Chapo Trap House - MM17: Cagney WAS Modernity!

Episode Date: April 24, 2024

Welcome to Movie Mindset season 2! Will & Hesse look at two films somewhat bookending the career of the great James Cagney: Lloyd Bacon’s Footlight Parade (1933) & Billy Wilder’s One, Two, Three��(1961). The first is a pre-code musical spectacular, allowing Cagney to show off his song and dance skills as a promoter of live “prologues” for movie houses, the later a cold war screwball comedy, together they show the insane range of Cagney across a career also notable for roles as gangsters and tough guys. But here, we get to see his work making the most racist and offensive musical numbers imaginable to a depression-era crowd, and joke-a-minute comedy chops as a beverage exec trying to keep his boss’s daughter from eloping with a Communist while opening up east Germany to the wonders of Coca-Cola.  Tickets to Will & Hesse’s Movie Mindset screening & talkback of Death Wish 3 in NYC on May 4: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/chapo-trap-houses-movie-mindset-screening-of-death-wish-3-w-will-hesse-tickets-877569192077

Let's all go to the lobby Let's all go to the lobby Let's all go to the lobby To get ourselves a juice Delicious things to eat, Foggy candy beans Sparkling drinks such as dandy Chocolate house and a candy Ladies and gentlemen, the movies are back. They're back and better than ever. That's right, folks. Will Menneker, Hesse Denny, Movie Mindset, Season 2. How have the movies been treating you?

The movies have been treating me so well. I am actually, I'm seeing two movies later today at once. Not at once, but in a row. They're projected over each other. They're doing it special for me at the theater. By the end of season two, you will be able to watch two movies at the same time. What they're doing is they're playing all four reels of a movie at once projected onto the same screen.

Saves time. Yeah. So what are you seeing? I'm seeing End of Evangelion. And then I'm seeing Don't Expect Too Much From the End of the World, which I'm pretty psyched for. Sort of a thematic double feature, you know? Because what is Evangelion, if not, like, don't expect too much about the end of the world.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's going to be fine. It's not a big deal. It's all right. All right. Well, to kick off season two of Movie Mindset, I don't know how many of you out there have been looking high, looking low. But on this episode, you will finally encounter your Shanghai will. That's right, folks. We'll be talking about the actor James Cagney

and two of his comedic performances, first in the musical Footlight Parade from 1933 and then later from the Billy Wilder Cold War farce 123. Cagney, we're going to see him, you know, go on a thousand miles an hour in both of these movies. But before before we get into them, I just got some quick mindset on the movies I've been up to since our Oscar preview episode, which, you know, look, I'm sorry, Maestro wasn't a big winner.

I'm sorry for everyone who bet on Maestro. I'm destitute now. I'm penniless. Well, that's what we got to do this season, Hesse. Yeah. Hopefully get some new subscribers into that big maestro blow up. Yeah, but other than that, I think I think our Oscar predictions held up pretty nicely. But I'm filling out my 2024 dance card and I got I got three I got three quick hits in the mindset before we get into James Cagney. First, I know we made fun of it on our Oscar episode.

But because of that, I felt like I had to watch it. So I watched NIAID, the movie about NIAID, the movie about NIAID, a crazy lady who swam from Cuba to Florida, or did she? And this is really what I want to talk about. Because I saw NIAID and I was like, you know what, this is a fun movie. It's like, it's like a perfect watch with your parents kind of movie. It's not a fantastic movie, but it's just, you know, it's fun, good hearted. Jodie Foster and Annette Bening, you know, they're always great.

Like Apollo 13 or something like that, where it's like a parents movie. Yeah. It's a great parents movie. And it's about this vaguely ridiculous woman, Diane, Diane Nyad, who is like an endurance marathon swimmer. Her whole career, she's been trying to do this swim from Cuba to Key West, which is over 100 miles of open ocean, crosses the Gulf Stream current and is filled with sharks and jellyfish.

I was like, there's no way she's going to do this. This is fucking impossible. And then, like, there's no way she's gonna do this. This is fucking impossible. And then, spoiler alert, she does. But then after I said I like this movie, a ton of people pointed out to me that she definitely cheated on the swim featured in this movie, to which I gotta say, if you ain't cheating, you ain't trying. I'm a NIAID head. That being said, I think the movie would have been funnier if it was about her cheating. No, that would have been so sick. I was just gonna ask. It's just like, no, the movie does not acknowledge the movie takes as written that she like this

as read that she like absolutely did that swim. Because what was going on and she tried she attempts to do it like five times. It's insane. She nearly dies a number of times. And then like, I was like, this is impossible. Like, I don't think even someone in like, not in their 60s could do this it's just too difficult and then she died and I was like goddamn I believe in the power of the human spirit I believe in lesbian excellence I just believe in friendship

I believe in swimming and I believe in America and I raised my daughter in the Diana Nyad fashion but no apparently she's totally full of shit. She was like hanging out on the boat for like having that trip. But still, that's so baller, though, to write when you're out of sight of the shore, you climb into the boat and crack a beer with your lesbian girlfriend. Pop a bottle of champagne. Just be like, well, then it's just a nice trip. You know, you're just like sailing from Cuba to Florida.

