Cagney Weekend

As part of my recovery from the Dauphin Island expedition, I took some time this weekend to copy some James Cagney movies from the DVR out to DVD. Included in this batch were a few I had yet to watch all the way through, including Pitcher Snatcher and City for Conquest. I also enjoyed Mister Roberts, in which Cagney plays a crank of a captain on a U.S. Navy cargo ship, alongside other Hollywood greats Henry Fonda and Jack Lemmon. In Shake Hands with the Devil, Cagney plays an Irish surgeon who doubles as an influential leader in the Irish Republican Army in 1921 Dublin. In this feature, Cagney's plays a character given over to violence for its own sake, with the blackest of hearts who meets a fitting end in the final scene.

This afternoon (while I'm supposed to be cleaning up the house), I'm watching The West Point Story, where Cagney plays a Broadway director helping West Point cadets to put on a show, with an ulterior motive to get one promising cadet out of West Point into show business. According to the reviews, this was the first song-and-dance movie Cagney did following Yankee Doodle Dandy. Its star-studded cast includes Virginia Mayo, Doris Day, Gordon MacRae (Carousel and Oklahoma!). More enjoyable for me was to see Alan Hale, Jr. playing alongside Jimmy. Hale's father, (Hale Sr.) starred in 3 Cagney movies (including my favorite, The Fighting 69th), and was perhaps best known as Errol Flynn's sidekick Little John in The Adventures of Robin Hood. Hale, Jr. had his own impressive career, although he was arguably best known as the Skipper in TV's Gilligan's Island. I just thought it was kind of neat that father and son Hale both got to act with Cagney. There aren't too many scenes from this movie on YouTube, but the one linked here gives you a glimpse of Cagney, MacRae, Mayo and Hale, Jr.

As an aside, MacRae had a heck of a voice. What I wouldn't give to sing like that. Here's MacRae crooning to Doris Day:


This batch of Cagney flicks was a good one. I'm not sure when I'll get to set aside this much time again for a while, but this was good.