In his last real decade of movie making (1951 - 1961) Jimmy Cagney was luckier than some of his fellow "golden age" movie star rivals. Edward G. Robinson was blacklisted, but managed to get some interesting character parts. Paul Muni's health began to decline, he made less and less films, and found more rewarding work on stage as Henry Drummond in INHERIT THE WIND. George Raft's days of stardom faded out in the late 1940s, and he became more and more a caricature of himself in films including SOME LIKE IT HOT. Humphrey Bogart was a superstar but finding more and more work as a supporting character actor in films like THE BAREFOOT CONTESSA, and then died of cancer. Fredric March tended to find good work, but like Bogart in character roles. Errol Flynn, with one or two exceptions, got into more and more third rate films as the decade continued (until he died). Robert Montgomery shrewdly entered producing, and also television work. William Powell (after MR. ROBERTS - co-starring with Cagney, by the way - in 1956) retired. Only Spencer Tracy, Clark Gable, Tyrone Power, Robert Taylor, Henry Fonda, and Jimmy Stewart managed to maintain their leading man positions as stars (and Power died towards the end of the decade too).
But Cagney managed to break more from his traditional roles in the 1950s than the others. While occasionally playing gangsters (most notably as Marty Snyder in LOVE ME OR LEAVE ME - but a gangster in a distinctly different light as he is in a crazy love triangle) he was willing to branch out to comic villainy (MR. ROBERTS), southern demagoguery (A LION IS IN THE STREETS), Irish revolutionary stories (SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL), and even returns to biography (MAN OF A THOUSAND FACES, and his reprise as George M. Cohan in SEVEN LITTLE FOYS). In 1956, the year of MR. ROBERTS, Cagney made a relatively small style film called THESE WILDER YEARS. His performance is quite good, as is his co-stars Barbara Stanwyck and Walter Pidgeon (his sole movie with both those performers), but the film really lacks the explosiveness of YANKEE DOODLE DANDY or PUBLIC ENEMY or WHITE HEAT or 13 RUE MADELEINE. It's sedate style resembles THE TIME OF YOUR LIFE more - Cagney pushing his subtlety rather than his feisty personality. Yet now and then that personality comes through.
Here he plays a wealthy industrialist named Steve Bradford, who has returned to the town he left twenty years before. He left under a personal cloud that he has never quite gotten rid of - while determined to build his fortune, he left a young woman with a baby son. Bradford is aware that the baby was given up for adoption, and now he wants to find his son and presumably make amends.
The adoption agency is run by Barbara Stanwyck (here named Ann Dempster). She follows what is (or was) the usual policy of adoption agencies at that time and for some time after: they did not reveal the fate of the children because they had been brought up by other "parents". It would be needlessly cruel in most cases. But Cagney is determined. After all, he now is rich and respectable and can do much for the boy.
The determination of both Cagney and Stanwyck is equally balanced here. Cagney brings in his firm's attorney Pidgeon (here James Rayburn), but Pidgeon is not in this state's bar. So a local lawyer (Edward Andrews) is hired - and Cagney gives the go-ahead to find any dirt necessary to win or pressure Stanwyck into giving up.
But at the same time Cagney becomes aware of the problems of giving up children watching the plight of a young girl named Suzie (Betty Lou Keim) who has no family and is expecting. She hates giving up her baby but she has the same economic problems that Cagney's girlfriend of twenty years before had. Cagney humanizes quite a bit watching Keim's problem develop. And he also humanizes in seeing what Stanwyck's agency tries to do.
He does eventually meet his son Mark (Don Dubbins), but on Mark's terms. And the meeting is bittersweet and enlightening for both men as they face each other.
I don't think Cagney ever played such a domestic drama in any other film. It has been called (elsewhere on this thread) a soap opera. Not quite - it is a short film and moves quickly, and not like an interminable plot as your typical soap opera has. This film is a good one, and (with it's Christmas atmosphere) has a holiday spirit that for once works well. It may not be as big a film as WHITE HEAT or YANKEE DOODLE DANDY, but it is not a film to dismiss either.
But Cagney managed to break more from his traditional roles in the 1950s than the others. While occasionally playing gangsters (most notably as Marty Snyder in LOVE ME OR LEAVE ME - but a gangster in a distinctly different light as he is in a crazy love triangle) he was willing to branch out to comic villainy (MR. ROBERTS), southern demagoguery (A LION IS IN THE STREETS), Irish revolutionary stories (SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL), and even returns to biography (MAN OF A THOUSAND FACES, and his reprise as George M. Cohan in SEVEN LITTLE FOYS). In 1956, the year of MR. ROBERTS, Cagney made a relatively small style film called THESE WILDER YEARS. His performance is quite good, as is his co-stars Barbara Stanwyck and Walter Pidgeon (his sole movie with both those performers), but the film really lacks the explosiveness of YANKEE DOODLE DANDY or PUBLIC ENEMY or WHITE HEAT or 13 RUE MADELEINE. It's sedate style resembles THE TIME OF YOUR LIFE more - Cagney pushing his subtlety rather than his feisty personality. Yet now and then that personality comes through.
Here he plays a wealthy industrialist named Steve Bradford, who has returned to the town he left twenty years before. He left under a personal cloud that he has never quite gotten rid of - while determined to build his fortune, he left a young woman with a baby son. Bradford is aware that the baby was given up for adoption, and now he wants to find his son and presumably make amends.
The adoption agency is run by Barbara Stanwyck (here named Ann Dempster). She follows what is (or was) the usual policy of adoption agencies at that time and for some time after: they did not reveal the fate of the children because they had been brought up by other "parents". It would be needlessly cruel in most cases. But Cagney is determined. After all, he now is rich and respectable and can do much for the boy.
The determination of both Cagney and Stanwyck is equally balanced here. Cagney brings in his firm's attorney Pidgeon (here James Rayburn), but Pidgeon is not in this state's bar. So a local lawyer (Edward Andrews) is hired - and Cagney gives the go-ahead to find any dirt necessary to win or pressure Stanwyck into giving up.
But at the same time Cagney becomes aware of the problems of giving up children watching the plight of a young girl named Suzie (Betty Lou Keim) who has no family and is expecting. She hates giving up her baby but she has the same economic problems that Cagney's girlfriend of twenty years before had. Cagney humanizes quite a bit watching Keim's problem develop. And he also humanizes in seeing what Stanwyck's agency tries to do.
He does eventually meet his son Mark (Don Dubbins), but on Mark's terms. And the meeting is bittersweet and enlightening for both men as they face each other.
I don't think Cagney ever played such a domestic drama in any other film. It has been called (elsewhere on this thread) a soap opera. Not quite - it is a short film and moves quickly, and not like an interminable plot as your typical soap opera has. This film is a good one, and (with it's Christmas atmosphere) has a holiday spirit that for once works well. It may not be as big a film as WHITE HEAT or YANKEE DOODLE DANDY, but it is not a film to dismiss either.