James Cagney (With Dwayne Epstein)

In this episode, we talk with Dwayne Epstein about one of the true greats, James Cagney. Dwayne lists in chronological order his favorite Cagney films. We could have listed lots more but time is a thing. Click to listen! 🎥🎥🎬🎬

Thanks for listening! 

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:00

Hello and welcome to Cinema Chat with David Heath. And I am your host, David Heath. And this is the podcast where we talk about movies from every era and just about every genre. And today we are going to be talking with uh Dwayne Epstein in regards to his declared favorite actor, uh, which is James Cagney. Now Dwayne comes with us, comes to us with some real credentials. He wrote a book called Killing Generals, and it's all about the making of the dirty dozen. Uh if you haven't heard that podcast episode where we talked with Dwayne before, uh it's a very lively conversation about the dirty dozen, and we talk all things Lee Marvin and Charles Bronson and the rest of the bunch in that movie. And uh we're delighted to have Dwayne on here to talk about James Cagney, and we have uh commissioned him to bring us his favorite 10 James Cagney movies. Dwayne, it's uh good to have you back. Thanks for coming.

SPEAKER_02 1:19

Oh, thank you, Jamie. Thank you very much for having me.

SPEAKER_03 1:22

Yeah, absolutely. We we now we talked last time about your book, uh Killing Generals, and uh why don't you refresh people's memories uh and what killing generals is all about?

SPEAKER_02 1:38

Oh, thank you for the opportunity. Yeah, it's called Killing Generals: The Making of the Dirty Dozen, and the subtitle I didn't come up with, the most iconic World War II film of all time. Um, and it's all about the making of the Dirty Dozen, how it came into being, from conception to production to legacy and everything in between. And I had a lot of fun uh working on it because it's one of my favorite movies of all time. It's just it's it's flawless in terms of its um timelessness. It's it's just great.

SPEAKER_03 2:11

Yeah, you know, the timelessness uh uh part of that movie is is really a thing. When you see a movie such as that that's um that has a a setting that doesn't depend on on contemporary things, uh it can often look like said timeless. And and uh that it's a it's a really great film. I would suggest we talked for a long time uh about that about that film. I suggest anybody uh purchasing the book, um, and also uh click on the on the podcast scroll down if you're new to the show or somehow you uh skipped over or glossed over it. It's such a fun conversation uh that Duane and I had uh about uh the dirty dozen. And uh uh it's it was a lot of fun. Uh today though, uh when we had our conversation before, you had mentioned uh uh that you were that your favorite actor is James Cagney. Um and uh we have I wanted to give you an opportunity uh to talk to uh my audience on on the favorite your favorite James Cagney movies. Um the list uh that you you provided me in advance is in chronological order. I was very purposeful in not asking for a top ten. And I instead I just want you to list ten of uh movies uh that of Cagneys that you think are are the best, and because it's very hard to separate. You know, what is really the difference between number four and number one? I how do you quantify that exactly? I've got a lot of top ten lists on on the show, but uh I'm kind of getting away from it a little bit because it's it's again, it's just so hard to figure out what's number four and what's number one, and how do you, you know, what's the one scene or the one actor or the one whatever that puts something over the top, you know. It doesn't it's hard really to quantify that. But um well, what do you say? We get started on your on your ten favorite James Cagney movies. Uh um let's see, uh you uh had uh listed, we're gonna do this chronologically, so that's the order that we're doing it, folks. Um and um the first one you have listed is definitely one of my favorite cagnies, uh which all these are some of my favorite cagnies, but uh but the public enemy, uh, which is uh uh a pre-code film, and uh it is uh uh directed by William Willman. And uh take it away, Dwayne. What do you like about uh about the public enemy?

SPEAKER_02 5:01

Thank you. Um and um and thank you very much for uh allowing me to come back with this idea about doing cagging. Um to start off with, I want to say, I don't know if you're aware of this or not, but to this day, I mean Cagney died in the mid-80s, 86, 87, and even though that's the case, uh, however long ago that was, which is quite a while ago, there are a group of dedicated cagney fans who call themselves Cag nerds.

SPEAKER_03 5:29

I'd never heard that.

SPEAKER_02 5:31

Yes, C-A-G-N-E-R-D, Cag nerds, and they are rabbit fans. I mean, they're they're very dedicated and per and when I discovered that um I was very enlightened and encouraged, and the the way I discovered that is because I was gonna write a book on James Cadden. And even though there's been a lot, and he even wrote one himself, um, but I had a different twist, I had a different take on it. I was gonna write strictly about his uh his his his crime films. And at first it was gonna be White Heat specifically, which we'll get to in a few, excuse me, a few minutes. Um and ultimately in doing the research, which was a lot of fun, uh I came across a gentleman that I actually got to know. His name is Robert Crichton. And Robert Crichton is a professional actor, and as a professional actor, he wrote and and co-produced and starred in a in a theatrical uh um uh project called Cagney the Musical. And and as such, it was just that. It was a musical about the life of James Cagney. And I did I've never seen it, but I've seen clips from it, and I got to speak with him and interview with him, and such a sweet man, and such a such a dedicated man. He was really another, you know, Cagner. And luckily, not a lot, but to a certain extent, he looks a little like Cagner. So that made it easier for him to play James Cagman. And he told me if the book ever comes to pass, we could sell it in the lobby of the theater, which you know, that would be nice. But anyway, that'd be awesome. Yeah. And because it was the movie that made him a fan, I mean made him a star, watch this segue. There's a lot of uh public enemy in the musical about Cadman. And and um the reason why is because, like I just said, it it it it put him on the map. And let me just say this about public enemy. There's a real good reason why it put him on the map, because you know, there are a lot of actors from the 30s, pre-code throughout the 30s, you know, post-code, whatever, yeah, after after the code of football effect that were that were known, okay? But Cagney hit like an atom bomb. Nobody had ever seen anything like him in that movie.

SPEAKER_01 8:10

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 8:10

And and mainly because I think I said this on the last show was that as Will Rogers said about watching James Cagney work, he said watching Cagney work is like watching a string of firecrackers go off all at once.

SPEAKER_03 8:25

Very good.

SPEAKER_02 8:26

Yeah, and and I couldn't agree with that more. Now, he's just believe it or not, as great as he is in that movie, he's still slightly subdued compared to what he would become over the uh over time. And he went, by the way, he wasn't even originally cast in the league. That was supposed to go to the guy who played his brother in the movie. No, not his brother, excuse me, his best friend. Um, and William Wellman was the one who took uh who took credit for switching the roles. Now, there are a lot of people from what I've read who took credit for switching the roles. None of them being Cag, by the way. Um producer Daryl Sonic took credit, uh studio head uh Jack Warner took credit, but believably, and most logically, it really was William Wellman.

SPEAKER_03 9:16

William Wellman sounds the right the right man. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 9:18

Yeah, and you know, I it was funny. I I didn't I'm not I didn't interview William Wellman, but I did interview his son, William Wellman Jr.

SPEAKER_03 9:27

Oh, I got something to tell you about him. Uh but tell me what you what you're gonna say.

SPEAKER_02 9:31

No, he just he just conferred, confirmed that it was indeed um his father uh uh who switched the roles and gave Cagney the lead. And also that he and Cagney became lifelong friends, which was really cool.

SPEAKER_03 9:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 9:47

What's your story?

SPEAKER_03 9:49

You're you're fortunate to talk to William Willman Jr. Um because uh I I had a com I had an email conversation with him uh back in 2020, you know, when when nothing was going on, COVID-19, you know. Yeah. This this was happening right then. Um and um and uh clearly everybody was just sitting around at home doing nothing. I I had I had this email conversation with him that and I kind of uh uh oh frustrated is the right word, probably, uh because he uh he uh he told me he would come on and talk to me. Um and uh and then uh he had to reschedule and then he had to reschedule again, and then he had to reschedule again, and then finally the fourth time he said, um, well, why don't you just talk about my book uh and and uh um and you know that's fine, you can talk about it, but and I'm like, okay, well, I wanted to talk to you about your book, but that's right.

SPEAKER_02 11:04

I can understand that frustration, and I kind of felt the same way with him because I don't know about and this was about three or four years ago when I spoke with him, and I know he was in the early stages of dementia.

SPEAKER_03 11:18

Oh, yeah, that yeah, I kind of feel I kind of feel like there may be something going on in there, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 11:23

Well, and and I'll tell you something funny, too, is that I was able to come in contact with him in the strangest way. Um when you're you know, when you do research for a project, you find connections in the most strangest ways. My landlord of the apartment I live in right now, um he did his children were babysat by William Wellman Jr. Oh wow. So so I had mentioned that to him in passing, and he said, um, well, I mentioned to him about the project I was working on at the time, and he said, You want to talk to him? I still have his phone number. And he put me in contact with him.

SPEAKER_03 12:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 12:01

And it took a while to schedule it correctly, but um because he kept forgetting it. He also thought, when I did talk to him, that I was talking to him about something else. And at one point he even said early on, he goes, Look, I gotta get off the phone, man. I gotta talk to this guy who's gonna be doing a book on James Cagney. And I said, uh Mr. Weldon, that's me. So anyway, but the memory of uh Cagney was crystalline.

SPEAKER_03 12:28

Was sharp, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 12:29

That's the thing about, I don't know if it's a dementia thing or just about aging, but when something stays with you that makes makes a difference in your life, yeah, it doesn't leave you. You know, it's with you forever. And um he told me that Cagney and Wellman got along great. While Bill was his father's name, uh nickname in Hollywood, and he uh he he told me great stories. He said they didn't see each other that often, especially when they got older, but when they did, they they loved to needle each other uh playfully. They go out to dinner and they would joke and and and because there were no women around and they were of that generation, they would they would use kind of foul language when they would you know in contact with each other, but uh but only when there was no women around. You know, they were very uh Victorian in the way they dealt with each other. And I thought that was pretty cool.

unknown 13:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 13:22

Think about Cagney in that movie, Paul Henri, yeah, which I think I'm not positive, but I think that's the only movie they ever worked on together.

SPEAKER_03 13:32

Um, I believe so. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 13:34

Uh they may have done one together like in the 1950s, but both of them were getting older, but I don't think so. In any event, the thing about Caggy in that movie is, as I started to say earlier, he wasn't like anything anybody had ever seen in the movie before.

SPEAKER_03 13:51

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 13:52

There's a thing about you know, one of the things of why he was so incredible in the movie, there's a moment in the film that's one of the most talked-about scenes in motion pictures, where he gets mad at his girlfriend, he's hungover, he gets mad at his girlfriend, played by Make Hart, and because she says to him, uh, you know, you're arguing back and forth, he's hung over, he's not in a good mood, you're arguing back and forth, and she says, I suppose you're like somebody else. Well, there's a grapefruit on the table, and he picks it up, right, smashes it into her face. The thing is, he doesn't just smash it, he like it into her face, he rubs it in, and then he gets up and leaves. Now, interestingly enough, and a lot of people don't think about this, but interestingly enough, that's exactly how Clark Gable became a star. Clark Gable had been in the business for a while, but in the early 30s, pre-code, um he had a small role in a movie, I believe it was called either A Free Soul or The Divorcee. And the star of the movie was Norma Shewan.

SPEAKER_03 14:58

Right.

SPEAKER_02 14:58

Yeah. And in a flashback scene, she, I think something about her father being a lawyer played by Lionel Barrymore, and and in a flashback, it shows how he would defend he had to defend Clark Gable or something like that. And this was Gable before he got his teeth fixed, before he had a mustache, but uh he was looking very pre pre-code, how about pre-Gable? And his hair was greased back and parted on the middle, and there's a scene in the movie where she says something equally unlikable, for lack of a better thing, uh to call it, and he backhands her. He smacks her right in the face. Now, this is very un I mean, not very politically correct, uh, and obviously it was like what's 1932 or 1933, but audiences, especially women, believe it or not, loved it. We were writing letters and going, who's that hunky guy who beat up Norman Sheer? You know, we loved this guy, but you know, he didn't beat her up, he just backhanded it. Not like that's any better, but it's very much like what Cagney did in Public Enemy. Absolutely. And it was stuff like that that would draw attention. And one of the things, when I found this out, I was amazed. There was a scene in Public Enemy where Cagney and his best friend, I think his name was Mac, were walking on the street, and there's an attempt to assassinate them. And just as they're coming to the corner, um bullets opened up. And his buddy gets killed. The actor who played his buddy got killed. Donald Woods, I think the name was. And Caggy survives, and I found out, and it's funny because when you watch the movie in slow motion, you can see it, they used live bullets. Those were real bullets firing at them. I mean, it's amazing. One of them almost hit Caggy. And they did it again in Angels with Dirty Faces, and we'll get to that in a minute. But that's the way movies were done. And you know why? To save money, believe it or not. It's it's strange, but the the studio figured it's cheaper to use live rounds than to have to, you know, use flags and take the bullets out of a shell.

SPEAKER_03 17:21

That is scary stuff.

SPEAKER_02 17:23

Isn't that bizarre?

SPEAKER_03 17:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 17:25

That's how movies were made in those days. And um, you know, and that ending, oh, that ending was incredible. Where I'm gonna give it away. So it's a spirit, folks. If you don't want to hear it.

SPEAKER_03 17:37

Yeah, yeah. Fast forward 30 seconds, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 17:40

Right. Agny um gets brought home, uh, so to speak, by the bad guys, the bad, the bad gangsters who shoot him up.

SPEAKER_03 17:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 17:55

And they wrap him up like a mummy, and he falls face forward into his mother's house.

