Gary Dennis’ New York City Movie Place

Raoul Walsh and Michael Curtiz set the look for Warner Brothers during it’s glory days more so than any other director who worked there. They gave a studio it’s style and in my opinion had more of an impact on a studio than any other director at any other studio. Their names are synonymous with a 2 decade run of great films from Warner Brothers. They made the Brothers Warner happy by staying on budget, coming in on time and usually never caused a problem. These were guys who pleased every one.

New York City born Raoul Walsh had a directing career than spanned almost 50 years. He had started as an actor but when he lost an eye in a car crash (with a jack rabbit yet) he focused on directing. He apprenticed under the best directors of the silent era including D.W. Griffith. He was the assistant director on Birth of a Nation and also did double duty by playing John Wilkes Booth for the� Lincoln assassination scene. He cast John Wayne in his first big picture (Big Trail – 1930). He was one of those responsible for the stardom of Errol Flynn and (to me more importantly) Humphrey Bogart. In one 4 year period he directed 9 pictures: The Roaring Twenties (1939), Dark Command (1940), They Drive by Night (1940), High Sierra (1941), The Strawberry Blonde (1941), Manpower (1941), They Died with Their Boots On (1941), Desperate Journey (1942), and Gentleman Jim (1942). He was adept at comedy as well as the gritty urban drams that Warner Brothers had become famous for. He also directed the pivotal Humphrey Bogart picture High Sierra which proved that Mr. Bogart could carry a picture. Some people have been critical of his slam bang style of directing but when was the last time a director directed 9 great pictures in 4 years? In an interview years ago Robert Mitchum told a story about Raoul Walsh’s directing style while they were making Pursued at Warner Brothers in 1947. “He would call action and then walk away. When the scene was finished he’d yell ‘cut’. Then he asked me how it went and I’d say ok but a lamp fell over. ‘Did you pick it up’ and I said yes and he said ‘did it look natural’ and I said yes and then he yelled ‘print, next’”. To some it might not always looks natural but it always looked good.

White Heat is one of those pictures that always looked natural and not good but great. It has James Cagney playing the most dangerous and believable mother obsessed criminals he ever played. It contains one of the greatest one man riot in a prison mess hall scenes ever filmed. If the surprise expressed by Mr. Cagney’s fellow inmates during “the telephone game” scene in the prison mess hall appears real, it’s because it is. Mr. Walsh didn’t tell the rest of the cast what was about to happen, so Mr. Cagney’s outburst caught them by surprise. In fact, Mr. Walsh himself didn’t know what Mr. Cagney had planned. He just told Mr. Walsh to put the two biggest extras playing cons in the mess-hall next to him on the bench (he used their shoulders to boost himself onto the table) and to keep the cameras rolling no matter what.

This is an exciting picture from start to finish with great performances from every one in the picture and a great script to go with those performances. Cagney plays Cody Jarrett, a brilliant but ruthless criminal with a hair trigger temper. As I mentioned already Cody has serious ties to his mother’s apron strings. He also has a young wife (Virginia Mayo) and an arch rival in his gang Big Ed (Steve Cochran). About to be arrested for a viscious train robbery he turns himself in for a much lesser crime that although he did not commit will take the rap for. It is a perverted alibi or an alibi in reverse; I could not have commited that crime as I was busy commiting this one. Since law enforcement cannot prove that he did not do it he pleads guilty to the lesser crime. Law enforcement does not believe him and sends one of their own into the same prison, into the same cell as Cody as an undercover inmate to weed out the truth and thus put him behind bars in the big house for a long time. I saw this movie as a kid and it was a staple of the

Movie Place

viewing rotation.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 12th, 2007 at 2:16 am and is filed under Drama. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.