Tag Archives: James Cagney

The Oklahoma Kid

Nicholas Chennault ~ March 23, 2015

The Oklahoma Kid—James Cagney, Humphrey Bogart, Rosemary Lane, Donald Crisp, Harvey Stephens, Hugh Sothern, Ward Bond (1937; Lloyd Bacon)

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The most obvious feature of this western from 1937 is that the two best-known actors in it have the most urban personas of any from the 20th century.  That’s perhaps one reason why James Cagney and Humphrey Bogart didn’t make many westerns.  They don’t sound all that authentic in a western, either.

The Oklahoma Kid:  “Listen, I learned this about human nature when I was but so high, and that is: that the strong take away from the weak, and the smart take it away from the strong.”

Cagney plays the outlaw of the title, the Oklahoma Kid.  It is 1893, the eve of the famous Oklahoma land rush into the Cherokee Strip (the largest land run in U.S. history).  There were several Oklahoma land rushes, the most famous in 1889 and 1893, featured in Tumbleweeds (1925, William S. Hart’s last film), Cimarron (both 1931 and 1960 versions) and Far and Away (1992), among other movies.  The land to be opened to settlers this time has been bought from the Indians for a pittance, but even that pittance is robbed from a stagecoach by the evil Whip McCord (Humphrey Bogart) and his gang.  However, it is also stolen from them by… the Oklahoma Kid.  McCord sees to it that the original crime is attributed to the Kid, instead of to his own gang.

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Wes Handley (Ward Bond) is inclined to take on the Oklahoma Kid (James Cagney) over his choice of music.

Meanwhile, law-abiding folk are planning to set up the town that will become Tulsa.  The Kincaids, father John (Hugh Sothern) and son Ned (Harvey Stephens), will ride their fastest horses and claim the site.  Judge Hardwick (Donald Crisp) and daughter Jane (Rosemary Lane) will come along shortly after, with law and civilization.  However, McCord and his men are Sooners, sneaking across to the land the night before the gun goes off, and they claim the Kincaid’s site first.  The Kincaids strike a deal:  they get the town site they want, but have to agree that McCord gets exclusive rights to saloons, booze and gambling.  That sets up a conflict between the forces of law (regular folks) and chaos (McCord).

When there’s talk of setting up a vigilance committee, McCord frames John Kincaid for a murder.  It turns out that the Oklahoma Kid is Jim Kincaid, John’s wild son, and he comes back to help the old man.  He brings back Judge Harwick to hear the case, but he’s too late, and a venal hack judge has sentenced John to hang.  John refuses to be busted out of jail, though, and, as Ned, now the local sheriff, pursues the Kid, McCord whips a mob into a fury.  By the time Ned and the Kid get back to town, their father is dead.

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Whip McCord (Humphrey Bogart) and the Kid (James Cagney) come to an impasse.

The Kid starts to hunt down the four of McCord’s men who led the mob:  Indian Joe, Wes Handley (Ward Bond), Curley and Ace Doolin.  The last is Doolin, whom he wounds, and Doolin testifies to McCord’s involvement.  Ned goes to arrest McCord, but McCord gets the drop on him and shoots him.  The Kid comes up the back way, and McCord looks like he will get him, too.  But the dying Ned shoots McCord, the Kid’s name is cleared of the original robbery charges, and he gets Jane Hardwick, who had previously been engaged to Ned.  (Ned was apparently unaware that guys named Ned never get the girl in movies.)

This had a bigger budget than most 1930s westerns, as we can tell from the top-flight stars and main-line director.  Cagney’s particular form of screen energy dominates the movie, making the Kid seem kind of a pre-gangster of the plains.  Cagney was a bigger star than Bogart at this stage of Bogart’s career.  Cagney and Bogart didn’t get along well on the set, much as their characters didn’t, although they went on to make Angels with Dirty Faces (1938) and The Roaring Twenties (1939) together—gangster movies, for which they seem much better suited.  Cagney made two more westerns in the 1950s as his career was coming to a close:  Run for Cover (1955), and Tribute to a Bad Man (1956).  Bogart made at least one more; he shows up as a Mexican bandit chieftain in Virginia City (1940).  This film is surprisingly watchable, considering the apparent unsuitability of the casting and the fact that it’s from an era when westerns were generally made very cheaply and had little cinematic prestige.  Director Lloyd Bacon was versatile (his work includes 42nd Street and other musicals with Busby Berkeley as choreographer and Knute Rockne, All American), but he didn’t make many westerns.  According to Cagney, Bacon wasn’t the director originally slated to direct.