SPEAKER_03 17:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 17:59

Um and when when he did the AFI tribute, when there was an American Film Institute tribute to Caggy in 1973, Frank Sinatra was the host. And Frank Sinatra said something great. He goes, you know, when I was a kid and I saw that movie, and he went, you know, and you he was talking to Caggy, and he goes, And you go face forward onto your floor, your mother's floor. He goes, Boy, that really got to me. I'd never seen anything like that in a movie before. And ever since, I would do that and screw the hell out of my mother. Yeah. Just fall face forward onto the floor. And then he wakes up meeting and he goes, I'm thinking, but I still do that, but not for the same reason. Okay, it was just very, very memorable because of Gagnon. And keep in mind, it was a time, once again, pre-code, it was a time when gangster films, crime films, were coming into the mouth. There was Eddie G. Robinson and Little Caesar, Humphrey Bogart and Petrified Forest, Paul Noney in Scarface, uh, also who's a who's afraid. Um, I was a teenager. I was a teenager. I was I was a uh a fugitive from a Chang. And these were yeah, and these were all very, very popular films. Now, what's interesting too is when they show them, when they initially show them in theaters, they all had a pre-screen crawl about how this isn't just a movie, this is a national epidemic. This is a problem we all must deal with. And then you proceed to see these guys having a real good time.

SPEAKER_03 19:35

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 19:36

Yeah, yeah, which is which is an interesting way to make a movie. Put it like that. And and it made them all celebrities, all of them.

SPEAKER_03 19:46

Yeah, yeah. And of course, uh uh another reason to watch the public enemy is uh the uh early Gene Harlow before she uh yes. Yeah, and of course, I had a conversation with somebody else uh uh about this movie for a few minutes. We discussed it as well, and and um he's less impressed with Gene Harlow than I am, but uh it's not her acting skills that are on display here.

SPEAKER_02 20:16

It's just that's yeah, that's a best way to put it on display. I I happen to like Gene Harlow. I think sometimes in in films she's a little over the top, yeah. And and and my girlfriend Barbara, who's a big old full-time movie fan too, she never thought Gene Harlow was very pretty, and she couldn't understand why so much was written about her. And I said it has to do with one simple thing. The camera loved her.

SPEAKER_03 20:40

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 20:40

There was just something, the love of her between her and the camera that was unmistakable, and I could see it. But in public enemy, apparently the William Weldon, not so much to Cagney, because Cagney was a very, as a human being, off-camera, he was a very, you know, quiet, easy-going kind of guy. But and and and you know, her escapage wouldn't have affected him because he was a happily married man, too. Apparently, she liked to go around the soundstage naked. Would walk around the soundstage and just have have an umbrella, uh, be completely naked, and and ask anybody in the crew if her scene was ready. And and Wellman was beyond pissed off. It was like, put your freaking clothes on and come to the set. She obviously did stuff like that for a fact.

SPEAKER_03 21:33

I had no idea. Yeah, yeah, no, there's there's about 30 or 40 stars throughout the years that just have had that ability, you know, just to uh make the camera just uh love them. And and and they they aren't always the the the best looking ones.

SPEAKER_02 21:52

Um yeah, the slew it. I mean, first of all, we can start with Cag himself. He wasn't that good looking a man. He was short He was he had uh thick red hair, which you know didn't really always uh photograph well. He didn't make a color film until the late forties. Yeah and and they used a lot of makeup on him to to um darken his eyebrows because he was red all over. Um he had freckles, but he had that thing, he had that you know charisma and relationship with the camera, and an amazing actor.

SPEAKER_03 22:26

Yeah, no, it's true. Um and as and as we scroll through the filmography that you laid out here, um, we'll see that he is capable of doing just about anything uh on film. And uh let's see, our next film uh is uh Boy Meets Girl, quite a quite a different film. Uh yeah, and uh uh directed by Lloyd Bacon, uh co-starring Pat O'Brien and the lovely Marie Wilson. What stands out uh about that film for you?

SPEAKER_02 23:00

Well, here's the thing. Like I told you earlier, I had to narrow the list because it was kind of like, yeah, but what about this one? Oh, yeah, but what about that one? And to my mind, picking um Boy Meets Girl is uh is kind of a way to put like four or five movies together. Yes. And that he made a bunch of movies for Pat O'Brien, and they were lifelong friends. Yeah. They had a great chemistry. Absolutely. What I think is hysterical was that in the movies they made, Pat O'Brien was often the uh uh the authority figure. He was his his boss, he was his uh um um older brother, his you know, his commanding officer all the time. Well, Cagney was this wild man in you know movies like In the Navy, Double Dogs of the Air, The Crowd War, The Irish in Us, they were always at loggerheads, Torrid Zone, they were at loggerheads with each other because Cagney was the guy, he was he was the Hellion, the uh um the anti-hero, the rebel, the maverick. And what's funny was in real life, there was the exact opposite. Cagney was a very, very much a homebody. He he didn't go out much, he didn't like to party. Um, and Pat O'Brien was the flip side of that. Pat O'Brien loved a good time. He loved the party, and he made bird bones about being, you know, a fairly heavy drinker. And and they were great friends, but Pat O'Brien had a nickname for James Cagney. He called him that faraway fellow. Because to his mind, anytime they were together and and they'd socialize, he said, Cagney always looked at actor like he wanted to be somewhere else. Like he was thinking about someplace else and wanted to be somewhere else. And he was that faraway fellow. And he said, I couldn't always tell what he was thinking. But you know, and that's that's the difference of the two. And one of the reasons why I picked Boy Meets Girl is because it's one of the few times they were ever in a movie together where they seem kind of on the same track. That's very writing team, the two of them. Um, and they were based on a real writing team. Yeah, oh gosh, darn it, I just went back on who they're based on. Yeah, that's the only one I that's the only one I'm not real I I think it was supposed to be oh yes, I can remember now. Charles MacArthur and Ben Heck.

SPEAKER_03 25:34

Oh, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 25:36

And and from what I understand, when they would try to sell a script or or a play or or whatever, they were like that. They I don't know if you've ever seen Boy Meets Girl, but Oh, yeah, yeah. They would womp around, be in uniforms, you know, costumes, and and just go nuts. Song and dance numbers, and you know, like like uh um I think I think the names in the movie were Bob uh Benson and Law or something like that. And anyway, that's what Pat O'Brien and James Cagney do in Boy Meets Girl, but they take it to the ninth degree, they go even higher with it. Um and it's great to watch them being this insane. It's like a Marx Brothers movie, very much, in terms of the uh sediment of the film. But from what I understand, the movie wasn't a hit when it came out, which is the same because watching Cagney and O'Brien being that goofy with each other and the other characters, oh, and another close Cagney friend was in it, uh, Ralph Bellamy.

SPEAKER_03 26:33

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 26:33

He played the studio Boss. And he, you know, Ralph Bellamy was a sad story, and that uh some actors were successful this way. He tried to make it big in movies for like the first 10 to 15 years of his career and couldn't make a dance. In fact, he even made fun of him in his Girl Friday, the uh uh the comedy version of uh of the front page, written by, you know, um Charles MacArthur and Ben Hack. And at one point, Carrie Grant is screaming into the telephone about what kind of person Ralph Bellamy is, and he goes, you know, a Ralph Bellamy type. You know, which I think, you know, it's that joke, but it says it all. And so what he did was, and all the power to him, he quit Hollywood. He went to New York to the Broadway stage, and he became a huge star in a play called The Dictive Story that was later filmed with Kirk Douglas, and even better yet, a few years later, playing FDR in Sunrise of Campbell. So he was lucky. He found he found a way to entreat himself uh as an actor beyond just the bland roles they put him in in films. You know, Robert Preston did it uh working for a long time in Hollywood at Paramount Studios, and then he went to Ha he went to Broadway and became a success all over again. Not all over again, but uh became a success with the music man. So yeah, it can happen, luckily.

SPEAKER_03 27:58

Yeah, anyway. Yeah, and of course, uh yeah, well, I I am I'm a Gen Xer, uh, and so uh growing up when I did, the first thing I think of with Ralph Bell Me is trading places.

SPEAKER_02 28:13

Oh, well, no, that's that was great. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 28:21

Yeah, he's a yeah, they both did. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 28:24

Yeah, they both did. We're both baby boomers. And she's a little older than me. Yeah. She remembers Donna Michi from a think it was a show called Circus World. That's a hold on a second. What was the Donna Michi Circus show called?

SPEAKER_03 28:41

Oh, okay, okay.

SPEAKER_02 28:43

Yeah, well, anyway, so every everybody has, if they're good, and talent has a lot to do with it, everybody has a second chance. Boy meets girl. I thought I had uh um made you maybe mentioned another film before that, but okay, you have a list, I don't so and the only thing I'd like to mention is when you watch it, and I and I think they did it on purpose, Tagby's wearing this really thick coat. Excuse me, like a big um overcoat kind of thing with scarf. Yeah. I think it's because he was starting to gain weight by then. And and um, you know, it's movies, appearances were everything. And he was trying to cover it a little bit. And Pat O'Brien was putting on weight too, but it was something about Pat O'Brien. He couldn't he could carry it because Cagney was such a small guy, it didn't uh it didn't always look good on him. It's like when Liz Taylor, because she was such a tiny petite woman, when she gained weight, it became obvious.

SPEAKER_03 29:45

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_02 29:45

He couldn't hide it. Same thing with Cagney, he couldn't hide it. Matter of fact, Ral Walsh, the director of both Blind 20s and uh and and uh White Heat, he would he used to go to uh colleges and speak, and people would ask him about his films, QA. And when he was asked about white heat, Ral Walsh said, Virginia Mayo, yeah, great actress. I love working with her. Jim Cagney, nice guy. But damn, could he eat? He ate way too much.

SPEAKER_03 30:18

That's a that's that's hilarious. I I yeah, he he he he does he he definitely wasn't like skinny as a rail. That's for sure. Uh, you know. Um let's see, your next movie also has Pat O'Brien, uh, which is uh Angels with Dirty Faces, which is a movie that I had a chance to re-watch uh uh a couple of months ago on on TCM, and and uh boy, that's a real it's just such a real treat. You get a chance to get treated with uh Bogart and and Cagney in the same movie, even though Bogart hadn't hit his stride quite yet. Um, no, but uh but we have uh but we but you still have you you know through um the through retrospective lenses, we know that Bogart became Bogart, and yeah, here he is uh with James Cagney and and uh um just what a fantastic film. Um what what do you what stands out for that for you?

SPEAKER_02 31:25

Well, as I told you when we uh did this initially, it's the movie that made me a cactus fan.

SPEAKER_03 31:31

Oh, is that right? Okay, okay. I didn't I I don't remember you saying that, but yeah, that this makes sense though.

SPEAKER_02 31:38

I was I was a little kid. I can retell the story if you want, uh, go ahead, yeah. Well, I was a little kid and I was uh um getting in trouble for doing one thing or another, I don't know what it was. My mother decided she she she would do psychology. She saw that James that Angels with dirty faces was gonna be on TV. And keep in mind, too, my mother, God bless her, was a huge movie fan. And in in terms of DNA, she passed it on to me. Um I've got I've got the movie Gene. And she decided I'm gonna teach him a lesson. I'm gonna sit him in front of the TV and I'm gonna make him watch Angels with Dirty Faces, which he's already seen a million times. So I'm watching the movie, and as it plays out, and I'm watching the whole thing from beginning to end. She wouldn't let me leave the room, she wouldn't let me turn my head, and when it was over, she asked me, Did you learn a lesson? And with tears streaming down my face, I went, Yeah, James Cagney's great. And she she reacted by just rolling her eyes, going, just don't hope for you. You're never gonna learn. But she didn't realize I did learn. I learned a valuable lesson that James Cagney was indeed great. And I've been a Cagney fan ever since, and I would go out of my way. He's one of those guys that, in my opinion, especially Cagney, even when a movie sucks, he doesn't. I could watch any movie he's in and find something of value.

SPEAKER_03 33:10

Some value, yes.

SPEAKER_02 33:11

Yeah, just in watching him. He's that impressive, he's that amazing.

SPEAKER_03 33:16

Yeah, you're absolutely right. You know, like uh this is not on your list, but but I remember watching um ragtime uh not too not too long ago.

SPEAKER_02 33:27

You know, you shouldn't have had me narrow time the 10th, man. I would have uh you know, I'd have added that one.

SPEAKER_03 33:32

Yeah, yeah. Well, you you okay. Well we'll talk about it for a second then. But uh it it's like ragtime to me. I remember watching it on cable when I was a kid, um, thinking, yeah, this is really boring. Um but uh but you know, watching it uh as an adult, I I still was like, oh, this is kind of boring. Uh but I know Cagney's coming on, and so when when he comes on the screen, and it's just my my whole attitude just changes because there's something about James Cagney, you know, and his presence on the screen that just makes it I you know, I I just uh did an episode on uh uh a few good men, you know, and the same thing happens with Jack Nicholson, you know. Like Jack comes on the screen and all of a sudden uh everything changes, you know, and that's what Cagney could do.

SPEAKER_02 34:26

Let me tell you something.

SPEAKER_03 34:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 34:28

When that movie came out, when it well, first of all, when I read that uh Jim Cagney was making a film back, I was on the moon. And I genuinely felt lucky to be alive to see him in something brand new.

SPEAKER_00 34:42

Yeah. More importantly, um, I like the movie. I like the movie a lot.

SPEAKER_02 34:48

Now I know in the making of the film there was a lot of problem he had a lot of physical problems. He couldn't really walk that well, and they had to kind of, you know, not CGI, there wasn't CGI yet, but they you know, he used a a double when he was doing scenes when he was walking, they'd shoot him from the back, things like that. Now I didn't know any of that when I saw the movie, and I didn't really care.

SPEAKER_03 35:09

Yeah, you wouldn't notice.

SPEAKER_02 35:11

It's James Freaking Canyon.