Yes, just a hangout. Not getting stung by Manowar jellyfish, but next up, I finally I finally watched Todd Haynes's May December. So have you seen that one? Oh, of course. Yeah. Well, what did you like? Did you did you like it? I loved it. I thought it was amazing. I liked it too. I guess I didn't like it as much as safe or far from heaven or dark waters. I'm sort of grading it on a Todd Haynes curve. But nonetheless,

I enjoyed it because you know, it's a movie about how actresses are evil and need to be stopped. Yeah, I appreciated that. And also I got to shout out, Julianne Moore. Could she just stop turning in like god-tier performances in every role that she's... I mean, how many of these is she going to do in her career before enough is enough? It's really incredible. Like, it's safe. Magnolia. The pharmacy scene from Magnolia is like one of the craziest scenes of acting I've ever seen in my life where she's just like who the fuck do you think you are like judging me it's like so but in May December it's like oh she's she's still got the juice she's still going a hundred miles an

hour yeah unreal performance from her but But I got to say, in a movie featuring Julianne Moore, straight out of Riverdale, Charles Melton steals this movie, in my opinion. He is so good. And such a very realistic, believable performance about someone who is basically stunted. Yeah, there's one point in the movie. The funniest line in the movie is when Natalie Portman's

character is looking at reels of auditions for the like the 13 year old that's going to play the child she seduces in the TV movie about the real incident and she goes, none of them are sexy enough. They just don't have that quiet confidence. Charles Melton like you know, he is he is a an attractive man with a quiet confidence. But in the movie, his quiet confidence is just a byproduct of the fact that he was like, you know, like is trapped basically, like he is. Yeah, he's been saddled with like real responsibility, but never actually got to like mature into an adult.

And I think that's like really well played in a heartbreaking scene in the movie where he smokes weed for the first time with his son. And then he immediately, like, freaks out. It's like, you know, like because he became like, you know, married and a dad when he was like 13 or 14 years old to this insane older woman. And he just never got a chance to blaze one with his boys. You know, he has to do it with his like his son, who's like, and then he's like, I can't tell if I'm making a bad memory

or a pre-bonding right now, but I just I love you so much. And I was just, oh man, it was like, it's so like, it's so real, too. It feels so real. And like, it's, I think part of that scene is because he's older and he doesn't have the genes required, the the micro plastic riddled genes required to successfully smoke new weed. He was built for like 90s weed. And now he's smoking that that that that stizzy blunt with like diamond infused crystals in it. And then he's just like, Oh my god, I was molested as a kid. Fuck. Yeah, I thought this was all normal. So he was hot. Okay But May, December also pretty good. And then finally, of my recent movie viewing, my recent movie viewings is Michael Mann's

Ferrari. Ferrari. Yes. Which I also thought was very good. I very much enjoyed it. And I gotta say, the driving scenes in this movie and just the way he shoots Italy was so good that like it kind of I kind of didn't care that like the central plot of the movie was something that like I didn't really care about which is like how hard it is to have a second family as a cool Italian guy. I really love for I think it's one of my favorites of the year for sure and like the one of the funny things about it is Shailene Woodley's like accent. Yeah.

Her accent, quote unquote. She's just like, you can tell she's kind of tried doing one. It just comes out in like certain words at the end of sentences. But you know, I've seen some people being down on Shailene Woodley being cast as an Italian woman. But I think she's really, she's borrowing, she's cribbing from the Al Pacino School of Acting, which is that like you come in strong with the accent in the first scene and then just let it trail off for the rest of the movie. Yeah. Like like in The Irishman or Carlito's way, you know, just bring bring the accents out when you need to.

You know, absolutely. It's a tool in your belt. Yeah, like Adam Driver, he was talking like an Italian guy the whole movie a little too much in my opinion. I said, like the thought I had watching Ferrari was that like, okay, the movie takes place in 1957. And all I could think about watching the movie is that like at a similar time period, the United States and the Soviet Union were both competing with each other to put a man into orbit, to send men into space, to the moon, to build rockets that would blast human beings out of

the Earth's gravity well and into the cosmos. Italy during the same period was like, we're going to make cars that go even faster. We're going to make the sexiest car you've ever seen in your life. I just like, I couldn't get over the fact that like Adam Driver as Enzo Ferrari was basically in charge of the Italian space program. Yeah, literally. Which killed way more people than NASA or the Soviet Union did. It was just like, every day he was like, we are going to put the man in a car, it's go even faster than it ever do before.

It fucking barrel rolls like 18 times, smashes into a concrete divider at like 800 miles an hour. The first like death scene where the guy gets flung like 70 feet in the air and like just falls to the ground like a rag doll and he just like turns and he like turns to his guy and he's like, okay, you can have a job as a driver. I don't need to do driver. Doesn't even flinch. And then the climax of the movie basically is this road race across all of Italy.

The mille mille, the thousand mile beautiful car challenge. The entire nation of Italy, they all rush out of their houses to watch this beautiful race go by their house on the side of the road until one of the cars hits like an acorn on the road over 30 times. It's a banana peel. 30 bystanders. It's a horrific, horrific car accident. It's really like one of the most shocking like moments of gore and recent Yeah, it comes out of nowhere And like and the way it like the way Adam Driver plays Ferrari like the whole point of the movie

He's like the whole of Italy is invented to me for killing all of these people. I'm here to say I don't care I do it again I do it again. I don't feel nothing. He's like, look, if you want fast, sexy cars, some people are going to have to die. This is like, this is my passion. This is my vision. Here's my secret son. Yeah, it's no because he was that's the one he got kind of teared up.