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Cagney wasn’t entirely happy with the way the project turned out.  In his 1976 autobiography Cagney by Cagney, he described how the project started:  “The picture was an idea of [writer] Ted Paramore’s, who conceived of doing the story of the mountain men, particularly of their paragon, Kit Carson.  We researched it and I came up with some things I wanted to do, pretty exciting things, I thought.  Warner’s, without warning pulled Paramore off the script and without a word to me, changed directors.  When I got the final script it had as much to do with history as the Katzenjammer Kids.  It had become typical horse opera, just another programmer.”  Bogart, profiled in the New York Times just before the film’s release, seemed not all that wild about it.  “I speak the same lines and do the same things as I do in any other Warner picture.  The only difference is that I snarl at the Injuns from under a ten-gallon hat.”  Actually, Cagney’s hat is significantly larger than Bogart’s.  Bogart seemed preoccupied by the hats; he was famously quoted as saying that “Cagney looked like a mushroom under [his] huge western hat.”

Music is by Max Steiner; cinematography is by the legendary James Wong Howe.  Shot on the Iverson Ranch in Chatsworth, California.  In black and white, at 81 minutes.

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Tribute to a Bad Man

Nicholas Chennault ~ May 23, 2014

Tribute To A Bad Man—James Cagney, Irene Papas, Don Dubbins, Stephen McNally, Lee Van Cleef, Vic Morrow, Royal Dano (1956; Dir:  Robert Wise)

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King Lear-like ranching baron Jeremy Rodock (James Cagney) is under siege on his Wyoming territory ranching empire, by horse thieves, a former partner (James Bell) and his own recently-hired shifty foreman McNulty (Stephen McNally).  McNulty has designs on (and perhaps a history with) Rodock’s live-in Greek mistress Jocasta (Irene Pappas), a former dance hall girl from Cheyenne. 

Under attack and wounded by horse thieves on his own range, Rodock is rescued by a young easterner Steve Millar (Don Dubbins) and promptly gives him a job.  Rodock is obsessed with vengeance and his own brand of frontier justice, and young Miller becomes obsessed with Jocasta.  

TributeCagPapRodock and Jocasta.

On one encounter with the thieves when they try to kill him, Rodock’s men shoot the former partner and hang the leader of the thieves.  The partner’s son (Vic Morrow) takes up with Rodock’s crooked foreman and the rest of the thieves, but they, too, are caught.  Rodock foregoes his usual vengeance, though, and Jocasta comes back to him.  He doesn’t have Lear’s tragic end.  His empire isn’t destroyed, he gets the woman back, and his enemies (except the partner’s embittered son) are dealt with.  The young easterner goes off into the west. 

One assumes the “bad man” of the title refers to Cagney’s Rodock, but it doesn’t really fit him.  The original title was “Jeremy Rodock.”  He’s more misguided than bad, and he’s not entirely wrong.  Cagney’s eastern accent is a bit jarring, and the Greek Papas doesn’t particularly fit in a western.  Don Dubbins is not very interesting as Rodock’s young protege.  But it seems to work nevertheless.  Lee Van Cleef is here, not as a bad guy but just one of Rodock’s wranglers (named Fat Jones), as is Royal Dano (Abe).  A late Cagney film, this is the last of his three westerns (The Oklahoma Kid and Run for Cover are the other two). 

TributeCagRifleAttacked on the range.

Cagney was a great actor, but he was never as persuasive in a western as he was in a gangster film or even a musical.  This does not have a dazzling script.  It was a big budget movie filmed in Colorado in widescreen gorgeous color (by Robert Surtees), with a big-time director.  Robert Wise didn’t do many westerns, but he did this and Blood on the Moon (1948), a western noir which is better.  Music is by the Hungarian Miklos Rosza, who tended to do epics.

For Shakespearean overtones, compare it with Jubal, which came out the same year.  This was originally cast with Spencer Tracy and Grace Kelly, but Tracy had problems with director Robert Wise and Kelly married Rainier of Monaco. 

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