SPEAKER_03 35:13

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 35:14

And he had moments in that movie, and he wouldn't, like you said, he wasn't even in the movie all that long. And I love the story that what's his face, Milos Foreman told that the doctor, doctors had told Cagney, you've got to get active or you're gonna die. It's that simple. You've got to get out of the house and you've got to start doing something. So Miles Foreman had approached him about being in ragtime, and Cagney said no. He said no to a lot of things. He said no to My Fair Lady, who was gonna play uh um Eliza Doodle's husband, and he almost said yes to that one. Uh, but he didn't. He was gonna be in uh Godfather 2. They wanted him, Coppola wanted him to play Hyman Ra, um, which is funny because he's anything but Jewish looking. But anyway, when when when Milo Schwarman offered him ragtime and he first turned it down, he called him back and he goes, Listen, Doctor says I have to get active, so I'll do ragtime. What part do you want me to play? Yeah. Milo Schwarman's reaction was great. He went, Are you kidding? You can play Evelyn Nesbitt if you want. Evelyn Nesbitt. I thought it was great. Uh and I liked it, I liked it a lot.

SPEAKER_03 36:26

Yeah, I I like ragtime, but I think I probably wouldn't like it as m well, I definitely wouldn't like it as much without that Cagney appearance. Uh, you know, and uh when when I again when I watched it as a kid, I I I didn't I don't even know if I'd ever seen a James Cagney movie uh when that came out when I was ten. Um and I think it probably came on HBO when I was a little is that 1981? Yeah, 81. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And uh I just didn't it didn't register with me yet quite you know quite yet. Um you were 10. I mean Yeah. One of the things yeah, one of the things I I wanted to ask you about Angels of Dirty Faces, two things about Angels of Dirty Faces that I'm curious on your opinion. Um one of them is really about Bogart. I uh why do you think that uh Bogart was uh lingering around uh I you don't want to say mediocrity, because that's not the right word. But he was always playing these smaller roles and for a long period of time, and um and then all of a sudden he just gets catapulted uh into an area that pretty much only Harrison Ford and Tom Cruise have ever experienced, you know. Um as far as I can tell you quite simply, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 37:53

He wasn't very good.

SPEAKER_03 37:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 37:56

Not in the beginning.

SPEAKER_03 37:57

It took him a long time to learn how.

SPEAKER_02 38:00

I mean, if if you watch early Cagney, I mean early Bogart, it's it's wince-inducing.

SPEAKER_03 38:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 38:06

Like I said earlier, uh the last time we spoke, he doesn't know what to do with his hands. He he puts his hands like in his belt loops when he talks, or he puts it behind his back, or uh, he tries to look comfortable by doing like Jack Benny or something, and he he doesn't seem to get across to the audience, not yet anyway, yeah, how to uh look and act natural. He would sometimes speak way too fast, so you couldn't understand what he was saying, or he would slow down to a weird drawl.

SPEAKER_03 38:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 38:37

It took a long time for him to learn how to screen act. He came from the stage, he came from Broadway. And I don't know, I've never seen him on stage, so I don't know what kind of stage acting.

SPEAKER_03 38:47

Yeah, wouldn't it be great if we could cat capture glimpses of that's of that kind of stuff?

SPEAKER_02 38:51

You know, like I you know the reason he made it was because he was drinking buddies with John Houston. John Houston was a screenwriter. Now I've seen I've seen a lot of stuff about Humphrey Bogart, documentaries and uh testimonials and what have you. And nobody ever really said what I just said, that he wasn't very good in the beginning, that he had to learn how to, you know, he came to that. Kind of like what I've always said about Paul Newman, whom I love. Paul Newman didn't start out a great actor, sorry. He became one. He he had on-the-job training. Um Bert Lancaster, same way.

SPEAKER_03 39:28

Although Yeah, that's all very fair. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 39:30

Yeah. They had to learn. And because of the way they looked, although Bogart might be the exception, but because of the way they looked, they were given that chance. And John Houston saw something in Bogart and helped him come around to a better style of acting. He wasn't always a director. His first film as a director was Multi's Falcon.

SPEAKER_03 39:55

Right.

SPEAKER_02 39:55

But I know he had written screenplays for Bogart, I can't think of which offhand, but he knew what Bogart would be capable of because of the way uh what Bogart looked like, with that long horse face, and he he brought him along with the way he wrote. And so consequently, when he came to Multi's Falcon and and even more so, High Sierra and Um Treasure Sarah Madre, then he became an actor. He became an actor who who kind of invented and created his own persona on screen of the anti-hero. Um and so that's what that's what it was about Bogart.

SPEAKER_03 40:32

Now that's well, those are all very good observations.

SPEAKER_02 40:35

Oh, thank you. And it wasn't anything I came by in terms of uh taking a film class of any kind. It was just one observation and number two, uh reading about Bogart a lot. And I don't remember reading anywhere that he started out not being very good, but I do know that he was there was a great book written called City Boys about Cagney and Bogart and um John Garfield. And the observation is made that he he stumbled on screen a lot before he learned how to describe. And that was, I think, the way the author wrote it. But I knew what that meant. He wasn't there yet. He got he took him time, and he was given a lot of chances, even though he made you know like horror movies, the return of Dr.

SPEAKER_00 41:24

X and God-awful stuff. But mostly he was in he was in the sandline, it's the best way to put it.

SPEAKER_02 41:34

He was in support of all the other Warner Brothers stars, Betty Gables, Edward J. Robinson, um you name it.

SPEAKER_03 41:42

Yeah, he was in High Sierra, and and he he was in High Sierra, and in some of the movie posters, he was he wasn't even included. Um in I Sierra, uh movie that he was in almost 100% of. Uh and and they didn't include because Warner Brothers was gonna sack him.

SPEAKER_02 42:03

And well, he wasn't even the first choice.

SPEAKER_03 42:05

George Raft. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And see he told George, and the funny thing is, is it to hear I I uh the story I've told, and this is intertwined with Cagny, um, because Cagney and Jer George Raft uh were uh very much of like minds um in some of the same ways. Bogart was like minds with raft because they were playing similar roles. Um but but Bogart somehow talked George Raft into turning down that role at Iceera, and it just turned out to be like this thing that catapulted him. Um you know, and between that and Maltese Falcon, um it was just like there was no turning back after that. And George Raft's star was going down after that.

SPEAKER_02 42:48

Yeah, also turned down by George Raft. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 42:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 42:52

Not the brightest guy when it came to choosing script. Um but not that he always had a choice either. It was kind of like poison on it, but and if he turned it down and he was required to do it, then he would be put on suspension.

SPEAKER_03 43:04

Right. And and he didn't seem to care, you know, about that.

SPEAKER_02 43:10

Yeah, one of my favorite examples of that, the original choice for Casablanca, which to me is the pantulate film. The original choice, Ronald Reagan. Think about that. You know?

SPEAKER_03 43:25

Oh boy, okay. Um yeah, that would be a different movie. Um Wow.

SPEAKER_02 43:33

It would be in a successful film, that's for sure.

SPEAKER_03 43:35

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 43:36

Well, I shouldn't say that. There are there are there are a lot of elements that can lead to the successful movie.

SPEAKER_03 43:41

You just blew my mind, Dwayne, by the way. Yeah, you just blew my mind. Uh I just watched uh uh was it King's Row the other day. Um and Ronald Reagan lost his leg in that yeah, that's the th the yeah. Um but yeah, that was the

SPEAKER_02 44:00

Reason why they wanted him in Casablanca, because he had just made King's Road and it was a monster hit.

SPEAKER_03 44:05

It was a hit for the studio. And Bourne Brothers thought about putting him in. That all makes sense.

SPEAKER_02 44:12

I think it was Howard Koch, the producer, who said, no, he's not right for this.

SPEAKER_03 44:17

No, and they that was the right call. It's so funny how things intertwine. The other thing I wanted to ask you about with Angels and Dirty Faces, before we go on to the next one, uh, is um uh again, folks, we're gonna do a little spoiler here. There is a lot of hullabaloo uh, you know, regarding the ending uh where Cagney just absolutely loses his mind, um, freaking out that he's going to be executed. Um a lot of people don't think that's appropriate, like he wouldn't behave that way. But my thought is, yeah, if it's really the end, yeah, you really might behave that way. You might have a complete, all of a sudden, oh wow, now all of a sudden I value um what I wasn't valuing before. Now I'm not a tough guy anymore because I'm gonna be executed. What what do you think about that?

SPEAKER_02 45:12

Oh, it's real easy for me.

SPEAKER_03 45:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 45:14

I I wondered that myself for a long time.

SPEAKER_03 45:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 45:16

Then I read then I read Cagnan's autobiography, which came up thinking sometime in the late 70s, and I I I was over the moon. I I devoured it. I've read it several times. And he talks about that. Uh he and Ben O'Brien does too. I've seen him on a on a documentary about Cag where he's asked about that. And he loves it, and he loves to replay it uh in the way he acts by going, you know, the dead end kids will come up to him and go, Hey, the truth, father. Tell us the truth, father. And like uh, well, I shouldn't say like Cagney. Donald Bryan had one take on it, Cagney had another. Cagney said, when you watch the movie, he said, that's what it was. He said, people would come up to him all the time. Little kids would take on a sleeve and go, did Rocky die yellow? Was Rocky really a coward? And Cagney's answer was, I can't tell you that. That's gonna be up to you.

SPEAKER_03 46:18

Yeah, it's gonna be up to you. That's good.

SPEAKER_02 46:19

Yeah, and he said, as far as I'm concerned, the answer is in the way I played the character.

SPEAKER_03 46:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 46:26

And I think I think he's absolutely right about that. Because when you watch the movie, when Pat O'Brien first asks him to act like a coward, even though he may not be, he said, um, I can't, you know, I can't I can't do what you ask me, Jerry, because you know, in order to be afraid, you gotta have a heart. And I think I had that cut out of me a long time ago. So, you know, that's part of what he meant. But ultimately, I think he does what he does, acts I don't know what the term acts or or thinks, behaves whatever like a coward for the sake of the dead end kids. That's why Pat O'Brien asked him to do it.

SPEAKER_03 47:09

Well, now I'm gonna have to re-watch that that meme. I'm gonna have to do that with that different set of thoughts. Oh, it's it it might actually be my favorite on this list. I I'm not sure about that, but I I it's well well, in which case you have great taste, David. Yeah, it's yeah, it's just it's just a fantastic movie and and uh fantastic performance.

SPEAKER_02 47:39

No, it's just and you know what's great? Um they they made a sequel, believe it or not, called Angels Washed Their Faces. Probably the stupidest title for a movie that we had.

SPEAKER_03 47:52

I had no idea that existed.

SPEAKER_02 47:54

Yeah, first first they had dirty faces, now they k no. Washed their faces, and that starred Humphrey Bogart.

SPEAKER_03 48:02

I had no idea. Wow.

SPEAKER_02 48:05

Well it it's basically it doesn't even have anything to do with either with Angels with Dirty Faces. It's actually a remake of a movie called Crime School, yeah, which was about you know taking over a reform school, which the dead end kids are sent to.

SPEAKER_03 48:19

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_02 48:19

And Bogart is in charge of the reform school. And of all the people that dead end kids work with, Bogart was the one they hated the most. None of them liked Bogart. And they were constantly pranking him. Like uh just before a scene or even during a scene, they'd pull his pants down. And or or which I thought was a nice touch. Or um, they'd be riding your bikes around the studio and just constantly almost hit him, like right in a circle around, like, you know, a punk kid would do. Which let's funny said that's what they were.

SPEAKER_03 48:53

And they were just practicing.

SPEAKER_02 48:56

Yeah, right. And I mean they were professional actors, yeah, mostly in their 20s, but they were still kids. And the one they admired the most, they liked John Garfield, but they loved um Caggy.

SPEAKER_03 49:10

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 49:11

And the reason being is because they said they never worked on an actor that was so serious about being an actor.

SPEAKER_03 49:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 49:17

And there was an outtake in the movie in Angels with Dirty Faces, that is fantastic. It's great to see it. There's a scene in the movie when Kaggy is with the denim kids, and you know, and they're in their hideout in the basement of some tenement, and he's trying to get information about that, from that, about what's going on, what's going on. What do you hear? What do you say? And and while he's doing that, Leo Gorcy speaks out of turn. He purposely steps on Cagney's line. And Cagney's got an envelope in his hand that's filled with money. And when Leo Gorcy did that, he says something like, Oh, hey, I think he's cycles, eh? Cagny turns around, looks at him, and he goes, Talking out of turn again, huh, kid? Boom! Slaps him in the face with the envelope.

SPEAKER_03 50:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 50:08

Really hard. And you can see he really did it. And it and like I said, it was an outtake. And we see Leo Gorcy rubbing his face, and that's real. And it was one of the reasons why the dead end kids loved him so much. He didn't take shit from anybody.

unknown 50:24

Anyway.

SPEAKER_03 50:25

Yeah, and and then we have uh uh yeah, those are all great observations. And then we have uh moving on to the next uh film is uh the the Roaring Twenties, uh, which is uh yet another um another gem. Oh what what stands out for that one with you?

SPEAKER_02 50:47

Well, many, many things. Um mainly Jim Cagnon.

SPEAKER_03 50:52

Of course.

SPEAKER_02 50:53

He uh we j my girlfriend and I just watched it again the other day. Never ever count too many times I've seen the movie. It doesn't matter to me. Um and we watched it, and for the first time in a long, long time, the two of us broke down in tears. His that last scene when he dies on the steps of the church and and and the cop comes comes along and says, Uh, what was his name? Gladys George says, Eddie Bartlett. And then he goes, the cop says, What were you to him? And she says, I never could figure that out.

SPEAKER_01 51:32

And and and this is the part that got me.

SPEAKER_02 51:34

It's it's just so great. The cop says, Who was he? And then she looks off camera kind of like whimsically, not whimsically, but wistfully, and goes, He was a big shot.

