Nuggets

Just a couple of nuggets today, while I ruminate over a year end post of some kind:

- I know it is a little thing in the grand scheme of things, but I was greatly relieved this week to finally find 5 stray DVDs of James Cagney movies. This means that every Cagney film I have captured to DVD is safely in my collection. I own 52 of 67 Cagney films, plus a few documentary pieces and one TV appearance (A Link in the Chain). I had about 9 more than were only on VHS - these did not survive. I've been collecting his movies for almost 20 years. He's got a number of TV appearances that I keep hoping will show up on some internet archive someday.

- I ordered a first edition hardback copy of Cagney's autobiography as a Christmas present to myself. It'll be here next week. (No, I decided not to spring for the $500 signed copy, although for a moment, it was tempting). Have I mentioned that I'm a Cagney fan?

- Changing the subject, here is a brief but clear illustration of how silly this end-of-year fiscal cliff, tax argument really is in the grand scheme of things. Taxes will go up for all or for some, but it won't do squat to address the true fiscal crisis this nation faces.

- I almost dedicated a full blog post yesterday to this article on teaching table manners to your kids. You have to read the whole thing to understand just how flabbergasted I was to the idea of outsourcing the teaching of basic manners (and the cost!). Etiquette "schools" have been around forever, but still. One person quoted in this article states: "When it comes to children, she said, long gone are the days when you could tell them that they have to behave a certain way 'just because.'” Wow. "Just because" may be an incomplete answer, but parents are delegated an authority for a time, and by golly they shouldn't be afraid to exercise it.

- House 2.0 update. We are bricked, drywalled, and primed. We're heading into the homestretch, with painting, trim, flooring, cabinets, appliances, fixtures, deck and landscaping. Will we be in by March? We'll see!

- Updated 4:18pm: From the great family Scrabble competition: You will NEVER convince me that "jo" and "oe" and "ai" and "qi" are valid Scrabble words. I don't care what the "official" Scrabble dictionary says. Use them in a sentence. Bah. Humbug!!

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.

Cagney: The Fighting 69th

My all time favorite movie - and the one that inspired my hobby to collect all movies starring James Cagney - is The Fighting 69th. Cagney plays Jerry Plunkett, a punk with a tough-guy act and cowardly soul who ultimately redeems himself through a final act of valor on a WWI battlefield. Among the cast are such stalwarts as Pat O'Brien (as Father Duffy), Alan Hale (the father of the actor many of us watched on Gilligan's Island), Frank McHugh, and Dennis Morgan (Christmas in Connecticut) as Lt. Ames. I treated myself this afternoon to watching this old favorite.

The movie as a whole pays tribute to the 69th Infantry Regiment, and in particular to Father Francis Patrick Duffy. Duffy Square, the northern half of Times Square, is named after him. The poet Joyce Kilmer was a sergeant in the 69th, and died on the battlefield in 1918. The movie includes a spoken excerpt of his poem "Rouge Bouquet," written to commemorate the loss of 21 soldiers of the 69th. So while the movie is a fictionalized account that centers around Cagney's character, many of the periphery events are factual.

I was first introduced to this movie in a high school history class. I'm not sure why it captured me and birthed a fascination with Cagney. A couple of years ago, I even went so far to buy online a piece of movie memorabilia from this film, an authenticated still photo of the scene where Cagney and Hale first face off as Cagney receives his uniform (below).


I think part of what drives my love of this movie is my appreciation for the roles Cagney and O'Brien play. Cagney's Plunkett is a malcontent who has major problems with authority, who despite his bravado finds himself making a huge mistake, resulting in the deaths of several of his comrades. Later, while on a recon mission, Plunkett panics and tries to run away, crying out and giving away their position to the enemy. After a court martial that results in an execution order, a major battle ensues that gives him a final chance for faith, courage and redemption, all of which he takes. O'Brien's Father Duffy, however, really captures my attention. The scripture he quotes and the prayers he utters all throughout the movie, although delivered in typical 1940's movie stiffness, nevertheless ring authentic and true. Duffy goes after Plunkett as he would the lost sheep, leaving the other 99 for the sake of the one gone so far astray. Nobody is beyond hope, despite all appearance and evidence to the contrary.

The movie ends with O'Brien reciting a prayer, as faces of the fallen march by. I cannot find the scene online, and don't have my system setup to capture it myself at the moment. Nevertheless, the words are powerful, and are a fitting end to both the movie and this post:

Oh Heavenly Father,
Here I beseech you the prayer of this America's lost generation.
They loved life too, O Lord,
It was as sweet to them as to the living of today.
They accepted privation, wounds, and death,
That an ideal might live.
Don't let it be forgotten, Father.
Amid turmoil and angry passions,
When all worthwhile things seem swept away,
Let the tired eyes of a troubled world rise up,
And see the shining citadel of which these young lives
Form the imperishable stones, America.
A citadel of peace. Peace forevermore.
This I beg of you,
Through Christ our Lord, Amen.