He almost cried. He had a tear for that for de portago because it's his secret son's favorite driver. Yeah, that's true. And so he was like, but then I loved Penelope Cruz tour. Like she was I think my favorite part of the movie was Penelope Cruz and her like amazing performance. My favorite scene is when Adam Driver goes to his dead sons grave and he's like talking to the dead son's grave and he's like crying.

He's like, I miss you every day. Every day. I think of you. And then like the next scene, Penelope Cruz goes to the grave and it's just like a shot, like a static shot for like a full minute of her just like totally unmoving as like tears well up in her eyes. And I'm like, Oh my god, this is like so good. It's so like, you know, the two styles of like the differences between them, but they still miss the sun so much. affects two different people. Yeah. Um, no, like, and I have to underscore the driving scenes, you know, Michael Mann portraying, you know, action, you know, motion, speed.

And then the Italian landscape is incredible. The one where they're going at night and it's just the headlights on the wet road. It's like so cool. I'd watch like two hours of that. Yeah, honestly, there was too much about The Secret Family. Just give me those sexy cars and the men who die driving them All right Well, but the segue into what we're talking about for episode 1 of season 2 of movie mindset Many men who drive Ferraris go incredibly fast None of them have ever gone as fast as James Cagney in the two movies. We're going to talk about today

James Cagney house said to kick off this episode going to talk about today. James Cagney has said to kick off this episode, one quote comes to mind. And it was the quote said by Meadow Soprano's just unbelievably pretentious film buff boyfriend. Oh yeah. Where he says to Tony, you're a film buff? People say hawks are made in the genre of Scarface, but Cagney was modernity. Cagney was modernity. And I searched online for that quote. And then I was immediately directed to R slash the Sopranos. And the top post was, quote, Cagney was modernity. What the fuck does that even mean? Noah says it to Tony.

So, Hassel, could you take a stab outside of just being a pretentious film snob? What do you think Noah meant when he said Cagney was modernity to Tony who's only looking at the fact that he's biracial? I think that what he must have meant in my mind is that he could do it all. He was the first movie guy who was like, he could be scary, a scary little evil twink, or he could just be a sing and dance and little firecracker, you know. That to me is exactly it. I mean, I mean, yeah. And then when you like when we talk about Footlight Parade, when you see Footlight Parade,

which is made in 1933, it is it is really funny because like, what Cagney seems like he's in a different movie than everyone else. Like his style of performance is just so like it's the center of gravity around which everything else revolves. And he just does not stop in both of these movies. It is just it's his ratatatat delivery. It's like it's like a like a Tommy gun, like him going off with just like just a joke a minute joke, joke every 30 seconds in both of these movies. And I guess I just wanted to show two of his comedies

because you know, Cagney was mostly known or got famous for being a tough guy. You know, the public enemy, White Heat, Angels with Dirty Faces, The Roaring Twenties. Like, you know, he got most famous for being, for shoving a grapefruit in a woman's face, which was the most violent thing that had ever happened in movies prior to the public enemy. And we'll get to it. But there's a reference to that in 123.

In 123. Yes. Yes. No, Billy Wilder was obsessed with James Cagney and there's a ton of Cagney references in Billy Wilder movies and in 123. But just the okay, but first we're talking about Footlight Parade. This is war, a blockade. Anybody comes in, stays in. Three prologues in three days. We're going to work your heads off. But by Saturday night, we'll have what we want. Can't be done, I tell you. Can't be done. Footlight Parade is a movie about a guy, Chester Kent. What is Chester Kent's job? He is the purveyor of racist and smut filled musical prologues.

It really is incredible how racist almost all of the ideas that they have in the movie. Yeah. And like, so like, so he's this like, he's a producer. It's just like, everything is by the seat of his pants. It's just like everything is in, everything in this movie is in a constant state of flux, whether it's people's jobs, relationships, economic or social status. Everything is rising and falling, coming and going at the same time. Everything is just bursting into an office and throwing everything in the air. But one of the things I really enjoy about this movie is that Chester Kent,

Cagney's character, is constantly looking for inspiration with everything around him. Like, for instance, he's like, hey, there's a cat. See, that's a great idea for a musical number. A cat. You ever seen the way cats move? And then at one point in the movie, he sees a book titled Slavery in the New World. And he goes, see, there's an idea for a prologue.

You got aue. African slave girls and they're captured by white men. And I'm just, and they're like, thankfully, the producers of the movie scrap that idea for the big musical number at the end featuring Chinese people. Yeah, they go for it. They go slightly less offensive. Yeah. But it's even better than that because it's the secret, the evil girl who's trying to sabotage him who's like, oh, I have an idea and goes into his office and is like, I've been reading this really interesting book. It's called Slaves of the New World.

