Rediscovering the Past: James Cagney: Not So Much Yankee, A Lot Doodle Dandy

Another oldie but goodie, this one originally appeared in November 13 of 2008 and marks another instance in which I irrationally dwell on some actor of yesteryear, focusing an unhealthy amount of energy on someone who hasn't been relevant in roughly fifty years. 

Not buying what he's selling.

I don't know if I could count the times I've engaged in a conversation with my friend Chad about how difficult it is to buy guys like Edward G. Robinson or James Cagney as tough guys.

Chad hates Edward G. Robinson. Loathes everything he stands for. Thinks EGR is a mama's boy. Begrudgingly allows for him to have been all right in Double Indemnity but won't go further than that. I pretty much agree with those sentiments. If you need to hate the man, here's a clip:

What the hell is with him here?

Where Chad hates every fiber of what was Edward G. Robinson's being, I fucking despise James Cagney. Now, I don't hate him as much as I hate Ray Milland. That's simply not possible, but I would like to re-animate James Cagney's corpse just so I could kick his zombie ass. In every movie he was in, he just oozes overacting dandy trying to come across as a tough guy. Moreover, look at the guy.

How did anyone think that little POS was tough?

It is possible that I should have prefaced this entry into the annals of retarded blog entries by stating that I have quite a few old school Hollywood figures that I hold an irrational hatred for--Rod Taylor, Tippi Hedren, the aforementioned Ray Milland--but the point still remains that these two "tough guys" are dandies through and through. The thing I don't get is how the Greatest Generation bought these little douchebags as tough. I honestly think anyone who came up during the Great Depression could kick just about anyone's ass nowadays. They were tougher times, and it was probably a lot more common in regular society to have to get into a scrape here and there. Hell, most of these guys would have been ashamed if they couldn't go off to war. None of us pussies want to go off to war. But these tough old motherfuckers--these tough Robert Mitchum-like dudes--bought James Cagney as a tough guy.

What the fuck?

Reading Rainbow: Double Indemnity by James M. Cain

After aborting a month-long effort to get into For Whom The Bell Tolls, I decided that it was not worth it anymore and dove right into another of the many books sitting on my shelves unread.

This one was James M. Cain's masterpiece, Double Indemnity. I am sure most, if not all, of you faithful readers have seen the Billy Wilder directed adaptation of the film. If you haven't, do so. Now. Seeing 'cool' Fred MacMurray--and he pulls it off completely--is kind of mind-blowing.

The problem with attempting to read the source material for an iconic film--after all, the film version is largely credited as being the progenitor of the film noir genre--is that you probably already know where the book is going.

If that concern were applicable to this piece of literature, Cain's prose flows forth effortlessly, and it is told from the first-person so it reads very quickly--even with the occasional hurdle arising from its having been written very much in the parlance of its time. Walter Huff (the film version changed his surname to Neff) is an engaging narrator, and as the reader, you want to go along for the story.

Luckily, the film version does differ fairly dramatically in the third act from the novel, so any knowledge of the ending from the film is not applicable when reading the Cain novel. As is often the case, the book is better than the film--at least in that regard--although with this book, there is the unusual scenario that arises (in this time so far removed from the production of either piece of art) that the adaptation has become the much more prominent work. That is so much the case in this situation that the book has nearly been forgotten.

This should be rectified.

But don't take my word for it.