SPEAKER_03 51:48

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 51:50

Great scar.

SPEAKER_03 51:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 51:51

You know, that movie was based on the uh writing of a gentleman by the name of Mark Hallinger, who was uh a pr a producer at at Warner Brothers, but before that, he was a writer, uh, a newswriter for like uh like the Daily News or New York Post or Daily American, any any of the many of those New York newspapers, and it was based on his experiences in the 1920s. And so it was it was kind of like firsthand. One of the other things about that movie that I love it helped start the career of one of my favorite directors, a guy named Don Siegel.

SPEAKER_03 52:30

And Don Siegel did all the montage scenes. I I I forgot about that. You're right.

SPEAKER_02 52:38

Anytime I watch that movie, I always get a reminder. Like when they show the uh the effect of the depression, and they show this is all Don Siegel's doing. It's they show all these buildings, you know, like the stock market, Wall Street, and all that, and they all just all of a sudden they all fade away like not fade, but it was like they're made out of sand. And use some kind of effect that made them all disappear and fall to the ground. It was oh, it was great. The effect is brilliant. Also showing a giant, a giant ticker tape thing that they use to uh read the stocks and get bigger and bigger and bigger, and then it explodes, and you see people rolling all over the street. It's just you know, brilliant. The movie was directed by Rao Walsh. Um, there were directors like him. There were Rao Walsh and William Wellman, John Ford, uh Howard Hawks.

SPEAKER_03 53:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 53:39

Um these tough, hard-living, hard-drinking, you know, life-loving guys. There were guys. I doubt about it.

SPEAKER_03 53:49

I always I always have questioned, I've probably questioned it at least 50 times on on this podcast, but but I I always wonder, uh, we certainly know the answer with John Ford and and um and I think we know the answer with the others that you mentioned, you know, but other people like you know uh uh like Michael Curtiz, who he we'll talk about in a minute, uh and then some other directors from the uh golden age of Hollywood that didn't really make it into the um later stages, so you know, the new Hollywood or whatever. But um, but I always wonder um how good of a director uh those people really were. Um were they really great directors? Like was Cortese a great director? I think so, but I don't think we can ever really completely um quantify that because he didn't really have a chance to be a you know a masterclass director or an entourage as they say. Um and um I he didn't get a chance to to do everything his way. And um I just kind of um I always think about that kind of thing. Like what you know, how great are the that's a good question.

SPEAKER_02 55:04

That's a good point, but I can tell you something as far as I'm concerned. And and I think I know a friend of mine, wonderful historian, a guy named Alan Rhodes, yeah, recently wrote a book about Michael Curtiz. And he he, you know, if there's a theme to what he wrote about Michael Curtiz, it would be this. He wasn't only underappreciated, he was also probably the single most versatile film director in the history of Hollywood. Yeah, that's the only one in every single genre, all of them. He didn't specialize in any one thing, and maybe that's one of the reasons why he's not as heralded as some of the others.

SPEAKER_03 55:44

But yeah, isn't that an interesting knock?

SPEAKER_02 55:47

Yeah, he was versatile, so therefore he's not that great.

SPEAKER_03 55:50

Yeah, that's a that is such a really interesting way to knock somebody, you know. He could do everything, that's why he's not as good as the others, you know. What?

SPEAKER_02 56:01

There you go, right, right. Um and I I I think you had a valid point, Alan. Um, because you know, if you look at the breadth and scope of the kinds of films he made, yeah. His very his very last film was a John Wayne West one, yeah, uh The Cometeros.

SPEAKER_03 56:19

Oh, okay, yeah, I didn't realize that, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 56:21

Yeah, and he also he directed The Diversity, Marcos the Mide. And people forget that he directed all of these movies. Yeah. Um Mildred Pierce, Yankee Doodle Dandy, uh Um Um Um Uh Mike Christmas, Danny Kay, and uh Bing Crosby, uh oh god, oh all of Errol Flynn's best movies. The Seahawks. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 56:47

Um I think he directed Errol Flynn like eight times or ten times, something like that.

SPEAKER_02 56:52

What? I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_03 56:53

I think he directed Errol Flynn. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 56:55

And they and they didn't like each other at all.

SPEAKER_03 56:57

Oh, he didn't nobody, no, I don't think I don't think anybody liked Errol Flynn.

SPEAKER_02 57:01

Well, I didn't I never recommend that.

SPEAKER_03 57:05

He's a great leading man, I'll say that. Right?

SPEAKER_02 57:09

And and and I'll say this about uh Michael Curtiz. And I think it was probably started by David Nippen. David Nippen was was the guy who hoped to tell Michael Curtiz stories because he was always, you know, when he would speak, he would speak in Maloprops and non-sequiturs, and he had a thick Hungarian accent. His real name was Miklos Kaj or something like that. Oh, okay. And what one of one of David Niven's autobiographies, he wrote several, and they're always a lot of fun, was um Real and the Empty Horses. And that title came from something that Michael Kirchini would say, which was for uh the Charge of the Light Brigade, when there was supposed to be a scene where there were, you know, soldiers, not soldiers, but there were horses galloping through the scene, but without soldiers on them, he started that out. He would say, Bring on the empty horses. And that was that's that's where that came from. He would so guitar shit like that. And apparently, and I think we're gonna get to it in a minute, apparently when he was making Yankees Little Bandy, he ruined the take, Michael Curtis, which I thought was great. He the scene where, and it's so wonderfully sentimental, it's true. The scene where Walter Houston's father is dying, and and James Cagney is you know is holding his hand, and he said, you know, the stage exit. And it was it's very sweet, but very poignant the way it started, and then Walter Houston dies. And then on uh almost on a cue, they Michael Curtiz hadn't yelled cut yet, and he was he was intensely involved in watching the scene, and he started out, this is crazy, Jimmy, that was he ruined the cake. So they had to do it again. Oh no. I love stories like that, and that's what I'm talking about. David Niven loved to tell those kinds of stories because he was Cagnam uh uh a story himself that he wrote in his autobiography, but it wasn't about um any any movie he made with Michael Curtiz, it was a movie he was making with Errol Flynn, and I think it was the Seahawk. Now, I think that's one of the reasons why um Errol Flynn didn't like um Michael Curtiz, because he had him doing all this crazy shit.

SPEAKER_03 59:36

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 59:37

There's a scene where he's supposed to be up on the parapet of uh where the mask was, and and Michael Curtis is staging the shot. And there's an actor in the movie who's supposed to be like a member of the church, you know, a clergyman, and he's got a viewfinder, Michael Curtis, and he's watching how it's being set up, and he looks over and he goes, Tell that pre minister, cleric, whatever, tell that guy to back up two feet. He's still not in the shop the way I want him. And he does. And then he does it again, and then he says it again. By the third time he does it, uh backs up and backs up. He's on a you know, a sound stage, but it's a soundstage, you know, that's on a gimbal.

unknown 1:00:21

So it can, you know, the ship can roll back and forth, right? And when he backed up for the fourth time, he fell off the sound stage. He fell off the ship.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:29

And like an old-fashioned director, he shouted out, you know, in the bull run he goes, somebody get me another priest!

SPEAKER_03 1:00:41

That's funny stuff.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:43

He wrote that story. I know I love it. I think that's great.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:45

That's funny stuff. Um, yeah, you mentioned Yankee Doodle Dandy, and that's actually our next movie. Uh so yeah, that's um I literally finished re-watching that uh minutes before I got on here. Uh and uh and just I the correct me if I'm wrong, but the this is the kind of role that Cagney wanted to play all the time. Am I right about that?

SPEAKER_02 1:01:14

You're absolutely right. Yeah, he really liked playing tough guys. Yeah. He always saw himself as a song and danceman. That's all he ever wanted to be.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:22

Yeah. And and when George Raft.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:25

But yeah, right.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:27

Like George Raft.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:28

Um the way George Raft wanted to see himself as. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:31

Right. Um, but the the big difference is George Raft didn't have much talent. Yeah. Sorry. Tell you the truth. He was interesting in some movies, and he was great at the end of his life when he was in Sun Like It Hot and kind of parried himself. Um but in movies when he had the lead, eh, it's kind of dull.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:51

Um, you're right about that. Yeah, uh, George Rafft's uh sorry for interrupting, but George Raft was really good when he wasn't counted on to do the heavy lifting.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:02

Bingo. Yeah, you got it. And you know, he his look was modeled after a very popular look at the time. He was a valentino.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:13

Yeah, he had really on the slick back hair.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:17

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:18

It's Valentino. And Valentino, even though he had died in the uh mid-20s, late 20s, that look was still very popular. Anthony Quinn cultivated it early in his career. He had that same look, although he wasn't as handsome as Valentino was. Valentino was a very handsome man and a better actor than people give him credit for. I discovered that watching some of his old films. Um he had presents and he was terrific. But anyway, um what were we talking about?

SPEAKER_00 1:02:47

Um about Yankee Doodle Danny.

unknown 1:02:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:50

Jackie Doodle Dandy. When they were making that movie, when they started filming it, um the the very next day, it was the second day of filming, Pearl Harbor was gone. And it was the beginning of World War II. And everybody gathered around the radio, the entire uh crew, the reactors, the cat, and were listening to FTR speech about how this would be a day that would live an infamy. And when he was done, I love this story. The room was completely silent. Nobody knew what to say, nobody knew what to do. How do you, you know, say or react or something like that? And Cagny was the one who broke the silence. Caggy said, You know what?

SPEAKER_00 1:03:31

I think this would be a good time for a prayer. And they did. They all joined hands and they prayed.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:40

That's amazing. I yeah, uh, you know, uh the timing of this particular project is unbelievable. You know, because it had a day Well, and that's another thing.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:51

Yeah, I'm sorry. I just want to say it w well, first of all, Cagney actually wasn't the first choice. They wanted for the stare.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:59

Oh, geez. Thank you very much for for for not doing that.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:04

Ruining for you?

SPEAKER_03 1:04:05

No, no, I no, I no, I'm just glad, yeah, I'm glad they didn't ruin it. You know, uh because uh it's yeah, Cagney is just uh Cagney, he's he's a ball of fire.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:19

And the reason why, well, first of all, James Cagney knew the real George M. Cohen, and he did not like him. He was part of I mean, he was a fascinating man. He created the modern American musical single-handedly, long before anybody, I mean a lot of people added to it along the way, but it was George M. Cohen who did it first. And they point that out in the movie as well, but he was also a a staunch anti-unionist. And when the when the um actors of actors equity were first forming back around the turn of the century, or a little later than that, see, say about the teens or the twenties, um, George M. Cohan was vehemently against it. He didn't believe actors should have a union. And James Cagney was one of the people that were fighting for the union. He believed in unions. And so it had a personal thing for him in terms of the character. However, more importantly, James Cagney in 1939 or 1940 did a radio version of my favorite novel ever with called Johnny Got His Gun by Don Trombeau.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:34

Oh, wow. I didn't know he did that. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:36

Oh man, he's incredible in it too. I didn't think as much as I've always loved the novel and I've read it more times than I can count.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:43

I love those radio dramas, by the way. Yeah, those old Yeah. I used to go to sleep listening to them, you know, even though it was pa you know, it's past both of our generations, but but uh but I mean it's before us, but but it's it they're so fun to listen to.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:59

You bet. Oh And the comedy show sitcoms.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:02

Oh, the Burns and Allen and Costello. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:05

The Marsh brothers.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:10

That's right. Harpo was on the radio.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:13

Right. Anyway, um, Cagney had done Angel uh excuse me. Cagney had done Johnny Got of God. It was a radio play written by a radio genius named Arch Obler. And Arch Obler uh was responsible for the production. And the problem was Dalton Trombeau, who had written it, was blacklisted and about to be, well, about to be blacklisted. And consequently, that put Cagney in a really tough spot because it became kind of like, well, if he could do a show like this, maybe he's a red or pinko or something like that.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:54

And in those days, in your window worked a lot of ways.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:59

And consequently, it was Cagney's brother, Bill Cagney, who was a producer of Warner Bloods, and Cagney's personal business manager, who said, you know, if you want, he said to Jack Warner, if you want to get Cagney out of the hot, you know, this problem that he's having with uh Congress, put him in Yankee Doodle Land. That's the movie he wants to make anyway. You know he'd be great at it. Let him do it. And that actually worked. Because I mean, it's such a patriotic movie. It's so flag waving and so wonderful on that level. And it it saved Cagney's ass. It saved his career in terms of the politics of the film. Um, and it's also he was called before the House of uh House of American Activities Committee uh before Yankee Delavandy came out. And he testified, and one of the things he did when he testified was to tell the chairman of the committee, well, the chairman of the committee wanted to speak with him privately. Um kind of like the shit that's going on right now with the Epstein files, where they uh when both Hillary and Bill Clinton came into position and the way they were treated, but they wouldn't have any of it, and they stuck it back to the committee better. Well, I'm glad I was able to work that in. Um Cadney met with Martin Dyes, D-I-E-S, because he wanted to meet with us. And you know what the whole meeting consisted of?

unknown 1:08:34

No.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:34

Martin Martin Dyes wanted Jane Cagn's autograph.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:38

Yeah, I was wondering if you're gonna say that.

unknown 1:08:41

You freaking believe that.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:42

Oh, it's gonna be they think they think that kind of shit just started in the last maybe 10, 20 years. It's been going on forever.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:49

Forever, yeah. If you can just sign that to to Little Johnny, you know.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:55

Yeah, but that's my uh nephew.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:59

He spells it M-A-R-T-I-N-D-I-E-S.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:03

It's it's a nickname. It's awesome. And yeah, Yankee Doodle Dandy is is a movie that um I feel uh is just special.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:14

It was it was Kagan's personal favorite part.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:16

