Word: cagneys
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Strawberry Blonde (James Cagney, Olivia de Havilland, Rita Hayworth; TIME, March...
...Strawberry Blonde" is a nice bit of escape back into the barber-shop days before the first World War, when men inhaled birch beer like coke and the biggest blood-suckers were only leeches. James Cagney in his usual punching self demonstrated that the world is his with two fists and a correspondence course in dentistry. He picked up an alluring nurse--Olivia de Haviland, in a swell park scene, but doesn't like her. Instead the cockney Irishman chases exciting Rita Hayworth, the strawberry blonde, and isn't fast enough to land her. But you knew he would marry...
...slow show saved by some top-rung acting. Oliva de Haviland proffers a pleasing new approach, abandoning Melanie's sweet-souled idealism for a rougher characterization. Alan Hale as a street-cleaner and wife-wolfer is huge and gives the customers a few hearty giggles. Cagney's successful plodding is beautifully contrasted against the strawberry blonde's hypocritical and disastrous social climbing...
Offered a job by the contractor, Cagney is made the stooge for the firm's corruption, goes to jail for five years. Out again he rejoins his wife, and when the contractor appears for emergency dentistry with his strawberry consort, Cagney plans to bump the villain off with dentist's gas. But on seeing the jaded pair, Cagney realizes that he has had very much the best of life. So he merely rips out the contractor's tooth-without...
Adapted by Hollywood's Brothers Epstein (Julius & Philip) from James Hagan's 1933 Broadway hit One Sunday Afternoon* directed by Raoul Walsh, Strawberry Blonde is a blithe, sentimental, turn-of-the-century buggy ride. Cagney makes the hero a tough but obviously peachy fellow. But the strawberry humdinger, Rita Hayworth, takes the picture away from him, and dark-eyed Olivia de Havilland, with her electric winks, each followed by a galvanizing "Exactly!" takes it away from both of them. The Warners' lot reports that the de Havilland winks shattered Cagney's control a dozen times during...