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.
