"Just a second, don't get your pants in an uproar."
Gee, maybe they should bring back marathon dance competitions. That's how this film opens, with James Cagney's character having set one up, and about to divide a big profit from it with his partner. It's a crooked business, and throughout the film Cagney is running around literally and figuratively, from one confidence scheme to the next. He has amazing screen presence and is simply fantastic, and Ruth Donnelly more than keeps up with him as his shrewd potential mother-in-law.
Everyone is scheming here - his partner in the dance competition, who makes off with all the money, Donnelly's character, who sells off her furnished apartment's furniture and skips town owing a couple of months rent, and of course Cagney, who gets a couple hundred dollars by cooking up a scheme for a crowd to find hidden money out on the boardwalk, dashing away when he sees they've become an unruly mob tearing the place apart. "The world is like a cow, bellowing to be milked and if you're smart, you'll get yourself a bucket," he says while pitching one of his ideas.
Later, we see that the wealthy are hardly above the fray, as the rich old lady he gets to endorse what she calls his "axle grease" of a product drives a hard bargain for what she'll be paid for it, and his partner in a grapefruit business makes off to Rio de Janeiro with his daughter at the first sign of legal trouble. (It was pretty clever to his final scheme involving investing in grapefruit, a nod of course to 'The Public Enemy').
Donnelly is a big part of why I liked this film, as the role is funny and she is perfect for it. She always dresses like her daughter, talks in the plural when it's about her, and aggressively looks out for her to marry into money. She also has an acerbic tongue, which is masked a little bit by her delightful little pauses which suggest other words. "You better come back with that five hundred bucks or I'll put my foot right in your...kisser," she tells Cagney. "Don't wear this. Wear your blue dress. It shows more of your...girlish laughter," she tells her daughter.
The film fades a teeny bit when Cagney's character hits it big, first by convincing a cosmetics company to market its product fraudulently as a "reducing cream," but Claire Dodd livens things up by flirting heavily with him and letting him know in no uncertain terms that she's available to him. They're seen having breakfast, which is code in the day for having spent the night together, a scene only possible pre-Code. (And in fact, how Cagney is the protagonist who ultimately gets away with it all wouldn't be permitted when the code began being enforced).
This isn't a perfect film but it sure was full of life and entertaining to me, with its snappy dialogue and engaging characters. Lots of fun, and worth 78 minutes.
Gee, maybe they should bring back marathon dance competitions. That's how this film opens, with James Cagney's character having set one up, and about to divide a big profit from it with his partner. It's a crooked business, and throughout the film Cagney is running around literally and figuratively, from one confidence scheme to the next. He has amazing screen presence and is simply fantastic, and Ruth Donnelly more than keeps up with him as his shrewd potential mother-in-law.
Everyone is scheming here - his partner in the dance competition, who makes off with all the money, Donnelly's character, who sells off her furnished apartment's furniture and skips town owing a couple of months rent, and of course Cagney, who gets a couple hundred dollars by cooking up a scheme for a crowd to find hidden money out on the boardwalk, dashing away when he sees they've become an unruly mob tearing the place apart. "The world is like a cow, bellowing to be milked and if you're smart, you'll get yourself a bucket," he says while pitching one of his ideas.
Later, we see that the wealthy are hardly above the fray, as the rich old lady he gets to endorse what she calls his "axle grease" of a product drives a hard bargain for what she'll be paid for it, and his partner in a grapefruit business makes off to Rio de Janeiro with his daughter at the first sign of legal trouble. (It was pretty clever to his final scheme involving investing in grapefruit, a nod of course to 'The Public Enemy').
Donnelly is a big part of why I liked this film, as the role is funny and she is perfect for it. She always dresses like her daughter, talks in the plural when it's about her, and aggressively looks out for her to marry into money. She also has an acerbic tongue, which is masked a little bit by her delightful little pauses which suggest other words. "You better come back with that five hundred bucks or I'll put my foot right in your...kisser," she tells Cagney. "Don't wear this. Wear your blue dress. It shows more of your...girlish laughter," she tells her daughter.
The film fades a teeny bit when Cagney's character hits it big, first by convincing a cosmetics company to market its product fraudulently as a "reducing cream," but Claire Dodd livens things up by flirting heavily with him and letting him know in no uncertain terms that she's available to him. They're seen having breakfast, which is code in the day for having spent the night together, a scene only possible pre-Code. (And in fact, how Cagney is the protagonist who ultimately gets away with it all wouldn't be permitted when the code began being enforced).
This isn't a perfect film but it sure was full of life and entertaining to me, with its snappy dialogue and engaging characters. Lots of fun, and worth 78 minutes.