Lady Killer

When you think of James Cagney, you think of a gangster in films like The Public Enemy, where he smashed that grapefruit into Mae Clarke's face. But Cagney won his Oscar for Yankee Doodle Dandy. He also received nominations for Angels With Dirty Faces and Love Me or Leave Me.

Here he shows just how far his range extends in a romantic comedy which also includes Mae Clarke in a bigger role than you are probably accustomed to seeing her. There is a lot of action in this 76 minute film. Cagney is a theater usher who gets fired and ends up following Mae as she is trolling for suckers to get fleeced by her partners in a card game. He joins the group and they pull bigger more sophisticated cons until a trigger happy gang member kills a servant during a home robbery.

He and Mae head to Los Angeles, and when the LA police hold him for what happened in New York, Myra and one of the gang make off with Cagney's money. The LA police ultimately have to let him go, but penniless he gets increasingly shaggy and ragged looking. This causes him to get picked up for a series of bit parts by a local movie crew exactly because of his scruffy looks. One of the fascinating bits here is seeing how movies were made at the time. He hooks up with star Margaret Lindsay and uses his conning skills to make himself a star. (As an aside, Lindsey made 12 films that year, her second year as an actress.)

Soon, Mae and the gang find him and they want to pick up where they left off, using Cagney to get into posh places that they can rob. He tries to get them out of town, but they see dollars in LA and are going nowhere. How will this all work out? Watch and find out. And like I said, there's a lot of action for 76 minutes and Cagney really shows he can do romance, comedy, and gangster all in one film.