Johnny Come Lately

Grace George is hocking the silver candlesticks to keep her paper running. It's thirty years, and the local machine boss, Edward McNamara, has laid down the law: stop publishing those less-than-admiring editorials, print these puff pieces over her signature, and he won't have her mortgage called in. At court that morning, she watches as Jimmy Cagney is hauled in for vagrancy, pleads Not Guilty, and takes him on as a reporter. He announces that the paper is going to continue to go after McNamara, and here's how.

What I enjoyed about this movie was the wealth of supporting eccentrics. Oh, some of them are clearly intended to be remembered purely for those eccentricities. It's a writer's trick: the guy with the mouse; the guy who sings ballads; the guy who puts ketchup on everything; the guy who's a tramp who recites poetry; the tramp who talks about the hot cakes. They're there, they're briefly memorable because they do something other people don't. Maybe they'll figure in the story, maybe they won't. However, the reviewer will notice them and admire the performance.

Yet for that brief moment, each stands at the center of the film, and Cagney stands aside and watches them, amused and pleased. For that brief moment, this film celebrates each of them. Released in 1943, it looks like an odd and eccentric piece for an audience in the middle of the greatest war of the 20th Century. It isn't. It's Why We Fight: so a guy can put ketchup on everything, even in his coffee. Yuck.

This is a film that all not a classic certainly deserves to be better known than it is. I had certainly never heard of the film when I found it on very late at night on the BBC the other day (we really do take for granted the treats the BBC sometimes serve up late at night) but was pleasantly surprised by what I found here. A James Cagney film where as usual he dominates every scene he is in but here it is a bit more under stated than normal. Here Cagney plays Tom Richards a vagrant who stumbles across a small town that is being crippled by corruption. Richards finds a friend in the proprietor of the local paper and few moral people left in town Miss Grace George. Slowly Richards back story is hinted at, which brings depth and meaning to his character. Cagney is so good here you wish to see another film showing how his character got to the point where we are introduced to him in the movie. As Cagney powers through the movie we see him work his magic on the towns folk all leading to an inevitable yet subtle and enjoyable ending. Whilst I would not look to purchase this movie. I would certainly watch it again the next time I find it on television.

This curious film is one of the James Cagney films I like the best. For a Cagney film it's slow. I think Cagney was nostalgic for the period in time when he was growing up and Johnny Come Lately captures that slower pace of life people enjoyed before World War I.

Cagney plays Tom Richards who was a newspaperman before the life of the open road suddenly appealed to him. We first meet him, seedy and unshaven, sitting on a bench in the town square reading the Pickwick Papers. The town is in the grip of Boss Daugherty played by Edward McNamara. Daugherty has whittled whatever opposition he faced down to Vinnie McLeod who is a widow and owns a badly in debt town newspaper. Daugherty got the mortgage and he's about to close in the best tradition of 19th century villainy. Vinnie meets Richards and brings him to her home. One of her charitable traditions is to give passing hobos a decent meal and Cagney gets one and in turn learns about the town politics. By the end of the film all's right and Cagney moves on, having changed a whole number of lives in the process.

Vinnie McLeod is played by Grace George, a prominent stage actress who makes her one and only movie here. She's very good and other supporting players who acquit themselves well are Hattie McDaniel, Marjorie Lord, Robert Barrat and most of all Marjorie Main playing Gashouse Mary.

This film was obviously a labor of love for James Cagney and it shows.

This is a movie that not everyone will love or even like. One must remember it's a sentimental look at the turn of the century, 1906 the movie states, by filmmakers in 1943. So this is a review about a quaint film made 73 years ago, which was looking back nostalgically 37 years. Not to belabor the point, but it would like a movie today (2016) reliving a time 37 years ago, which would be 1979 and being reviewed 73 years from now in 2089. So you can see that when you consider this film in that way, all bets and our judgment are probably a little off. In that light I feel the flick holds up very well. Sure many of the movie's main stars are very one dimensional. Only Cagney and Edward McNamara made me feel that there was much depth to their characters. Many movie watchers of today will find it a little slow and without a lot of action. Some will say it's way too saccharine. The production values aren't the best and late in the movie, the transitions between scenes appears a bit jerky.

Remarkably, somehow this movie works. Through all it's faults it shines like a diamond in the rough. You feel the quaintness of 1906, whether it was like that or not, you FEEL it was. I really felt I was looking through a window to the past. In this movie you really like James Cagney. He is not the champion of the beautiful young girl, but of the aged older lady who is paying the price to fight the good fight. He does it with dash and style. "Johnny Come Lately" made me smile a lot and even cry a little for the good ole days, theirs and mine. In the end what more do you want from 73 year old movie?

This offbeat drama from United Artists and director William K. Howard has elderly Vinnie McLeod (Grace George) running a struggling newspaper in a small town circa 1906. She has a soft spot for the vagrants who pass through, often feeding them and cleaning them up. Currently she's locked in journalistic battle with local big shot W. M. Dougherty (Edward McNamara), a crook with his fingerprints all over various town scandals. McLeod gains an unlikely ally when another passing bum, Tom Richards (James Cagney), turns out to be a talented reporter. She hires him onto the paper, and Tom sets out to bring down Dougherty once and for all. Also featuring Marjorie Main, Marjorie Lord, Hattie McDaniel, William Henry, Margaret Hamilton, Robert Barrat, George Cleveland, Lucien Littlefield, Clarence Muse, Joseph Crehan, and Arthur Hunnicutt.

This was the first film produced by Cagney and his brother William Cagney for their independent company. It's an unusual mix of nostalgic smalltown whimsy and hard-hitting corruption expose, with bursts of surprising violence. 64-year-old Grace George, who gets an extended "Introducing" credit at the film's start, was a major theater star who had actually appeared in a silent film decades earlier. This would prove to be her only other screen credit. I enjoyed Marjorie Main as the scandalous operator of the local gambling establishment (it's implied that it's a brothel, but this being the production code years...), and Arthur Hunnicutt in an early role as one of the passing hobos. The movie earned an Oscar nomination for Best Score (Leigh Harline).