Sinners' Holiday

Depression Era audiences could identify with the ensemble cast of this Warner Brothers vehicle set in a crummy amusement park, where folks talk big and dream small. An artifact 95 years later, it has film debut roles for Cagney and Blondell (as a brunette) and some amusing dialogue.

Grant Withers and cute Evelyn Knapp are the nominal leads, the only true "good" folk amidst the low-lifes, criminals and crusty sideshow denizens. They're both pleasant performers, but the show belongs 100% to Knapp and Cagney's mum, played to the hilt by character actress Lucille LaVerne.

On a Coney Island arcade, a corpse turns up.

John Adolfi's movie version has not aged particularly well. Likewise. Many of the performances do not stand up to 90 decades. While Evalyn Knapp, Jimmy Cagney and Joan Blondell (Jimmy and Joan had taken the same roles in the Broadway production) are fine in their roles, the whole seems an uneasy morality play and the other actors give stagey line readings. Cagney and Blondell are still working their way through, but their staginess seems to fit the characters and Jimmy's nervous energy delivers a punch.

Gotta love these old pre-code black and white films; there is a great scene where if the fair-goer hits the target, the girl sitting on a swing lifts up her dress for a little "show". This straight-forward no-surprises murder story takes place during prohibition , in a penny arcade, which was also the name of the play on which it is based. It stars Cagney in his very first performance in 1930, brought in from the original play; Also in a big role is Joan Blondell, who had already made four films, but would go on to make eight more films with Cagney, as well as over 150 films on her own. The top bills are Grant Withers and Evalyn Knapp, and Lucille Laverne, who had all started in silents. Also love the plain-talking mother who has an opinion on everything and everybody. John Adolfi, the director, had started as an actor in 1907, and worked mostly in silent films. This was one of his last movies as director. Due to its age, the sound and picture quality is a little iffy, but enjoy it as a fun, plain, simple story.

It's the Coney Island boardwalk amusement park. Ma Delano runs a penny arcade and lives above it with her children Jennie, Joe, and Harry (James Cagney). Mitch McKane runs a bootleg operation under them and has his eye on Jennie but Angel Harrigan beats him to her by weeks and months. Harry gets involved with Mitch and one night, he shoots Mitch dead in a confrontation. He hides his crime as the police investigates. He confesses to Ma who tries to frame everything on Angel.

I don't think that I've ever seen Cagney play such a sniveling little punk, at least not to this extent. It's interesting and a little fun. He's not the lead in this one. It's really really early in his career. It's his first credited role. It's also fun to see the sleaziness of the amusement carnival laid out in this pre-Code talkie. There is something edgy while being innocent.

In 1929, James Cagney and Joan Blondell (neither of them well-known at the time) played supporting roles in a Broadway drama called "Penny Arcade". Warner Brothers bought the film rights and brought Cagney and Blondell to Hollywood to repeat their stage roles in the screen version, retitled "Sinner's Holiday". This was the first movie for both of them. (Blondell's second film, a quickie, was released before "Sinner's Holiday", a more prestigious picture.) The actual star of this film is Grant Withers, playing a gangster who's made a lot of enemies and needs a place to hide before he gets rubbed out. Withers is pretty good, and he deserves to be better known. Cagney's role is much smaller, but he's absolutely electrifying. As soon as he steps on screen, there's no question that he's the best actor in this movie ... one of the best actors in the history of films, in fact.

Joan Blondell is boring in this film, as usual. Her appeal has always eluded me. At least in her other films she usually had something to do; here, she doesn't. There are good performances by Lucille LaVerne and Warren Hymer, in his usual typecast role as a dim gangster. Hank Mann, who was one of the original Keystone Cops (and who eventually outlived all the other Keystone Cops), is excellent here in a small role.

"Sinner's Holiday" suffers from the usual Warner Brothers complaint: low budget-itis. I saw the trailer for this film before I saw the movie itself. The trailer features a shot of amusement park rides in a funfair. This is obviously stock footage, but at least I expected the stock shot to turn up in the movie itself. Surprisingly, it doesn't. There's almost nothing on screen to convince you that this movie takes place in an amusement park. It looks like a stage play recorded on film, rather than a movie in its own right. Still, "Sinner's Holiday" has much to recommend it, and Cagney's performance alone is worth your time. I'll rate this movie 6 out of 10 points, or 7 if you're a Cagney fan. If you're a Joan Blondell fan, I don't want to know about it.