Sinners' Holiday

Middling Pre-Coder that's notable for being the film debuts of James Cagney and Joan Blondell (with her natural hair color, no less). The plot's about a family that runs a waterfront penny arcade and the trouble the youngest son (Cagney) gets into, including bootlegging and killing a guy. One for Cagney fans to check off their list but it's really not that great. The characters are all pretty unlikable and Jimmy shows little of that trademark charm & swagger in the role of a sniveling punk. Public Enemy would play to his strengths much better and, of course, make him a star. Lucille La Verne plays Cagney's mom and she hams it up in every scene. Grant Withers is pretty good as the ne'er-do-well turned good by the love of a woman. That woman being lovely Evalyn Knapp. She was my favorite part of the whole picture. The scene with her and Withers under the pier is probably the film's highlight. It's an early talkie so it creaks and groans but at least it doesn't seem like a filmed stage play, so points for that. Still, after it's over, you won't be in any hurry to tell your friends about it.

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.

This is a must-see film which captures a specific time and place: the prohibition-era Atlantic City Boardwalk scene.

This movie was released in 1930 at the height of prohibition and the beginning of The Great Depression.

It is the first film teaming of Cagney and Blondell, lifelong friends.

They acted these roles in the theater before the rights were purchased by Al Jolson to sell the script to Warner Brothers.

The scenes showed would have been absolutely scandalous five years later when the code went into effect.

The acting is great from the top down.

Cagney is at his most raw and gripping.

Great story which truly depicts the period and place with a reality-based tone that is hard to find in pictures anymore.

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.

This busy little film that was originally entitled "Penny Arcade" was retitled "Sinners Holiday" for no other reason than the fact that there were several films put out in 1930 with "Holiday" in the title that were successful. This film may have its fair share of sinners, but nobody is really on holiday in this fast-talking fast-paced little piece of Vitaphone history.

James Cagney starts out his career with Warner Brothers pretty much where he ended it - crying on his mother's lap just as he did in "White Heat" - the lap of a mother that will do anything to keep her baby out of trouble. Cagney plays Harry Delano, a tough guy who thinks he's tougher and smarter than he really is. His family runs the Penny Arcade in the amusement park. Evelyn Knapp plays his sister, Jennie. Jennie is in love with amusement park smart guy Angel Harrigan (Grant Withers), an ex-con and handyman at the arcade who has the misfortune of being at the wrong place at the wrong time when Ma Delano needs a fall guy to save her son Harry. It also doesn't help any that Ma Delano doesn't approve of Jennie's plans to marry Angel.

James Cagney gets more screen time in his first film than he does in any film until he gets his big break in Public Enemy. There is also a pretty good role for Joan Blondell in her first screen appearance as Myrtle, some-time girlfriend of Harry - also someone Ma Delano doesn't approve of. Who exactly did Ma Delano think her kids were going to wind up with while working in the amusement park? Wall Street types?

How did Cagney and Blondell end up together in this film, you might ask? Al Jolson bought the film rights to the Broadway production of "Penny Arcade" and would only sell it to Warner Brothers if Cagney and Blondell reprised their roles. Why he did this nobody knows, since Al Jolson was hardly known as a benefactor. However, in doing this he saved Warner Brothers a second time. The first time was in putting the studio on top in talking pictures, this second time he gift wrapped two actors that were perfect for the urban look and feel that the studio had been going for but had been having a rough time succeeding in getting right with the actors they were employing.

In summary, this film is full of the interesting minor characters, urban slang, and fast talking that make the early talking Warner Brothers films so much fun.