And he's like, say that again. I can see it now. Blackface all over everyone. It's the horrible most racist song and dance number you've ever seen. And so this movie, it's like it opens and like the first thing we see on screen is like, you know, like Times Square and like the ticker ticker is going by and it says motion picture producers announce only talking pictures are made in the future. So like this is like, you know, a precursor are made in the future. So like, this is like, you know, precursor to singing in the rain. And a lot of Hollywood movies about the change in, like, the sort of mode of theatrical production from silent pictures to talking films. But in

this movie, Cagney is a musical producer. He's like a song and dance man. And the movie is about him sort of like changing with the times and coming up with like a new style of performance, the musical prologue. And the idea here is that in like, if you think about those old classic movie palaces, you know, like the really old theaters, they all have stages right in front of the screen. And like it's portraying a time in movies when like instead of having previews or commercials before a movie, they would have like a 10 or 15 minute actual real musical number with like actors and performers that played before you would see the movie that you paid

for. Which we need to return honestly. That would be sick. I'm sick of seeing Maria Menounos you know I want to see I want to see I want to see Shanghai Lil. Yeah I want to see some I want to see some some horny and racist musical numbers before I see Dune 2. Yeah, we'll do let's do Heart of Darkness. Literally is what they do in the movie. But I you know, like this is this is, I believe, the oldest movie that we have yet shared in movie mindset.

I wanted to start with an old movie and a musical because, you know, for a long time, I said the musical genre was like a big area of film history that I had like blinders on too, you know, it was like all movie musicals are for girls. Like I don't like them. Hey, why is everyone just breaking out in song and dance? Doesn't make any sense. But now that I'm older, more matured, I've sort of like expanded my palette. I really think that like you need to understand musicals to understand movies. And I think you're really selling yourself short if you miss out on some of the great Hollywood musicals. You know, I think about, as of course, you remember the line from the Austin Butler Elvis movie where where he says, preacher once told me,

something's too dangerous to say, you got to sing it. That's the way I feel about this. If something is too racist or horny to say, you got to dance it out. You got to do you got to sing and dance it out. But the other the other big feature of this movie that I want to I want to point out is that this is a great example of a what's called the pre-code era of motion pictures. This movie was released one year before the Hays Code was officially enforced in Hollywood.

The Hays Code regime lasted until the mid-60s. Now, as I have here, I pulled up the Wikipedia for the H. And like the Hays Code was defined by things that were absolutely forbidden. The don'ts. I made my favorite. Yeah. You can't show a toilet on screen. The first movie after the Hays Code to show a toilet was Psycho. Wow. Yeah. Wow. Yeah, that bathroom. Yeah.

No, it's just like it's insane, the things that you take for granted. So I just want to like, has somebody go down the list of the things that are absolutely forbidden by the Hays Code. And then I want you to I want you to try to remember how many of these this movie flagrantly violates. It got in right before the deadline with some very racy stuff. So number one, pointed profanity. That includes the words God, Lord, Jesus Christ, unless they be used reverently in connection with proper words God, Lord, Jesus Christ, unless they be used reverently in connection with proper religious ceremonies, hell, sob, damn, gawd, and every other profane and vulgar expression, however it may be spelled. Okay, well, we definitely, that definitely happens

a lot in the movie for sure. All right, two, any licentious or suggestive nudity in fact or in silhouette and any lecherous or licentious notice thereof by other characters in the picture. Oh boy, oh boy, does this movie contain implied and licentious nudity in the form of bathing suits. Yes. You know, this is like, okay, so this movie was directed by Lloyd Bacon. And basically the movie is like the first hour is like a pretty standard comedy about sort of a harried Broadway musical producer Chester Kent and his

trials and tribulations. The last 30 or 40 minutes in the movie are taken over by Busby Berkeley, who's in the you're probably more familiar. He's like synonymous with like he's like the movie Hollywood musicals. And he turns in three spectacular and absurd and surreal musical numbers. We'll get into them specifically, but all of those, all that era in musicals where there were synchronized swimming, that was just a way to have nudity in a movie. Yeah, literally. There's one shot where a woman is swimming under the legs of all these other women.

Yeah. But their legs spread out and the camera is pointed upward at her. And it's very, I was like, my God, this is crazy to show. There's another scene in the second big musical number, which is called Sitting by a Waterfall, that again, we'll get into the details of it. But like as it evolves into this like, deeply Freudian fantasy of sort of, I don't know, erotic release, we have like, yeah, like, like what seems like hundreds of women in a swimming pool, and there's that one shot of like, their faces and very close up as one after the other of their heads just pop out of the pool and smile, but they're all sort of like, wet and gleaming.

