found a show called The Goes Wrong Show on BritBox. We clicked on it and were, quite frankly, bewildered by it.
It was a group of about seven people acting out a play and completely messing up lines, tripping off props, and being all-out insanely weird.
We weren’t sure if these people were really messing up their plays or if they were pretending to mess up a play, or . . .what was going on.
We watched the first episode and laughed so hard that our sides hurt. Obviously, we eventually caught on that the whole show was meant to be a joke and that the actors were real actors playing fake actors on a show about actors.
Later we watched the episodes with The Husband and he laughed so hard I thought he was going to burst a blood vessel.
We watched the whole season and I have to say the Christmas episode was my favorite that first season. Flash forward to a few years ago and we discovered this group — which we had since found out was called Mischief Theatre — had been featured in a special called A Christmas Carol Goes Wrong on the BBC.
With A Christmas Carol Goes Wrong we are getting more than just funny but also pure ridiculousness.
For a little background on the actor troupe who takes part in this Christmas special, according to Wikipedia, “Mischief Theatre is a British theatre company founded in 2008 by a group of students from The London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art in West London, and directed by Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer, and Henry Shields. The group originally began by doing improvised comedy shows, but by 2012 they expanded into comedic theatrical performances that include choreographed routines, jokes, and stunts.
The company is best known for its performances as the fictional theatre company, The Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society, who attempt several amateur performances that comedically go wrong.”
In this particular special, the comedy group has taken over the BBC’s production of A Christmas Carol by kidnapping and dragging out the main stars, including Derek Jacobi, a famous British actor. Actress Diana Rigg plays the narrator part of the time, but literally has to “phone it in” because she is stuck in traffic.
Things, of course, go completely haywire and become even crazier when one of the actors believes he should be the lead actor and tries to knock out the director (Chris) to take over the lead as Scrooge. While trying to take out Chris, though, he injures other cast members or ends up destroying various sets.
Where you can find it: Amazon, Tubi, YouTube, The CW, Pluto, Plex
Have you seen any of these movies?
What movies will you be watching this holiday season?
If you write book reviews or book-related blog posts, don’t forget that Erin and I host the A Good Book and A Cup of Tea Monthly Bookish Blog Party. You can learn more about it here.