Yeah, I it it is not my favorite of his, but but I uh but I uh but it's a special film because uh you know, I mean he looks like he's having the time of his life. And and and sometimes you can just feel the energy from actors, the you know, when the you know, like we're talking about about George Raft, you don't ever really feel that energy. Um you know, but Cagney, boy, you feel it, but you really, really feel it um sometimes um uh more than others. And this is a time where uh you can just see, you know, he's just doing things that he ha has wanted to do. He didn't he did he didn't want to be in all these shoot 'em up movies necessarily, but um, but I'm glad he was in them. But but uh you know because he did them so well. Yeah, exactly. You know, but the this is just a fantastic moment for him. And um, and of course, uh um he was nominated. What did he win the Oscar?

unknown 1:10:20

Yes, he did.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:21

Okay, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. He did. He did. And it's funny I'm even asking that question because um after we're done recording this, my next episode is going to be on the 15th Academy Awards, uh, which of course he did win, where I where I kind of do a review of the Academy Awards, uh the big three ones, the big the best picture, best actor, best actress, and and um um literally this was the last one I need to watch for for best picture, and and uh and then I just kind of like stun zoned out for a second. Did he win? Yeah, he did win. But you know, I'm most assuredly going to uh affirm that because it just there's so many so many things he does in this interesting in that movie in that it's not factual.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:13

That's the best way to put it. The script we uh the script had to be approved by um Cohan himself, uh, because he sold the rights to apply to warnaboters, but it included script approval, and he didn't want any mention of some of his less than savory aspects of the movie, such as he was married like three times, and he didn't want any of that to be in the movie. He didn't want it known that he was married more than once, although it wouldn't be that hard to find out. Um, and and what's her face, the actress you play with his wife, Mary. Um I don't remember her name. Um yeah, Joan Leslie.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:54

Yeah, Joan Leslie, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:56

Yeah, she pretty much represented all three of his wives. Um and there were other aspects of Cohen's life, uh Cohen's life, and what's great is he got to live long enough to see it just once.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:12

Yeah, he died right after it came out, yeah.

unknown 1:12:15

Yeah, no, he he died right before it came out.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:17

Oh, before yeah, before it came out, okay.

unknown 1:12:19

Yeah, yeah, he saw it in a special screening.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:21

He was dying of cancer.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:22

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:23

And and he saw it and he loved it. And what he loved most was James Cag. And by the way, he was the one who wanted Fredister. And if you've ever seen a picture of uh George M. Cohan at the uh his prime, he looked like a young Fred Esther. He had that twinted chin, he was going bald real early, like Fred Astaire. Um there was a lot of similarities in his facial features. And they danced kind of alike. And the other thing is too, Cagney, Cagney was no longer a spring chicken when he made that movie. He wasn't that old, but he was like 42, 43 years old. And so he had started to put on weight, and he had to slim down for that movie, and he had to uh he had to rehearse constantly for the dance numbers. And he didn't just rehearse, he had to rehearse in a way that George M. Cohen used to dance. And Cohen had this stiff-legged style of dancing, which they used to call in vaudeville in early theater, Legomania. And it was based a lot on um um but um what's the thing they do in Ireland? River dance or or um you know that kind of thing?

SPEAKER_03 1:13:38

I know you're talking about, but I don't I can't think of the the it's almost like clogging, yeah, the best way to put it.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:44

Anyway, that's how Cagney had to dance, but that's how George M. Cohen danced. Now I know people who were professional dancers who told me they didn't particularly care for the way he danced in the movie. And I anytime I would hear that, I would have to say that's because he's dancing like George M. Cohen. You know, or they would say, you know, he didn't sit, he's not really singing in this movie. He's more like fast talking. And I would say, once again, that's how George George M. Cohen. You know, and that's what he was doing, and that's why he won the Oscars, because he was perfect as George M. Cohen. You know?

SPEAKER_03 1:14:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:18

George George Michael Cohan.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:21

Very, very good, very good, very good. Um we should probably move on to the next film, which is uh City for Conquest. Another movie, another movie that I had a chance to re-watch uh during the last week. And you mentioned Anthony Quinn earlier. Uh he's in it. Yeah, he's in it, and it was and it was supposed to be George Raft. Not surprisingly, a George Raft character. Yeah, yeah, uh, but it turned out to be uh Anthony Quinn, and um, you know, uh Anthony Quinn was really good in this. Um such a sleaze ball. Oh, yeah. Oh yeah, yeah. No absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:03

I got into a thing with um with with once again, Alan Rhode, uh the guy who wrote the book on Like, he disagreed with me about something. I said about about City for Conquest and about a specific scene. I said, you know what really and because Jimmy Cagney didn't like the way the movie turned out, he found it to be a disappointment based on the novel that he had read and loved. That because of that, Alan Rhode had agreed with Cagney, saying that, well, you know, like James Cagney said, it pulled its punches. It wasn't as hard-hitting as it should have been. And I said, I disagree. I completely disagree. That movie has a powerful punch to it. And I told him, I said, it's the first movie I remember ever seeing in which rape is implied. Of course, not shown.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:52

Yeah, yes.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:54

And it's implied in a very powerful way. And when I reminded him of the scene, Alan Rhodes agreed with me. He said, you know, I never thought of it that way. But you're right. When Ann Sheridan loses her shoe, and she asks Anthony Quinn to give it to her, my shoe, Mary, give me my shoe. And he's like, sure, baby, sure. And you see him moving in on it.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:16

She's in shadow. And then they saw her shoe, and she's like, No, Mary, no!

SPEAKER_03 1:16:21

He's raping her. Absolutely. Uh that is absolutely a uh really it's it's it's really to me almost w worse that they don't show it. And they're and that's what and that's what makes it work. Yeah, because you're just wondering, you know, what in the world uh you know, you I mean you know kind of what's happening, but yeah, you don't see it and and you have a chance to like think the worst.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:50

And um, yeah, absolutely, once again, the ending, and I'm not I'm not gonna spoil it. Academy movies had great endings. I got it too.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:59

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:00

Yeah, Public Enemy, Warring Twenty, uh uh Yankee Doodle Dandy, when when he's dancing down the steps of the White House and he falls in with all the other soldiers who are singing um um um uh the World War I song um over there.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:17

Yeah, oh yeah, over there, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:19

And oh, and he's got tears in his eye that he sing along. It's great. And and City for Conquest. Now, I don't want to give away why it's such a great, powerful ending. However, I watched it again fairly recently with my girlfriend, and we were both a mess. There wasn't enough cleaning in the house. It was just so powerful when after all that they've been through and all that's transpired and everything, and I won't say what it is, because that would be the whole movie. But after all that's gone on, and Anne Sheridan meets up with Cagney again, and he's working, you know, he's working on a newspaper stand.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:02

Right.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:03

Yeah, and and I think Ant Sheridan breaks down and starts saying something like what happened to us, you know?

SPEAKER_00 1:18:13

And and I think you know, Cagny dries her tears and then says, That's all right, Paggy. You'll always be my girl.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:24

That's awesome.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:26

Yeah, and then I can't believe I'm crying again. Just remember.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:30

I do this too, Dwayne.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:32

Oh my god. Just remembering it now. And the way Cagney did it.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:41

Yeah, yeah.

unknown 1:18:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:43

And like I said, I'm not gonna ruin it by saying why.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:46

Yeah, and that's a question that millions of of uh uh people in relationship ask themselves uh and and uh and it hits home probably because yeah, you know, you've probably asked that question and at some point in your life too. And that's what happens with people, you know, uh life is full of missed opportunities and and uh it's just uh wow.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:15

Um George Kennedy made his film debut in that movie. And he plays a cag, he plays Kagan's brother.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:22

And uh I didn't realize that. Wow.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:25

Yeah, and and his character was clearly based on George Gershwell.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:29

Wow. I did not realize that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:32

Yeah, where he does, you know, when they show him once again at the end of the movie, yeah, doing his composition. Like Raps Any Blue.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:42

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:43

Great stuff.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:43

Now we see and we see Cagney do something that he doesn't normally do in the movie, which is kind of play um uh not the he's plays the he's the central character, but um but he plays kind of second fiddle uh with the Ann with Ann Sheridan's character, and and and you know I'd like to think that they were both the leads.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:05

It was a male and female league, and and they were both terrific. I think Ant Sheridan was probably one of the most, maybe the most, underrated actress in movie history.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:14

Um that's fair to say.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:16

I I I think she she was pretty, she was talented, she could she could throw out a straight now a um a barb as good or as better as Eve Arden, who who would do it all the time.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:29

Eve Arden. Eve Arden was second level. Right.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:33

Ginger Rogers when she would do it.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:35

Yeah, Ginger Rogers is good at that too, yeah. Yeah. Especially 42nd Street. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:41

She'd never ever been acknowledged as great as she was, and she worked great.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:46

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's well, that yeah, that that's that that's a very good uh that's a very good evaluation. Um uh now of course we have uh another great actress uh in your next film, uh stars with Cagney, uh, which is um a strawberry blonde, uh, which uh features uh Olivia De Havlin and also Rita Hayworth. Um much different film than pretty much all the others we've talked about.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:16

And I'll tell you something. That's my personal favorite, James Calderon.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:21

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:21

Tell me why at the top of the list. Um couple of reasons. In a lot of ways, his character of of uh I just went blank on his name, Doug didn't. I can't believe this.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:35

Oh, wait a minute. Jack Carson was Hugo Barnstead. Oh, yeah, yeah.

unknown 1:21:40

Biff Grimes.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:41

Okay, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:42

That was his name. Kaggy's name was Biff Grimes.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:44

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:45

And in a lot of ways, Caggy reminded me of myself.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:50

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:52

Yeah. When I was growing up, I was a lot like Biff Grimes. I wanted to seem and act a lot tougher than I actually was. Because when you write, you get right down to it, Biff Grimes is just a sweet, sweet man, you know? And this movie had, in my opinion, the single greatest supporting cast of any Warner Brothers stock company movie. All my favorites were in it. Jack Carson, Alan Hale, um um, oh jeez, I Yeah, you're right.

SPEAKER_03 1:22:21

The kitchen sink is is in is involved here.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:24

Yeah, um, I almost said Frank McHugh, but he wasn't in it. Um, and Alan Hale practically steals the movie that every single time. Oh, and Rita Hayworth, by the way, was not the original choice to play the title character. Ann Sheridan was. And she would have been perfect. Especially if you remember the way Rita Hayworth is in the end of the movie after after she spent way too much time married to Jack Carson. Yeah. So snarky towards him. Aunt Sheridan had that kind of thing down, man. She'd been doing it for decades. But they went with Rita Hayworth because um Aunt Sheridan was in a contract dispute with the Warner Brothers. So they decided, screw this, we're gonna find somebody else. And they did.

unknown 1:23:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:06

Olivia De Havillon is wonderful, Oscar-worthy, in my opinion. And, you know, there's a line in that movie that he says several times that I used to get myself ingratiated to my girlfriend. We've been together, we've been together over 25 years now. And we're both Jewish movie fans. And I got to use a line in that movie that just solidified it for me and her. I w I was uh back east, I was on a business trip to New York, she was living in New Jersey, and she came to visit me. And we had just started dating, and I decided to try to do this. We're standing in the middle of 42nd Street in the crosswalk, okay? In the crosswalk. And I stopped and I turned to her and I said, if I want to kiss my girl in the middle of the street, I'll do it anytime, any place, anywhere. That's the kind of hairpin I am.

unknown 1:24:10

And I kissed her. And that was it, boy. I was solid, Jack. It was it was perfect.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:18

And that's what I told her.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:20

That's awesome.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:21

She said, Yeah, and she said to me, Isn't that from Strawberry Blonde? And I said, Well, we got out of traffic, and I said, Yeah. And at the same time, we both said, That's my favorite James Cagney movie.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:33

Yeah, that's awesome.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:34

So, you know, movies, movies can help you a lot.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:39

Yeah, wow, that's great. Yeah, yeah. Uh it it it is a simple film in a lot of ways, but um, but uh it it it's well, it's really uh this is one of those um three that I didn't get a chance to revisit at any time recently. I think I saw it last three or four years ago on Turner Classic Movies. And um probably seen it about four or maybe five times. Um but yeah, Olivia de Havillin is always worth worth watching and and uh yeah yeah, you're right. I uh about Ann Sheridan. She she could have played the Rita Hayworth role. Of course, Rita Hayworth at the time was on the come-up, um and it really w w worked out for the studio to uh to have her in there.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:29

Um but uh yeah, but then she wound up going to Columbia. I think she was on Lona for one, so she wound up going to Columbia.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:35

Oh, yeah, of course. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:36

And that's where she really made her name about. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:39

So she was she was definitely uh yeah, a star coming up.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:44

With Gene Kelly and yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:46

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:47

She was terrific. Um now the next movie is one that probably everybody listening to our voices has seen. Uh uh, just real quick. Oh, yeah, go ahead.

SPEAKER_02 1:26:00

Um that whole thing in uh Strawberry Blonde about them going to a beer garden. Uh uh Rita Hayworth and James Cagman were dancing and they're having a wonderful time. And and uh Cagney's mother grew up in that time period. I mean, he was born, but he was a child, he was an infant. And his mother was from that time period. And he claims, by the way, that that um that that song that the movie um uh the band played on, um there's a line in the song instead of Diff Grimes where if they said um oh I forgot the name of the character in the song, but it's based on his mother. His mother's name was Nellie, and there's a a reference to Nellie in the song. And so with that in mind, Cagney did and Cagney knew that. And she was a redhead, she was a strawberry blonde, and he invited her to the set. She was much older. He invited her to the set and the sound states, and it was all done up, and he thought she would impress her. He he would impress her. And after she'd been there a couple of hours, Cagney asked her, he said, Well, Ma, what do you think?