Yeah, it's like, it's, yeah. And the water's like roiling. It's like very, yeah. So like, this was just like, I mean, it seems so quaint in like by today's standards, like having lived grown up in a, you know, an era where you can show a fucking sucking, killing, blasphemy in movies. It's, you know, the things that we go to movies for. But it is interesting that like in the 1930s, like they weren't showing like even pre-haze code like outright nudity or

sex but like, man, they were implying a lot of it. They were just like, they were doing everything but the thing itself. And this movie, like I said, it's like if you're if you're if you think of old movies as only being like, you know, with like, they have like, married couples have to have two beds and like, being like, you know, where like, they had like married couples have to have two beds and like they're, you know, three feet need to be on the floor at any given moment. Like one of the first things that happens in this movie is James Cagney gets divorced. I thought you went to Reno, hon. And you remember from Don Siegel's Invasion of the Body Snatchers,

where the the two main characters in that movie were both divorced and they describe it as going to Reno. Oh yeah, it's used again here. Yeah. Yeah. Next up in the Hays Code, the illegal traffic in drugs. Okay, like a big part of this musical, the last big musical number takes place in an opium den slash whorehouse. Yes, the opium den scene is crazy. tour house. Yes. So that one's out. That one's out. So next up for any inference of sex perversion. Well, I think we've already covered that. Yeah. The one of my favorite lines is in the Shanghai Lil number when what two of the prostitutes are talking to each other and they're like

that Shanghai Lil is really bad for our profession because she's just fucking everyone for free. It's like so crazy. Next up in the Hays Code is white slavery. White slavery. Well, okay, once again, Shanghai Lil is a musical number about, well, is it white slavery because it's a white woman acting Chinese or playing a Chinese lady? But there's, look, the Shanghai Little Music Number is all white slavery.

Yes, absolutely. And it, white slavery comes up again in 123. There was a real, like, I think in the early 60s, there was a resurgence in movies talking about white slavery, especially comedies, like Thoroughly Modern Millie. The entire B plot of that movie is white slavers trying to capture the like supporting actress and sell her into white slavery. But yeah, there's definitely a while for Hollywood and show business to take white slavery as seriously as it should be taken to make it and then finally make a movie like taken, which is like, you know, it finally treats the very serious issue of white slavery in a way that the gravity that it deserves instead of these sprightly musical comedies.

I also love that in in the Hays Code. It's like other slavery. That's fine. Yeah, slavery, slavery, the thing that actually exists in the United States of America. That's fine. Well, number six is the next up on the Hays Code is an important one. Miscegenation, miscegenation of any kind, that is also forbidden. And I'll tell you what has in the Shanghai Lill dance number in this movie, in one for one second, you do see a black man touch a white woman and not a not a white actor in blackface, an actual black actor, touch a white woman in one of these scenes. He's the only black actor featured in the movie.

Well, there's one who plays like doing a very Jim Crow style like dance in the Honeymoon Hotel number. Oh, right, right. Yeah, okay. Next up with the Hays Code, sex hygiene and venereal diseases. That's one thing that I don't think is in this movie. Yes. I don't think there's any... I'm sure that there's someone scratching their crotch in the Shanghai Will number or something. Maybe in the background.

Yeah, yeah. Burnin'. Next up is scenes of actual childbirth, in fact or in silhouette. And when I'm wondering, it goes like actual childbirth? I can't think of any movie other than documentaries that depict actual childbirth. Yeah, maybe Dr. T.

Yeah, we'll get to that in our Robert Altman episode. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Next in our Robert Altman episode. Next up is, and this is the most insane one in the Hays Code, children's sex organs. I didn't know that that was, I didn't know that there's something that had to be banned. We got to put the kibosh on this. I would say, yeah, I agree with that. I agree with that one. I don't think that should be included.

I think that does violate moral decency. You don't like Prospero's books by Peter Greenaway Then the last two are ridicule of the clergy and then finally willful offense to any nation race or creed Well, which I say mission accomplished in this movie, especially watching this movie in 2024. Yes. But, um, aside from the, uh, the racism and perversion in this movie, I don't want to make it sound like it's all a joke because I think this is, you know, for its era and even now, I think this is a very funny and interesting movie. And what interests me about this movie, and particularly, uh, Cagney's character, the

Chester Kidd character is the way in which this movie, and particularly Cagney's character, the Chester Kent character, is the way in which this movie, I think consciously in other ways, kind of reflects the spirit of the New Deal. And we even see, like this movie was actually even made by the studio kind of like almost as propaganda for FDR's first hundred days. And we even see at the end of the movie in the Shanghai Will dance number. Yeah, they like they all turn over cards to reveal FDR's face as like, yeah, father of the nation. But like I said, it begins in a moment in which like, you know, Chester Kent's livelihood and his entire like, career is

threatened. It's like these shifting, you sort of economic change and like shifting modes of production and like the whole kind of like slapstick first hour of the movie is about like these constant inventions and reinventions of himself that Chester Kent has to go through. Like that's the constant change of his theater company and the constant change in ideas because the other plot of this movie is about how that awful Gladstone is stealing, keeps stealing. Gladstone! A rival prologue producer is someone is he has a spy in his company who's feeding Gladstone all of Chester Kent's best ideas like girls of Egypt, girls of South America,

and girls of Africa. Yeah. Yeah. And I love that the spy who is Vivian Rich, the blonde seductress who tries to steal the heart of Chester Kent. And one of the first things that happens is she gives him a giant photograph of herself to put on his desk. And it's like twice the size of a normal photograph. And if you look like it's her on there with like a swirling like hypno spiral behind her head. She's doing doing marriage hypno to. Yeah. This movie. But you don't mean like I've you I've you I've you Chester Kennedy. You're as kind of like the FDR figure of this movie. How is he like FDR? Well, like I said, he's sort of, he's acting as a leader. He is like, he's mustering the productive forces of his company into like big new projects. He's always remaking things. And then he's like, you know, it's always like, rehearse, rehearse, rehearse, rehearsals off.