The Essential Cohan

Today, I indulged myself to an all-too-infrequent treat: I sat down and watched James Cagney in Yankee Doodle Dandy. In this 1942 film, Cagney plays the part of George M. Cohan, the great Broadway actor, playwright, composer and producer from an era long since past. Many of the patriotic songs we grew up singing in grade school were penned by this giant of the stage, whose statue stands opposite Times Square.

I had hoped to pen something special to commemorate Independence Day. However, I found myself being the one needing a lift. As my leaky eyes will attest, there is no question that Cohan tapped into the essential American Spirit. May your celebration today be joyous, full of gratitude to God and to those who laid the foundation of our freedoms.


And be sure to click here, for the essential Cohan favorite, "Over There".

Update July 2012: Apparently Warner Bros. disapproves of developing a wider audience for classics such as these. The original YouTube account that I had linked to for the above videos was apparently terminated, meaning we can no longer enjoy these scenes online. I'm all for copyrights, mind you, but you'd think that a little common sense could be turned into a positive marketing strategy. Oh well, my apologies for the lack of videos. The blog post will remain, however.

The Great Cody Jarrett

One of the more intense Jimmy Cagney movies is one called White Heat. Released in 1949, this gangster-crime drama has significantly more depth than several of the earlier Warner Brothers movies Cagney made in the 1930's. Likely, this probably had much to do with the maturation of audience sensibilities toward violence following World War II. White Heat portrays characters with more emotional depth, better dialog, and here's the shocker: a plot. Indeed, the greatness of this movie is found in the unexpected turns, the character dynamics that reveal the complexities of the human conscience, and the suspense that builds throughout. As great as some of the pictures of the 1930's were, after a while the viewer began to come away with the idea that the characters were more cartoonish or caricatures - two dimensional at best (sadly, many modern offerings from Hollywood are still this way). Cagney's Cody Jarrett is far from two-dimensional. Cody Jarrett is a bona-fide bad guy, ultra paranoid and sporadically psychotic, and in every way the proverbial "momma's boy." But as tribute to the genre, Jarrett fights to the end, and goes down in a "blaze" of glory.

Not long ago, Big Hollywood posted an article about this movie. If you don't mind spoilers, have a read. Video clips included.

Without question, Cody Jarrett is one of my favorite bad-guy characters. White Heat is a good story, and a great movie.

"I made it, Ma! Top of the world!"

A Link in the Chain

I generally have little interest in the Hollywood scene, but if pressed to name my favorite actor, James Cagney would win the honor, hands down. Film critics and fans alike tout Cagney as one of the all-time greats. With origins as a song-and-dance man from Hollywood's early vaudeville roots, Cagney's characters brought to life the prototypical anti-hero. Indeed, Cagney was one of the early pioneers of the anti-hero genre, which I define basically as a scoundrel with just enough redeemable qualities to make you like him. To be sure, Cagney was very conscious about being typecast, and tried to branch out into other types of characters. But aside from Yankee Doodle Dandy, in which he played the estimable George M. Cohan, my all time favorite Cagney movies feature him in the role of the anti-hero.

More recently, I discovered a little known Cagney appearance from an old weekly television series called The Christophers. Still active today, The Christophers are an organization with Catholic roots whose mission is captured nicely in a simple motto: "It is better to light one candle than to curse the darkness." In 1957, toward the end of his movie career, Cagney starred in an episode of The Christophers called "A Link in the Chain." He plays a professor who reflects on his life and whether he has made any difference. Over the course of 30 minutes, we see vignettes about 3 students who found the direction of their lives changed by this professor. Simply put, the professor provided timely encouragement and profound truth that revealed to each student that good could be done in this world, and lives could be made better because we choose to get directly involved - not in causes, but with real people. The episode reveals in time that we are all but links in a chain - the professor endeavored to light a candle and make a difference, because someone in his past had done so for him - an unspoken tradition that reaches back into human history. One generation inspires the next.

Conscious of my responsibility to my own children, I find myself at the place where the question seems to be "what next." I've experienced highs and lows in both career and ministry, yet I find myself hesitant to look behind at what was. Rather, I feel compelled forward, to use the gifts God has given me for something new - something that will continue to shape me into what I'm destined to become. And while it is tempting to believe that there is nothing new to share that hasn't been written or taught better by someone else, it is also clear that every generation has to have its voices. A broken chain is lost history, lost identity, lost purpose.

These generations are at risk. We have a responsibility to speak truth. But we must ensure that our voices bring light to real people - otherwise, we merely curse the darkness.
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