SPEAKER_01 1:27:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:27:10

And she leaped over to Cagney and went, they didn't have pretzels, man. It was important that they got it that real that you know, pretzels didn't come out in beer gardens until much later. I mean, that's that's a mom.

SPEAKER_03 1:27:33

That's pretty awesome that someone that someone would notice that. Uh yeah, and that's what she captures out of the whole thing. That was that it really bothers me. Um that's funny. That's funny stuff. Um yeah, the next movie is one of every that mostly like I said, uh most people listening to us, if you've gotten this far in the episode, uh, you have probably seen White Heat. This might be actually some people. People's only uh only experience with James Cadney. Uh and uh in my opinion, um I I don't know if it's my favorite, maybe it is, I don't know. But um I think it's his most memorable and probably most famous role. Um no, hold on, hold on. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:21

You haven't said what it is yet. You've given it quite a buildup. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:28:25

It's uh white heat. Yeah, white heat.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:27

See, I was gonna I see I thought I'd beat you to the bunch by going, made it ma Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:28:33

Yeah. I I think uh, you know, when when younger people, and I say younger, I I'm 54. Uh yeah, and anybody m my my age are younger when they think of Cadmi, if they never have seen a classic film before, they've probably heard excerpts uh from uh from that film with his voice, and they probably have seen something you know from the film, even if they haven't watched it. Um and so that's why I think it's possible this is his most famous film. Um could be, yeah. It's possible. Um, but uh you know, there's like 500 things you could say that makes this film great. Um, but let's go over a couple of them.

SPEAKER_02 1:29:23

You know, I I uh I can tell you right now from the outset, after all that you said, yeah. You're probably completely accurate and right about it. It's cagney. Yeah, Cagney himself, it's his least favorite film. Yeah. He didn't like working on that movie at all. Yeah. Mainly because he had to go back to Warner Brothers. He had left the studio and he tried making movies on his own. He and his brother uh made Jane Bill Cagney. They they made some uh films and they all flopped. And they were all well-intended, very sweet films, movies like Johnny Came Lately, um, The Time of Their Lives, uh just very sweet movies. And and and it was not very typical Cagney uh um films. But not only did they lost money, but uh they were they were in debt. They were in the hole. So uh William Cagney went to Jack Warner and and negotiated for a new contract. And what happened was Cagney did not want to go back to Warner Brothers, first of all. And also, he didn't want to have to deal with Jack Warner at all.

SPEAKER_03 1:30:38

Nobody did.

SPEAKER_02 1:30:40

A lot of people don't know this, but James Cagney spoke fluent Yiddish. And his his nickname for Jack Warner was the Schwantz. Now, do you know what a Schwantz?

SPEAKER_03 1:30:52

No, I don't.

SPEAKER_02 1:30:54

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 1:30:56

Um, it involves male anatomy, I'll bet. Bingo. Say no more.

SPEAKER_02 1:31:04

I I remember when I was a kid, I asked my father, I was like, Hey dad, what's a schmuck? And my dad said, a schmuck is a big pux. And I would and then I said, What's a pux? And he goes, A pux is a big schmuck. Basically, in between there, it's a schmucks. Anyway, so Cagney apparently said, You're gonna have to deal with the schmux. I'm not. He sent Bill Cagney, and what Bill Cagney did was he got the best deal he could. And not only did he get the best deal he could, he got a deal that surprised the shit out of Jack Warner a couple years later. Because he got Jack Warner or Warner Brothers to absorb all the loss that uh the Cagney Brother Productions had happened. And on top of that, and I love this, Bill Cagney was a lot smarter than Frank than Jack Warner was. He got Jack Warner to agree to residual payments, royalties, to every time a Cagney movie is ever shown on television.

SPEAKER_03 1:32:12

Oh, wow.

SPEAKER_02 1:32:13

This was 1948. Yeah, this what TV was in its infancy. Jack Warner figured what's a big deal. Sure, you want that guy, you're not gonna make a dime anyway.

SPEAKER_03 1:32:23

That's a concession, wow.

unknown 1:32:26

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_02 1:32:26

It set up the Cagney brothers for the rest of their lives.

SPEAKER_03 1:32:29

Oh my gosh, what a what a coup. I love it. I didn't know this story, uh, but I love it, and it makes me love Jack.

SPEAKER_02 1:32:38

Well, I'll tell you this. Cagney didn't like making the movie, but one of the reasons was that naturally Jack wanted bullshit of it.

SPEAKER_03 1:32:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:32:47

Cagney said, if you want me to do this movie, I'll do it. But can we get some old Warner pals in this film too? Like specifically, he wanted Frank McHugh. They were very good friends. Cagney had a small circle of friends he was tight with, and one of them was Frank McHugh. The rest was Pat O'Brien and uh Ralph Bellamy. Anyway, um, and and Warner said, sure, oh, absolutely, we'll get Frank. We'll get Frank, definitely. And he kept Cagney kept checking in with Jack Warner about Frank McHugh. And Jack Warner kept telling him, yeah, he's on his way. We got a spot just for him. And first day of shooting.

unknown 1:33:27

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:33:28

The director was Rao Walsh. Where's Frank? And Rao Walsh, I think it was Rao Walsh, told James Cagney, oh, Jack didn't tell you? He couldn't get Frank McHugh. Frank McHugh was busy.

SPEAKER_03 1:33:45

Oh sure.

SPEAKER_02 1:33:46

Right. Not only that, Cagney found out later. Frank McHugh was never asked. Jack Warner never spoke to him about it.

SPEAKER_03 1:33:53

I bet not. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:33:54

Yeah. That's that's the kind of way the old studio days would work.

SPEAKER_03 1:33:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:33:59

You know? And he I thought it was funny. Cagney himself was very concerned about the way he was playing the character. There's an almost, you know, afterthought scene when Cagney sits on his mother's lap, and he didn't know how that would play. He even said to Ral Walsh, he was like, Do you really think audiences are gonna buy this? I'm a grown man. I'm gonna sit on my mother's lap. Are you kidding me? It's gonna look sick. And Ralph Walsh's attitude was like, hey, try it. Let's just see what happened. He did it, and everybody noticed it, and everybody loved it. Audiences went crazy for it. He also uh probably the most famous scene in the movie, other than the ending. That scene where he finds out his mother is dead and uh he goes nuts in the uh in the uh prison cafeteria.

unknown 1:34:56

Um there's a lot of great stories about that scene.

SPEAKER_02 1:35:00

But one of my favorites was the fact that how Caggy did that. Caggy was a method actor before method actors. Caggy was able to do it because this is the weird part. He was a very quiet, down-to-earth kind of guy, a faraway fella, as I said. And yet on the day they shot that scene, he invited a bunch of people to the studio at the soundstage to watch him do it, which I thought was really weird that he would do something like that. And he knew, and he knew how he was gonna play it. He played it the way he played it because when he was a little boy, he had a friend whose father was incarcerated in a mental institution. And he went to visit him. It was not Rikers Island. I think maybe, maybe, maybe it was Rikers Island before it became a prison under this mental hospital. And he said, the screams I heard in that place at night, he goes, gave me shivers, and I never forgot it. That's all I had to do was reenact them.

SPEAKER_03 1:35:57

Wow, that's that's yeah, that's crazy. I have no pen intended.

SPEAKER_02 1:36:04

Um yeah, I think one of my favorite little side things about that scene, yeah, that I love finding this out that almost nobody knows. I don't know which guy it is. It's like the third guy when they're going through and he's asking, you know, ask him how my mother is. And they're passing the word, and they're passing the word. I think it's the third guy.

SPEAKER_03 1:36:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:36:24

That is the great um Jim Thorpe.

SPEAKER_03 1:36:28

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:36:29

Yeah, you know, the sports legend.

SPEAKER_03 1:36:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:36:32

The greatest athlete of the 20th century. He was down on his luck, he was working as an extra in movies. That was the real Jim Thorpe. Isn't that amazing?

SPEAKER_03 1:36:40

I love the way stories like that come about. You know, trip. Yeah, it's just golly. Jim Thorpe. I I I remember reading I I I wrote a book report about a book uh about Jim Thorpe in in grade school. Um that's a yeah, amazing story. Um yeah, uh White He is uh a fantastic film. I don't um I'm I'm it it's always unfortunate whenever you have a movie that is so good and you find out that there was turmoil on on the set, and you're like, oh, that makes me not it doesn't make me like it less, but it does make me a little sad that like, oh, I wish that wouldn't happen.

SPEAKER_02 1:37:30

You know, I'll tell you, it wasn't so much turmoil as it was kind of disappointing for Cag.

SPEAKER_03 1:37:35

But yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:37:37

Otherwise, he actually enjoyed making it. He got along wonderfully with Ralph Walsh.

SPEAKER_03 1:37:43

Um I was gonna ask you about his relationship with with Walsh. Yeah, okay.

unknown 1:37:47

Oh, yeah, they got along great.

SPEAKER_03 1:37:48

Yeah. You know, they worked together on R20. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:37:51

Like I said, what Walsh said about Cag was that, hey, nice guy, but he just ate too much.

SPEAKER_03 1:37:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:37:56

Um he got along great with Virginia Mayo, um, got along great with Edmund O'Brien. And one of the things that I I love finding this out that Caggy loved to do when to pass the time, like when he's on a movie set and waiting for a setup, he loved to write little rhymes and limericks and short poems. And just before he was to do a scene with Edmund O'Brien when he got stuck with Edmund O'Brien, he slipped Edmund O'Brien a piece of paper just before they were going to yell action, and he went, tell me what you think of this. And and and it was one of those, you know, uh the once with a girl from Nantuck Edwards. So, you know, it was just a cute little memory. It wasn't dirty, but it was just a cute little mimerick. And Edmund O'Brien was in awe. He said, I never knew anybody like Cag that would do stuff like that. Who passes the time by writing cute poetry?

SPEAKER_03 1:38:51

He did. You know, things like that. A Renaissance man. Um, definitely. Yeah, definitely crazy. Um Okay, well, we're down to our last two uh Cagney movies here that you listed. And one is um it just they couldn't, these two last two couldn't possibly be further apart from each other in tone. Um but uh yeah, Man of a Thousand Faces is the next one, 1957. Um it's uh directed by uh somebody I never heard of until I looked it up, Joseph Peaven? Peveny Peveny. Yeah, I couldn't read my own writing. Uh Pevene, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:39:36

Yeah, he was he was he was a universal uh studio uh uh uh director.

SPEAKER_03 1:39:41

Yeah, and uh of course he's playing Lon Cheney in uh in uh uh Biopic when there was no such thing as Biopics, at least we no such term as biopic, but this is his um next biopic uh playing uh Lon Chaney, uh the great uh horror film actor, and and um I I I I feel like this is just an another excellent performance by him. Um I my takeaway uh as far as things outside of Cadney is boy, Dorothy Malone was a terrible person in this movie. Oh my gosh. This was my first experience watching it. It was literally last night, and uh I'm like uh yeah, I love Jane Greer, um, and I've always loved Jane Greer, but I loved her even more after this movie. But Dorothy Malone I loved less. Um, you know, oh my gosh, they put her in this terrible, mean role. Um, you know, but um uh I married someone like Dorothy Malone, by the way, in this movie. Uh but I'm I'm not gonna go any further than that on on on recording. Um but uh uh almost exactly like her. But anyway, that's all I'm gonna say about that. Um but yeah, it just kind of struck a chord with me. You know, but uh um what are your thoughts on him playing on Cheney? Because um I think I think is I think is uh another great role for him and a chance for him to really spread his wings.

SPEAKER_02 1:41:29

And and you know, but because it was already into the 1950s, the studio system was beginning to crumble. The Gagne had gone through last. And you know, he he made films with MGM, he made films with uh I think he made some films with Paramount, uh, made a couple films of Universal, and to my mind, knowing as much about movies as I do, or whatever I know about movies that I do, every studio, the way I remember it, had its own personality and the kinds of films they made. Absolutely. Um and in the case of Universal, they made the greatest horror movies, hands down, I'm sorry. And it started with Lon Cheney and Sr. And I could almost say this only about any comparison between Lon Cheney and and uh uh James Caddy in that I've I've been a huge Lon Cheney fan, almost as long. Well, I wouldn't say almost as long. Um I I saw my first Lon Cheney movie um sometime in my early twenties on PBS. There's a movie called He Who Gets Slapped. Oh my god, what a movie.

SPEAKER_03 1:42:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:42:41

And then PBS, now TCM does it with Silent Sunday, but PBS on occasion used to just show silent movies.

SPEAKER_03 1:42:49

I remember that. In the 70s, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:42:53

Yeah, right, yeah, in the 70s. And I saw He Who Gets Slapped, I saw Phantom of the Opera, Bunch Back in Notre Dame, um, um, Tell it to the Marines, uh, West of Zanzibar. And the thing about Ron Shane is very much like the thing, in my opinion, of James Cagney. He's noted for his makeup, which is amazing. However, the thing about Ron Cheney that I love was that he wasn't a typical actor of the time. Just like James Cagney wasn't a typical actor of the time. He didn't have to learn how to become a good actor. He didn't have a persona that was always the same every time you saw him. He, just like Ron Cheney, in the days of silent films, silent films was always about melodrama. And in melodrama, you have to do these broad takes. You know, I'm the villain.

SPEAKER_01 1:43:47

Right.

SPEAKER_02 1:43:48

You know, and hey, I'm the good guy. Hey, I'm hand hurt, you, you, you no good nick. Ryan Chaney eskewed all that. He never did that. I mean, granted, it was um the teens and uh 1920s, so there was a certain amount of that every now and again based on whatever the film was, but for the most part, he never really did that. He would play the character like a real person. And he would do these tough-eyed take. I like the best of movies where he didn't want any makeup at all, you know, where you you could see it with Lon Cheney. Although the makeup he did was incredible. And when you watch Man of a Thousand Faces, which unfortunately to my in my mind, as much as I love him in that movie and love the movie, there's just way too many melodramatic soap opera moments in the film.