And then he puts all of his profits back into new and increasingly better musical prologues. And everything is an idea for another production. It's just this idea of things are changing and you have to change with the times. You have to constantly be on your toes and be inspiring to people. So how is he not like FDR? Well, he can dance. Yes. He's a singing, dancing man. And he it's so funny. The first like scene where he dances, he does like the most like 30s ass dance you've ever seen where his like ass is like sticking out in this year. When he's talking like there's a there's a there's a fourth musical number in this movie.

We talked about that one. There's like the first musical number that Busby Berkeley does is sort of it's shorter than the last three. And it happens in kind of the middle of the movie. And it's sitting on a backyard fence, which is a delightful musical number about cats fucking. Yeah. Yeah. Which they'll never make it. You can never make a musical about that today.

A ridiculous idea. And this is the one where like, you know, like he sees a cat and he's like, see, you know, there's an idea cats they've got rhythm and then like the scene where he's sticking his ass out and he's like trying to show the actors how to dance like cats and he's like, no, no, no, it's not like that. It's like, ha ha ha ha ha. And it's just him sticking his butt out and prancing about. It can't be done. It just can't be done. I love the character of the choreographer in this movie. Yeah, like, I put this probably the most heterosexual coded choreo musical choreographer I've ever seen in a movie. He has a new he has a newsboy cap and a cigar in the corner of his mouth the whole movie and he's like, I gotta get the I

gotta get these actors hitting their marks. I can't take it no more. It's so good. And then of course, there's like a number of romantic plots in this and like sort of similar to the aspects of musical and theater production in this movie. Everyone's relationships in this movie are constantly in a state of evolution and transformation at the same time. Because like, okay, then there's the the two lead actors in the company is, well, the first one played by Dick Powell

and the other by Ruby Keeler. Oh, yes, yes, yes. Ruby Keeler and Dick Powell. And like Ruby Keeler, again, she starts out as this sort of mousy secretary. With glasses. Yeah, this, do you think this movie was the first movie to employ the trick of a Woman taking off her glasses then people being like what she's hot. Oh my god put her in the show

I'm sure Lubitsch must have done that a few times. Yeah, so many movies. I'm sure that was a feature of them But then like and then dick Powell the the lead actor is a guy who joins the company because the Because the old woman that he essentially jiggle owes for is like a patron of the theater and she's like Oh, you simply must hire my lovely boy and I'm like a big a big like a big part of the plot of the movie is Dick Powell leaving like abandoning his status as a kept man to leaving like abandoning his status as a kept man to to fall in love with the lead actress when she takes her glasses off and is revealed as a hot woman mm-hmm and then there's Chester Kent himself like the for the for in the

second scene of the movie he gets divorced from his bitch wife yeah and then he's going to your wife yeah and then immediately takes up with another bad woman yeah Yeah. Yeah. He gets hypnotized. The hypnosis works. Yes. By Vivian played by Claire Dodd. But the whole time he has his secretary, who is the real hero of the movie, because she's the one who is saving his ass all the time. Like, yes, producers are looking him like he's got a mole stealing his ideas. And everybody is looking to

destroy, everyone's looking to throw a wrench into his incredibly convoluted and complex plans to put on horny, racist musical numbers. Yes. And to her, I love another thing that kind of dates this movie is she's a beautiful young woman named Nan. hates this movie is she's a beautiful young woman named Nan. But then in the first musical number, sitting on the backyard fence, a song about cats in heat. We got a little preview of how spectacular the musical numbers are going to be, but this is just the lyrics are like, we'll do our turtle doven sitting on a backyard fence. And it's just like, yeah,

a song inspired by hearing cats fuck in an alleyway becomes this like cheeky musical number that features the first appearance of, I think, the singularly most funny and terrifying character in the movie, the small child like Gremlin, who plays a mouse in this one, and a kid in a brothel in the Honeymoon Hotel.

Yeah. In Honeymoon Hotel. Yeah. I was like, is that a kid or what's going on here? And it's answered definitively in the Honeymoon Hotel number. It's like, oh no, that's got to be an adult with some sort of something's going on here. My favorite thing about the sitting on a backyard fence number is the stage. There's a part where one of the cats is doing a dance on what is supposed to be the moon.

But is that one King Crimson album cover? I think. Yeah, yeah. It's like, how is this happening? But yeah, it's definitely a much it's I feel like that number is in there to kind of be like, how is this happening? But yeah, it's definitely a much... I feel like that number is in there to kind of be like, don't worry, there is song and dance in this. You haven't been sold a bill of goods. There will be beautiful musical numbers.

