The character: Rocky Sullivan The actor: James Cagney The movie: Angels with Dirty Faces (1938) In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus differentiates between the reward that a person receives for doing good publicly versus doing good privately. Let not your left hand know what your right hand is doing, he tells us. It is… Read More Better than AFI’s Heroes and Villains: Hero #37
To see my running list of the hundred greatest movie stars in American film history, click here All stars are listed with a single film which is particularly important, though not exclusively so, to understanding what makes them vital to American movies. 30) Al Pacino / Key film – Scarface In a world before the Vietnam… Read More Better than AFI’s 100 Years…100 Stars: 26-30
Dir. Raoul Walsh. Starring James Cagney, Priscilla Lane, Gladys George The ingredients of The Roaring Twenties are almost comically simple, and the story is a little easy at times as well. In the midst of a firefight in the later days of the First World War, George Hally (Humphrey Bogart) is minding his business in a shell… Read More The Roaring Twenties (1939)
Dir. Michael Curtiz. Starring James Cagney, Joan Leslie, Walter Huston Perhaps some foolish moron will endeavor to create a little canon of “the most Hollywood movies” of all time. (I hear some of you saying that the AFI lists are such a canon already, and that said moron need not exert much effort on his… Read More Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942)
Dir. John Ford and Mervyn LeRoy. Starring Henry Fonda, William Powell, Jack Lemmon Roberts (Fonda) has just traded his chance to get into the war and away from the dyspeptic tyranny of his commanding officer, Morton (James Cagney). Roberts, a onetime medical student who volunteered for the war instead of finishing his degree, is an… Read More Mister Roberts (1955)
Seeing Things Secondhand 