Though dated quite a bit, Lady Killer is still enjoyable today though the film is the victim of some bad editing and plot holes.
James Cagney gets fired from his job as a movie usher and gets picked up by Mae Clarke who's the moll and come-on for a gang of crooks who have many sidelines. Currently they are running a poker game and Cagney gets taken. Of course he discovers it shortly, but instead of turning them in, he joins them.
But murder he doesn't figure on after he fingers a job at a rich widow's mansion. He beats it to California on the lam and gets work as an extra. But through a little chicanery gets a featured role in a film and becomes a movie star. Of course the old gang looks him up and there are consequences.
There's some bad editing in Lady Killer. Cagney starts courting star Margaret Lindsay and in a scene that must have been cut she expressed to him to have monkeys, elephants and yodelers at her birthday party. It was a joke because in what we do see, Cagney brings all those things to her party and Marx Brothers like chaos results. It was a very funny scene, but it had no foundation.
There's one interesting scene that is a commentary on the times. When Cagney arrives in Los Angeles, he's immediately picked up by the LAPD and held for questioning for those New York activities. They let him go for lack of evidence, but threaten that if he doesn't get a job in two days he'll be picked up on a sodomy rap. Though the word they use is an offensive euphemism.
When Cagney is spotted by some agents from the studio looking for various types as actors his natural instinct in this next scene is to run. Not a good thing to have a sodomy rap hung on you whether it was true or not. He had every reason to fear it. Then this was before the code, in two years the topic was never even mentioned.
Lady Killer is typical of the type of film that Cagney was being used in by Warner Brothers, enjoyable for his fans, risqué a bit, but badly edited as well.
James Cagney gets fired from his job as a movie usher and gets picked up by Mae Clarke who's the moll and come-on for a gang of crooks who have many sidelines. Currently they are running a poker game and Cagney gets taken. Of course he discovers it shortly, but instead of turning them in, he joins them.
But murder he doesn't figure on after he fingers a job at a rich widow's mansion. He beats it to California on the lam and gets work as an extra. But through a little chicanery gets a featured role in a film and becomes a movie star. Of course the old gang looks him up and there are consequences.
There's some bad editing in Lady Killer. Cagney starts courting star Margaret Lindsay and in a scene that must have been cut she expressed to him to have monkeys, elephants and yodelers at her birthday party. It was a joke because in what we do see, Cagney brings all those things to her party and Marx Brothers like chaos results. It was a very funny scene, but it had no foundation.
There's one interesting scene that is a commentary on the times. When Cagney arrives in Los Angeles, he's immediately picked up by the LAPD and held for questioning for those New York activities. They let him go for lack of evidence, but threaten that if he doesn't get a job in two days he'll be picked up on a sodomy rap. Though the word they use is an offensive euphemism.
When Cagney is spotted by some agents from the studio looking for various types as actors his natural instinct in this next scene is to run. Not a good thing to have a sodomy rap hung on you whether it was true or not. He had every reason to fear it. Then this was before the code, in two years the topic was never even mentioned.
Lady Killer is typical of the type of film that Cagney was being used in by Warner Brothers, enjoyable for his fans, risqué a bit, but badly edited as well.