This will satiate you until the ending. Yeah. But until the ending, there's moretat-tat dialogue. There's more um you know it's just more like it's just really fast like back and forth style dialogue which we see we will see push to like an even higher extreme in Billy Wilder's one two three which is like a joke every 10 seconds in that movie but it's pretty vulgar like cheeky dialogue like um the the secretary character says of the the vile temptress He's like she says as long as they're sidewalks. You'll always have a job

Off the Hayes co's list. Oh, I know miss bit rich They get that close to actually cursive there somehow James Cagney gets divorced like twice more before the ending of the movie. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Inexplicably like, you know, like the what he thought was his ex wife like is like what like as it reaches to the climax of the movie, which is these three big musical numbers, like he has to keep inventing new ideas because Gladstone someone keeps, you know, sending them to Gladstone. Gladstone! And then like then he has the idea to start selling like it basically like earlier in the movie, he gets the idea from a pharmacist about like how how

franchises work. And if you have like a dozen pharmacies, then you can like set the price from the vendors and he's like, Hey, see, I'll apply that to musical numbers and we'll do the same musical prologue in like 10 different theaters on the same night. So the end of the movie is basically he has the brilliant idea to do a lock in where he see like he like traps everybody in the rehearsal space and like makes them has three nights to rehearse, direct, write three different musical prologues and then stage them on the third night for this theater owner to like save the company to save America to get us out of the depression. We need even more horny and racist musical numbers to do an impossible project that requires an incredible amount of logistical coordination. Yeah, like electrifying the Tennessee Valley and yes doing Shanghai Lille or like comparable comparable feats Yeah, like you know, it's just the ex-wife comes back and didn't actually get a divorce and it tries to extort blackmail him for 25

Grants we can marry the other bitch. And then the secretary saves him both from being exploited by his producers and ex-wife and the end his And the current fiance. Yeah, the current fiance is like, I'm gonna sue you if you don't marry me because you proposed to me. Which is a really like a funny idea. I didn't know that could happen. But him and the secretary catch her sneaking around with the owner of the company and they're like, oh, you're fucked. We we got you. That's right. Noodling, you've been caught canoodling.

Mm hmm. So basically like Kester can't Cagney like all of his, you know, like spinning a thousand plates at once. It all pays off in the climax of the movie, which we should we should talk about the three big musical numbers, which. Oh, wait, before before that, there is one part where he leaves and he quits because he finds out that he's been being like stiffed by the theater owners. And as he's leaving, he sees a bunch of black kids playing in a in a fire hydrant. And he looks and he says, wait, that's it.

Beautiful white nubile white bodies. In a fountain. And then he runs back and he's like, what? I know. I have an idea, too good. Yeah, the revelation is like, what if it's just white women? The first time he's ever thought of that before in his entire life. He's like, what if he don't do blackface?

Oh boy, oh boy, does he deliver. Yeah. He's like, here's an idea, everybody. We've got actors, men and women on the stage. But get this, they're white. It's their actual skin. He doesn't stick to that idea fully though. Yeah, a monocle drops out of the guy's face.

But what? What the? White people singing and dancing as whites? Who's going to believe it? One of my favorite bits from that part is when this happens, there's a police officer who's in the process of trying to arrest him and he's like, that's it, I just had an idea for a musical. And the police officer just goes,

say, I have some ideas for me. Can I come with you? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. See, this is like the New Deal ideology of this movie. It's just like, it's like, everything's kind of a mess, but hey, let's have a good time with it and everyone will pitch in. Yeah.

Everyone will be part of like an effort to save the theater company, i.e. America. Oh yeah, and there's one other really funny line when the secretary Joan Blundell, played by Joan Blundell, when she's like, Chester, come here, you got to hear this. And like they hear canoodling in the room. They open the door and it's Vivian with the producer and he's just like, you know, they're rolling around on the couch. And they're like, wow, you know, I always knew how dare you. And he goes, I was just showing her what you can't do in Kalamazoo. Such great little like 1930s isms like that.

So good. So like they got to do three prologues in three different theaters in one night. So they load everybody up into buses and it's like all this commotion. And then the very funny the the guy that they're pitching these acts to has indigestion. He's gassy for all three performances. His partners are sitting right next to him. They keep looking at him throughout these musical numbers and he's like, he looks upset the entire time.

And it's like so good, like after the climactic one, like the climactic number, they're like, and what did you think? And he's like, I gotta I gotta go home. I'm really not feeling great. I should have had all those ribs. But let me sign that. I'll sign that contract. You know, the real the set pieces in the movie are these three big musical numbers. And like, this is mostly what people remember about the movie, starting with the first one, the real, the set pieces in the movie are these three big musical numbers. And like, this is mostly what people remember about the movie, starting with the service at the Honeymoon Hotel. Gee, I'm sorry that I ever, ever left my little home in New Rochelle. Wait a while, you'll want to stay forever at the Honeymoon Hotel.

Girls, you'll have to scatter. We don't see why we should. You're in Jersey City and not in Hollywood. And now the joke in like so like the joke here is that like they've had three nights to create, rehearse and perform these like small musical prologues on a budget. Yeah. From the get from the jump in Honeymoon Hotel, the movie takes on a complete dream logic. This is where film becomes a, you know, to use a buzzword, a liminal space in which it just becomes totally surreal and absurd.

Because like the sets and like there's like 10,000 extras. And the second number takes place in a pool. And the first one in the honeymoon hotel is a set that involves multiple floors and staircases like it just takes on a completely absurd logic wholly outside of the reality of the first, you know, two thirds of the movie. Yeah. And it's the Honeymoon Hotel, like all three are total bangers. Like all three are like such like classic like top 25 like old Hollywood like musical numbers. I really love, there's a Looney Tunes.