SPEAKER_03 1:44:41

There are. It's a little long, and that that's part of it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:44:45

Well, well, that makes you feel longer than it is, man.

SPEAKER_03 1:44:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:44:48

Um that the whole thing with Dorothy Malone and um you know, and Jane Greer from the Scootie Goody, uh, who who I like a lot too, but I like her better when she's not the scoody goody. Like out of the past with Robert Mitchell.

SPEAKER_03 1:45:00

Oh, sure.

SPEAKER_02 1:45:01

I Oh man, she's a she's a great femme for towel.

SPEAKER_03 1:45:04

Anyway, um Maybe even the best, by the way. Maybe, maybe.

SPEAKER_02 1:45:10

It's it yeah, it could be.

SPEAKER_03 1:45:13

Um I mean that particular role.

SPEAKER_02 1:45:15

Right, yeah. The look she gets on her face from Mitchell and Kurt Bolsheat the shit out of each other.

SPEAKER_03 1:45:20

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. That's what I'm saying.

SPEAKER_02 1:45:22

Yeah, she's orgasmic watching them.

SPEAKER_03 1:45:25

Yeah, it's awesome.

SPEAKER_02 1:45:27

Yeah. Um, anyway, the uh oh, and by the way, a real quick aside, the actor who played Irving Salberg in uh Angels with in uh Man of a Thousand Faces was Robert Evans, who would go on to be the head of Paramount Studios.

SPEAKER_03 1:45:43

I I didn't know that. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:45:44

Well that was yeah, that was Robert Evans. And anyway.

SPEAKER_03 1:45:49

He wasn't a very good actor, by the way, in my opinion.

SPEAKER_02 1:45:51

No, he wasn't, and he knew it.

SPEAKER_03 1:45:52

No.

SPEAKER_02 1:45:54

Um I think uh I think I'll run a movie studio instead.

SPEAKER_03 1:46:00

I have no talent, so I'll I'll get yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:46:03

I'll take over Paramount. There you go.

SPEAKER_01 1:46:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:46:07

Anyway, um, there's a scene in the movie early on where Cagney reenacts a scene from one of Lon Cheney's movies. I think it was called The Miracle Man.

SPEAKER_01 1:46:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:46:18

Where and he does it like the way Lon Cheney did it. I've seen that movie. It's short and it's weird. Um and oh, one of the other elements about that movie that I love is that they show how the the bizarre and the strange and the kind of unworldly of this world keeps creeping into Cheney's life. You know? The guy who has no legs, he challenges into a fight, the uh you know, the fact that he was born of deaf parents, um and you know, things like that throughout the movie. And in that scene I'm talking about, Miracle Man, where he he untwists his legs, wow, that thing that that has such a punch to it, like a wallop. And seeing him reenact Hunts Back in Notre Dame and and uh uh Batter of the Opera, um two films I love that that you know, and by the way, they were shot on the actual set that were uh the originals were shot at, because it was Universal Studios, which by the way they've since torn down, unfortunately. Um but he was just you wouldn't think on the face of it, the short, chubby guy that was James Cagney would be right for Loncheney. And yet he was. Yeah, perfect for he was very well kept. And also, by the way, Roger Smith as Lon Cheney Jr. I love that. Yeah, married Ann Margaret, all right? So um, you know, and he was also on the TV show, Mr. Roberts. He played Mr. Roberts on TV. He was also on 77 Sunset Strip. And you know, have you ever seen what Loncheney Jr. looked like?

SPEAKER_03 1:48:00

Yeah, not like that. Not like that.

SPEAKER_01 1:48:02

Right? But you know, Hollywood.

SPEAKER_03 1:48:05

Yeah, that was a bit of a uh, yeah, that was a bit unbelievable. Um yeah, that that part.

SPEAKER_02 1:48:12

He yeah, uh you know, Cagney, by the way, Cagney, Ron Shaney did die that way, and it they could have given it a lot more explanation, just a bit more, in that he was making his final film, um, a movie called Thunder, about a guy who works for the railroad, and a piece of this is so weird, a piece of artificial snow, the plastic snow, lodged in his throat, and he didn't know it lodge. And by the way, that movie hasn't survived. I've only seen clips from it, because like the overwhelming majority of silent movies are gone. Yeah. Um, celluloids are no, it's silver nitrate, excuse me.

SPEAKER_03 1:48:58

Probably more than 80%.

SPEAKER_02 1:49:00

Yep, exactly. Anyway, there was a couple of clips and I've seen it. That piece of uh artificial snow that lodged in his throat, and he didn't even know what happened, gave him throat cancer. And that's how he died.

SPEAKER_03 1:49:13

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:49:14

And he only made one talking picture, and it was a remake of a siren film he made called The Unholy Three.

SPEAKER_03 1:49:21

That's right, the Unholy Three. Yeah, I watched the only time you get to hear Lon Cheney's voice. I wish to watch a c a clip of that yesterday after I watched the movie. I didn't have enough time to watch a the full uh I'm glad you're making the effort. Yeah, no, I I no, I try anytime I'm uh do an episode, I try to be as um as prepared as possible. Um but uh yeah, it's it's yeah. Uh but let me put on my own vote though for Lon Chaney uh for the unknown. I I I I kind of almost think that's my favorite. Lon Chaney movie, by the way. The unknown.

SPEAKER_02 1:50:03

Yeah, remind me of the thing.

SPEAKER_03 1:50:04

That's the one with Joan Crawford. Oh my God. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:50:08

Oh, oh, thank you for reminding me. Did you know that that's Lancaster's favorite movie? Lancaster apparently was a huge fan of two people when he was a kid growing up in Brooklyn. I mean, in uh Harlow. Ron Cheney Sr. and Douglas Fairbanks. Now, you could see why he was a Douglas Fairbanks fan in his face.

SPEAKER_03 1:50:27

Oh, sure, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:50:29

But the emotion that Ron Cheney showed in The Unholy, when he I God, I completely forgot about that movie. It's amazing. He has himself amputated because she doesn't want to be touched. It's extreme and overly melodramatic, but wow, what a plot line. And the look on his face when he finds out she's married somebody else. And he had this done. It's like, oh God.

SPEAKER_03 1:50:54

It's in the big movies like anybody else ever did. It's absolutely insane. And and uh and I'll probably I'll probably think I probably gotta say uh jo uh like Joan Crawford in that movie just uh next next level sizzling hot in that movie by the um just love little joan crawford in that movie. Um but uh and and definitely yeah Lon Cheney. Um the one thing about Lon Cheney uh Jr. is I wonder how many people went to the movies uh and saw Lon Cheney Jr. thinking they were seeing Lon Cheney because he often was on movie posters just listed as Lon Cheney. And in the 40s, there were probably a handful of people who had no idea Lon Cheney actually died, and it was just oh, oh, Lon Cheney. I remember seeing the him in movies before, you know, and you know, and uh you know yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:52:01

And then I'll tell you something funny about Lon Cheney Jr. He hated that. He did not want to change his name, but the studio talked him into it. He was Creighton Cheney. And and uh the very fact that uh that he had to change his name, and they did that that was kind of a silly scene at the end of the film when James Cagney asks him to bring or or motions him to bring his makeup box and he writes Junior on the uh Yeah, that felt fake.

SPEAKER_03 1:52:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:52:26

Yeah, that was hokey.

SPEAKER_03 1:52:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:52:29

James Cagney wrote in his autobiography that he thought the story of of Ron Chaney was better than what was in the movie. And he cited a specific example, and I think this is interesting. The uh the character Dorothy Malone played was named Cleva Craight.

SPEAKER_01 1:52:47

Right?

SPEAKER_02 1:52:48

Okay. Now, Ron Chaney Jr. set out to find his mother. And he did, but not in the way it's shown in the movie. He goes to an address he was given by a f by somebody, I don't know, and he knocks on the door, and the a maid answers the door. And Ron Chaney Jr. says, I'd like to speak to Kleva Creighton. Is she here? And the the woman who answers the door was a maid and said, I'm sorry, you have the wrong address. There's no Kleva Creighton here. And the voice from the back of the house shouts out, Khleva, who is it? Cagney thought that should have been in the movie.

SPEAKER_03 1:53:30

Yeah. It's weird how how these people uh talking about producers, um, how they decide, oh, you know, uh no, that doesn't need to be in, or hey, let's throw that in. I it's you know, eighty years later, or not quite eighty years later, but seven years later, we're we're looking at it like what's you know, what why were they thinking? Yeah, yeah, in this case, you know, but it it's it's pretty it's pretty crazy. Um well the last one on your list um is uh is from my favorite director. Um yeah, and that is uh uh Billy Wilder. Um and uh the movie is uh called 123, uh which uh yeah, which is James Cagney doing something that he uh is just obviously had a knack for, you know, and and that and I and I and I think uh I wrote on my letterbox review um you know before Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein and before Dr. Strangelove, there was one, two, three. Because though you can see the you can see the mad cap humor, like airplane, you know, you can see these guys um taking from this project, um which uh is just uh a madcap movie and and it makes fun of everyone.

SPEAKER_02 1:55:09

And you know, the thing is that movie taught me more about not just the Cold War, yeah, American history and and and uh uh Russian history, the Cold War, socio geopolitical um things that I never learned in school.

SPEAKER_03 1:55:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:55:26

Seriously, I didn't know who Urika Garan was. I didn't know uh about Willie Brandt and or or or the Brandenburg Gate or any of the stuff that was in the news at the time all the time. Yeah. And I saw it, I saw it for the first time about uh maybe eight to ten years after it first came out, and I saw it on TV, and it was a real eye-opener. And Cagney is beyond bombastic. Oh, he's he's unleashed. Right, right. It's Cagney Unleashed. And what's great is, you know, and I've heard many people say this, that uh uh Jack Lemon in an interview, we became friends with him because of Mr. Roberts, Jack Lemon said that was the movie that made Cagney decide to retire. Yes, because it was just so hard to do it, you know, like this all the time. Hence the title one, two, three, boom, boom, boom.

SPEAKER_03 1:56:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:56:20

And there was a scene, and and Cagney had said the story himself that when they were just about to shoot that scene where he has all that dialogue, he has to do like a machine gun, just before they were going to shoot it, they closed the soundstage door. And if you've ever seen a soundstage, your giant door, it's just like a barn door. And and when they closed it, Cagney said, I saw the sliver of light. I saw the dying of the light as the door was closing. And he goes, I so badly wanted to be outside. I badly wanted to just go out and enjoy the sunshine, but no, I had to be here and I had to learn all these stupid lines and do it as fast as I could. And by the way, he also did that scene in several takes. He couldn't do it right away.

SPEAKER_03 1:57:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:57:06

That's what Billy Wilder wanted.

SPEAKER_03 1:57:07

And Billy, and Billy Wilder is he's he's not Stanley Kubrick, but he's not Clint Eastwood either. He was he was uh somebody that you know required multiple takes, and you know, and and I and I I um I I I think I I love that you mentioned Jack Lemon because it's kind of like um Jack Lemon lived to do this stuff. That's why Billy Wilder loved him so much. That's why he was in with Billy Wilder so often, you know, because you know, he was obsessed with where do I stand, you know, how do you want me to say my line? And he would do exactly what Billy Wilder wanted him to do.

SPEAKER_02 1:57:52

Whereas what's great about the relationship was yeah, Billy Wilder could give Jack Lemon a suggestion on something, and he would know exactly what to do. He wouldn't like there were several favorite examples in Sun Like at Hot, when he's telling Tony Curtis that he's engaged to Joey Brown, and he didn't know how to play the scene. Like, you know, he's dancing around, and he's engaged. And and and Jack Lemon goes, What am I supposed to do with my hands? And Billy wilded through a pair of Moroccans.

SPEAKER_03 1:58:22

There you go. You'll figure it out. He figured it out, and he did it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:58:26

That's what made the scene work.

SPEAKER_03 1:58:28

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_02 1:58:29

He did it in the apartment when he didn't know what to do with his hands in the scene where he's being dressed down by Fred McMurray. And he goes, I you know, Jack Lemon said, I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing in this scene. Am I holding my hand and look like a little schoolboy? What? And Billy Wilder said, do something with this. And he gave him some nasal spray. And he held on to it. And then when Fred McMurray says the line that lets him know he's stooping, Shirley McLean, he squeezes it out like about a foot and a half. It was brilliant. That's it. That's what makes them work together so well.

SPEAKER_03 1:59:04

By the way, my my my favorite moment in the apartment is is is when when uh they um when when uh uh Ray Walson calls and says, Hey, uh, can I use the apartment? I got a I I got a gal here. She looks just like Marilyn Monroe. And you know, and then you see a minute later Jack Lemon at his kitchen sink going, Marilyn Monroe, you know, which is just funny because he just says, Oh, Marilyn Monroe. Like a like it's that in you know, that uh that meta humor, you know, of hey, I just made a Billy Wilder movie with Marilyn Monroe, and um, you know, of course I love inside jokes and do you you know do you know Billy Wilder's quote about working with Marilyn, by the way? Um I know that thing that Tony Curtis said, which I thought was really he said uh my he said my um my accountant and my therapist said I no longer have to work with Marilyn. Yeah, and of course, this is just uh a couple years before she passed on, and and he felt really bad about it, and he was asked about it later and after she died, and then he he said, No, I you know, I was just messing around. She was a delight, you know. Like, you know, I know she wasn't.

SPEAKER_02 2:00:28

Tony Curtis also backpedaled what he said about it because he had to kiss her, and over and over and over and over and over again. Tony he was asked, What was that like? And Tony Curtis said it was like kissing Hitler. And yeah, not a nice thing to do. I've heard that too, yeah, that's right. Yeah. And then he backpedaled later on by saying, and Billy Wilder was the one who did it first. He goes, You've got to understand, he had to do like 30 takes of the same scene. And he goes, after a while, it probably was like kissing Hitler.

