I was maybe eight or nine when my sisters, brother and I watched this every single night for a week.  Stations did that back then.  Call it cheap baby-sitting.  But we were riveted.  I’d never seen a man dance like that.  Especially a man I’d seen so many times as a tough-guy gangster type.  I think it was my first notion of…”Oh yeah…he’s an actor.”

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Watching it again, lo these many years later, I was struck by several new observations.  First – what a patriot George M. Cohan was!  (And, as is common knowledge, so was Cagney.)   Though Cohan maintained, “I was a good Democrat even [as a child]”… he didn’t feel the modern leftist compulsion to extend the sympathetic lilt of empathy towards one’s avowed enemies.  He knew which side he was on – and said so, in no unequivocal terms. 

Cohan wasn’t politically correct — he and his family put on Minstrel shows!  Innocent, good-natured entertainment back then, offending no one, delighting all; black, white or variegated paisley.  It wasn’t until the class-envy of Marxist political correctness that we insisted on being horrified by such a thing.  (more…)

1. White Heat (1949) – The last of the classic gangster pictures is also one of the best. Virginia Mayo gives the performance of her career, Edmond O’ Brien is sturdy as ever, and the script is a masterpiece of character, plotting, and story twists – but you never notice because Cagney’s towering performance as a mother-obsessed sociopath is so overpowering it sucks up all the greatness going on around him. (more…)