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| Title: LADY KILLER Year: 1933 Cast: James Cagney, Margaret Lindsay, Mae Clarke Rating: **** |
James
Cagney plays a shifty usher at a movie theater, so his character’s
already geared towards the lights, camera and especially action (and distraction from the very start. But
he’s quickly derailed, conned by PUBLIC ENEMY siren Mae Clarke into a rigged card
game involving Douglass Dumbrille and his gang of crooks...
But Cagney's Dan Quigley, after catching on, instead of getting angry, or even, or both, he joins and
eventually leads the group into nightclub ownership and then a bigger heist that lands them in real
dough, and real trouble...
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| James Cagney with Margaret Lindsay in LADY KILLER |
After his fair-weather friends/partners-in-crime betray him,
Cagney hides out in Los Angeles and soon becomes an extra on a movie
lot, and here's where the involving ridiculousness begins: seeing Cagney riding a
horse in Indian get-up, with fake scenery moving behind him, is such a
kitschy
highlight you'll forget he's bonafide criminal on the run...
Then, as our confident hero falls for famous (and humble)
movie-star Margaret Lindsay as Lois Underwood, and soon (through con-games) becomes a top-billed movie star on his own, his once
unlucky life begins to pan out but, like bad pennies or film noir hoods, those double-crossing wise guys
return for piece of his action...
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| Mae Clarke plays the bad girl in LADY KILLER |
Overall fun and busy distraction from other early Cagney
crime flicks, and you have to continuously suspend disbelief to
really enjoy it: especially scenes showing the fictional movies... Or one
silly segment as he provides Lindsay with monkeys and a painted
elephant on her birthday...
But as a confident, wise-cracking con artist beneath the
polished veneer, it’s all about enjoying Cagney, even in this contrived mashup of his future genres/devices including comedy, crime and Hollywood Satire because no matter what the part, he always takes the part seriously.
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| James Cagney in LADY KILLER |
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| James Cagney in LADY KILLER |
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James Cagney in LADY KILLER with Mae Clarke
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| James Cagney in LADY KILLER |
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| Mae Clarke plays the bad girl in LADY KILLER |
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| Mae Clarke and James Cagney returning from Public Enemy for LADY KILLER |
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