SPEAKER_03 2:00:57

It might have been.

SPEAKER_02 2:00:59

Tony Curtis said I was young and I was stupid and I shouldn't have said it. And it was just that simple. But going back to one, two, three and talk about inside jokes.

SPEAKER_03 2:01:10

Yeah, lots of them.

SPEAKER_02 2:01:11

Yeah. One of my favorites is when they're trying to, you know, teach horse bookhoffs how to be uh um um a consumer.

SPEAKER_03 2:01:20

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:01:20

For lack of a better way to say it, uh, a materialist. When he won't do what Cagney's asking him, Cagney picks up a slice of I mean, uh half a grapefruit, and he's like a I'm gonna, I honor.

unknown 2:01:32

It's great.

SPEAKER_02 2:01:33

One of my favorite. He does it again earlier on, but he says uh when he finds out that Pamela Tiffin is pregnant, you know, the girl he's supposed to be taking care of, and he he looks disheartened and he goes, Mother of mercy, is this the end of Rico? It's great.

SPEAKER_03 2:01:54

By the way, it is, but it's a great line. By the way, there uh there is another Joan Crawford connection to this because of course the movie centers around uh uh around um Cagney being in charge of the Coca-Cola Corporation. Uh and and uh that's right, yeah, oh my gosh, I forgot that. Yeah, she and her husband ran Coca-Cola. No, Pepsi. Pepsi. Yeah, yeah, and and and and so of course the last gag in the movie. Yes, yes, yeah, there's the last gag. And it's all because Joan Crawford made a phone call and said, Hey, what I hear that you're making this picture, and all you know, it's all about Coca-Cola. What's the deal here? I thought we were friends and that kind of thing. And so uh the uh I think I don't know if I don't know if Cagney arranged it or uh or or or what, but obviously it it got put in the film.

SPEAKER_02 2:02:50

Uh my guess is after Joan Crawford made that request for Billy Wilder, that was Billy Wilder's idea.

SPEAKER_03 2:02:56

Yeah, yeah. He knows a good punchline when he says, Oh, nobody knew a better punchline than Billy Wilder.

SPEAKER_02 2:03:02

You know, speaking speaking of Billy Wilder, I've been wanting to tell this story but never had the opportunity. Oh, go ahead. One of my favorite things about Billy Wilder was his actual off-screen sense of humor, which was almost as good as his on-screen sense of humor. And Billy Wilder apparently, and they made several movies together, and he was very because he was very good friends with Marlena Dietrich. Okay. Have you ever seen Starlight 17? Yeah. Okay. There is a scene in Sonic 17 where the character Wayne Erdman plays. I think the character's name is Hoff.

SPEAKER_01 2:03:37

It's an all-male cast, right?

unknown 2:03:39

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 2:03:40

Hoffee has a scene, Wayne Erdman has a scene where, and because of the camera angle, he's supposed to open the door to the barracks, and there was supposed to be um, what's his face? Schultz. Sergeant Schultz.

SPEAKER_03 2:03:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:03:55

As in Hogan's Heroes. And he opens the door. It's not Sergeant Schultz. It's Marlena Dietrich standing there completely naked. Totally naked. She would only do it for Billy Wilder, but she's naked. And Wayne Erdman has to react to what he sees. And he does. And that's why he did it, Billy Wilder, and she ran off, and Billy Wilder got the take he needed.

SPEAKER_03 2:04:19

That's awesome.

unknown 2:04:21

Isn't it?

SPEAKER_03 2:04:22

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 2:04:22

And by the way, I have to say this. You mentioned Joan Crawford twice, once in reference to Billy Wilder, once in reference to Lon Cheney. The only thing I can admire about Joan Crawford was the fact that she was a genius at reinventing herself on screen. Oh, she really five to ten years. Even though you can tell it's her, here's the thing. I can't stand her. I never could. Ever. And when I found out what a real bitch she was in real life, it didn't surprise me at all. I was like, of course. That just proves it. Anyway, I just wanted to say that for the rest.

SPEAKER_03 2:04:58

I don't you didn't need to hear that. No, you're okay. Um you're not alone. I I'm I'm not I'm not in that camp. As a matter of fact, I um I find myself often uh defending the one that gets attacked a lot, and and uh, you know, uh I I I found myself doing that constantly. I do it in sports sometimes, you know, I see somebody get maligned, and I'm like, hey, you know what, they're not so bad, and that kind of thing. Um I do that with some people too.

SPEAKER_02 2:05:30

Even though they are recently about Tom Cruise. People love to talk about Tom Cruise as if he's a pariah because he's so successful.

SPEAKER_03 2:05:36

Yeah, I happen to think he's a damn good actor.

SPEAKER_02 2:05:38

I just don't particularly care for the films he makes.

SPEAKER_03 2:05:40

He's been he's he has developed uh he developed into a really good actor, but I I uh and uh someone else that's reinvented himself. Yeah, I mean he um you know he was in all those uh he was in one set of movies in the eighties and nineties and then he just completely Yeah, yeah, all the Mission Impossibles, which of course that's just the wave of the times uh where we're I mean I I'm gonna sound like the old you know old old man wave, you know, punch or or shaking his fist at the clouds. Um but you know I'm kind of ready for um slower slower films to come back. Um I've been ready for a long time. I really enjoyed one bottle after another this previous year.

SPEAKER_02 2:06:28

So did I, but I gotta tell you something. I think that movie went way too long. It didn't have to be as long as it was.

SPEAKER_03 2:06:32

Yeah, I I get that.

SPEAKER_02 2:06:34

I I um think it a lot, but once Sean Penn got in that car accident, that was the end of the movie.

SPEAKER_03 2:06:40

Why didn't it go on for another half an hour? It was ridiculous. Yeah, I get what you're saying there. Um yeah, and I get what you're saying about Joan Crawford too, but I'm a Joan apologist. I I just I I I I I just am I I love I love yes, exactly. Somebody has to hold the the the Joan Crawford flag, but you are you're probably in the vast majority. Um, you know, I think a lot of people I don't pride myself on that.

SPEAKER_02 2:07:09

I don't like being the majority of anything.

SPEAKER_03 2:07:11

No, no, it something tells me that I I totally believe that statement, actually. Um I I actually love the way you bring takes uh to uh to to things um um I want to ask you one other question uh before we wrap this up and land the plane, as they say. Um who what I think I know the answer to your question based on some things you already said, but what actress uh do you think Cagney had the best chemistry with?

SPEAKER_00 2:07:46

That's a really good question.

SPEAKER_02 2:07:49

Um I think you think I know what I'm gonna say, but I don't even know what I'm gonna say.

SPEAKER_03 2:07:55

Maybe you don't, maybe I don't.

SPEAKER_02 2:07:57

I I know he loved working with Ann Sheridan, he loved Olivia De Havilland. Um my guess would probably be Ann Sheridan.

SPEAKER_01 2:08:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:08:07

But that's just a guess. And they and they had such great chemistry together. Did you ever see a movie he did called Torrid Zone?

SPEAKER_03 2:08:14

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:08:14

Yeah, Ann Sheridan and Pat O'Brien, James Kagan, Howard Hawkes, very Howard Hawks movie.

SPEAKER_03 2:08:20

I love Harold Hawkes so much.

SPEAKER_02 2:08:22

Yeah, Howard Hawks had a tendency to do a similar film for a long, long, long, long time. He would take a male dominated existence, society, experience, whatever you want to call it, and drop a woman in it.

SPEAKER_03 2:08:36

Yeah, he's really good at it.

SPEAKER_02 2:08:38

Yeah, he did it in Only Angels Have Wings. He did it in uh um was a voting McCall movie. Oh, uh To Have and Have Not.

SPEAKER_03 2:08:46

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:08:47

Um he was great at it. It was it was a formula that worked terrific for him. He did it in Rio Bravo.

SPEAKER_03 2:08:52

Yeah, Rio Bravo is the probably the best example. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:08:56

Yeah, right?

SPEAKER_03 2:08:56

Angie, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:08:58

And and he did it in uh uh Tour Zone. And I love what Jim Jimmy Cagn called the movie. He didn't particularly like the movie, and it was one of those things where they just were grinding out movies all the time. He called it because of the plot, he called it uh Guilty Johnson among the bananas. And I can see him saying it like that because it was the same plot as the front page. Yeah, Guilty Johnson and Walter Burns. Uh Walter Burns is the Gilden Johnson is the uh um the writer, and he wants to quit, and then he gets suckered back in because Earl Williams has escaped. It's the same plot as the front page. And but it's a fun movie, and yeah, towards and Cagries greeted it. And so was Anne Sheridan. Once again, playing a woman drops into a man's world.

SPEAKER_03 2:09:50

This dropped in it, yeah. That I never really thought about that, but yeah, now I think about Howard Hawkes. Yeah, I mean yes, absolutely. Absolutely. He's just he he does he did have a knack for that. And and and they're not empty characters. You know, a lot of times uh directors will put a pretty face in a movie, but that's not the same as what we're talking about with Howard Hockes, where they have they're and I'll go I'll go one step further.

SPEAKER_02 2:10:18

One of his most famous films, um Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, people who are scholars of Howard Hawks, people I know who are very good they're dilatons. They try to escape it away by saying, Oh, that's just uh what you call it, that's just him trying to stretch himself. It wasn't really a Howard Hawks kind of thing. Oh, yes, it was. Merrill Monroe and Jane Russell are in a Hope and Crosby movement, you know. They just reversed it. Very good. You know, they put these outsiders into you know this scenario because that's what Jane Russell and Meryl Monroe are. They're like Hope and Crosby. You know? But but you know, they're Merrill Monroe and Jane Russell, which is very different than Hope and Crosby. But that's the intent.

SPEAKER_03 2:11:05

Yeah, I don't know why I'm going on. I'd rather I'd rather look at Marilyn and Jane myself, but you know. Hello. Who wouldn't?

SPEAKER_02 2:11:16

They both look gorgeous in that movie.

SPEAKER_03 2:11:18

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Especially Jim Russell. Yeah, uh I agree. I agree, actually. I I did an episode on that uh a few years ago. Matter of fact, uh uh did did a full episode.

SPEAKER_02 2:11:32

She does that song on one number. Is there anyone here for love?

SPEAKER_03 2:11:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:11:36

She's dancing around all these guys in their underwear, and and oh god, it's hysterical. And she's bouncing around when she's dancing, and you know, uh Dan Russell, she can bounce boy. Yeah. And then she falls into the pool. That was an accident, by the way. That wasn't supposed to happen. But it made the scene.

SPEAKER_03 2:11:52

It made the scene, yeah. I didn't know that that was an accident, but yeah, it did make the scene. Um well uh going back to Cagney. Anything else you want to say about uh and and put a nice little bow on on the our our fun James Cagney episode?

SPEAKER_02 2:12:09

Yeah, I want to apologize to my girlfriend for staying online so long. Uh I don't know if she heard that or not, but anyway. And more importantly, anytime there's a cagney movie, it doesn't matter what even the crappy films they made him do in the 30s, that he grind it out, watch it. He's always watchable. And of the ten films, of the ten films, where we talked about a lot more that weren't even Cagney films, but of those ten films, definitely watch those. Virginia Mayo even said about him that Cagne was so good in White Heat, people forget how good he was. That he deserved an Oscar nomination, but they didn't give Oscar nomination for gangster films in those days. They just didn't. And yet, you know, Virginia Mayo said he was just that good. She also said, too, that he was so good, he surprised her on occasion. That scene when she's trying to leave and you know, sneaking into the garage, and Caggy just shows up and puts his arm around her from the back and around her neck, and he goes, Happy to see me. And and you know, he basically escaped from prison. The Junior Mano said, he freaked me out so much. I didn't know he was gonna make his entrance like that at that point. I thought he was gonna be you know told when to come in. He came in before. Fantastic. He was yeah, and scared the hell out of her. And she said, I couldn't get my lines up fast enough. I you know, I had lines. She said, Oh, of course, sweetie. I'm I'm I'm glad to see you. And she stammered and studied and made the scene work because he threw her up. And she goes, Cagney, oh, oh, oh, real quick, my other paperbook story.

SPEAKER_01 2:13:58

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_02 2:13:59

When Cagney's mother goes to the store to get strawberries, and he's upset. He's pacing back and forth in their apartment, and he's like, What you have to go get? What you have to go out now for? You know, what you have to get strawberries for? And Virginia Mayo, who's standing on a stool, modeling her new mean coat, going, goes, You like strawberries, don't you? Well, she had to go get some for her little boy. Well, the way that scene played out was Cagney's idea. Cagney asked her, he said, Listen, if I kicked the chair out from under you, would you fall on the couch and be okay? And Virginia Mayo said, Yeah, yeah, it's easy, I can do that. And that's exactly what he did. He kicked the stool out from under her, and Virginia Mayo fell on the couch. And it was all Cagney's idea. That's the thing about him. He was so freaking inventive. He had a phrase for it. He said, in a given movie, to keep anything from being dull or tiresome, you sprinkle the goodies along the way. I uh I love that.

SPEAKER_03 2:15:03

That's a great way to see it. That's a great way to look at it, yeah.

unknown 2:15:06

Yep.

SPEAKER_03 2:15:06

Sprinkle the goodies.

SPEAKER_02 2:15:08

That's what Cagne does. He sprinkles the goodies along the way. And I think that's a good uh bow to tie across this great little time we have.

SPEAKER_03 2:15:18

All right. So you want to thank Dwayne Epstein for coming in and bringing it hard. Uh we're bringing it bringing it really hard, talking about James Cagney, his favorite actor, and uh what a performer James Cagney was.