There's stop motion animation in this. Yeah, they do stop motion. There's like a honeymoon hotel, which is kind of the least visually... I don't know. It's the least... It's the least surreal and visually splendid. It's like... Yeah. It's mostly just like... It's incredibly elaborate and complex in terms of moving the actors around these sets

and all of the motion and dialogue or like dialogue in sing-song form. But like, yeah, it's like, you know, it's a good opener. But like, even that, even then, it's so like, in the mind of the like, it's so like well known at the time that they did a Mary Melody's like exact one for one recreation of it starring bugs, or it's a bunch of bugs in a honeymoon hotel. And it's like really amazing. It's like exactly the same but with bugs if you want to look that up. It's it's really a wonderful thing. Yeah, and like, part of the process of like, familiarizing myself with like older like golden era like Hollywood movies like in you know my you know teenage

or like young adult or even now is figuring out just what the fuck Looney Tunes was making fun of because like yeah I was like I was just like I didn't know Edward G Robinson or Peter Laurie were like real people and not just Looney Tunes characters until I saw like M in film school or whatever. Yeah. The skinny chicken that's supposed to be Frank Sinatra. All the hands lay eggs. Yeah. But basically the setup for the honeymoon hotel is, you know, really, really pushing the pre-code, pre-code

freedom because like the setup for this bit is that it's a real couple who's just been wed and they've decided to have their honeymoon at a hot sheet motel. That's just like, again, it's this weird like 1930s convention of like, basically, it was illegal to have sex outside of wedlock for a long time in this country. Because a feature of the honeymoon hotel is that there are like the hotel detectives. There are two gum shoes in the lobby of this hotel, like checking the registry and like, you know, making sure there's no hanky panky going on. But the house detective says, no one stops

here unless their name is Smith. And then like, so it's the it's, it's the young bride and her husband. And like, they go to their bridal suite and then the funniest part of this sequence, the bride's entire family shows up to just sort of usher them into the room and explain what's about, but you know, where the magic, the magic's about to go down, so like they have the spinster aunt who gives them a bottle, like a baby bottle to be like, you'll soon be needing this. And then like the younger brother, the son is just like, dad is finally glad to have you out of the house.

Congratulations, father. She's off your hands at last. And then there's a great scene in the hallway of the hotel where like all the doors open at once and all of the Johns walk out in single file with like holding their coats and hats and walk single file into the bathroom. And then like all of the all the pros, people poke their heads out of the doors and begin to tell the young bride what goes on at the honeymoon hotel. Mm-hmm. It's a beautiful tale of solidarity.

Yeah. And then we get this horrible gremlin child. Yeah. Where the husband, Dick Powell, comes out of the bathroom and all the Johns go into the bathroom and come out wearing their you have their smoking jackets and they're like night slippers. They're like, oh, yes, I've got my evening attire to fuck this whore. It's like a reverse walk of shame. Yeah. The walk of pride.

And then Dick Powell goes into the wrong bedroom and finds himself in bed with this demonic little child. Yeah. And his wife doesn't understand what's going on and is like, what? Who the heck? You've been cheating on me. You've been cheating on me with this little gremlin. Who is that blonde? Yeah. And then they kiss and make up at the end and then like, it's like, Ooh, the magic's gonna happen.

It pans over to a baby, a picture of a baby. Yes, the last thing is a picture of you just reminding you, you know, we can't show real actual pregnancy, we can only show you the knock on effect. You don't you understand viewers. I think I think it's probably half of the audience in the 1930s didn't understand. Yeah. They hadn't made the connection yet. They'd never been the pros.

Intercourse and procreation. Yeah. The pros at a hotel had never explained it to them. Yeah, that is how sex education worked in the 1930s. It's like, if you were wealthy, your dad took you to a brothel. And if you were poor, maybe you'd be lucky enough to see a musical prologue called slaves of Africa that would go it out for you. But I like here's the interesting thing, though. So

like, okay, the first number Honeymoon Hotel is this body ditty that is like portrays everything leading up to the active intercourse. Then in the second musical number, Bio Waterfall has said like, I don't know how you read this musical number, but to me, like I find this to be like, this is like, it makes sense that it follows up Honeymoon Hotel because I read Bio Waterfall is basically like the physical expression through dance, body, and motion of erotic release. Mm-hmm.

Yeah, absolutely. There are parts like of like the intense, like the synchronized swimming and these like this incredible choreographed like swimming and the bird's eye view from above like Busby Berkeley, the signature shot where it's like a perfect bird's eye view. And then you see like the movement and rhythm of all these bodies forming these like really complicated geometric patterns. Yeah. At one point, like I just like, I can't help but think of it as like, it's literally showing

an egg being fertilized by a sperm. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. And it's this, the human waterfall that it shows. Yeah. And it's this the human waterfall that it shows. Yeah. Just all the women kind of stacked up like on a rotating thing with like water squirting out. Yeah. It's just it's women getting wet by the thousands, basically. Yeah. And yeah, like, yeah, folks, they're squirters.

Yeah. Squirt is, squirt is P. Squirt. It's proven. They've proven in this. I would love it if the people who wrote the Hays Code, like the Catholic League of Decency, they had no idea what squirt was. So I'm just imagining, what if they knew what squirt was and had to include it in their Hays Code. And absolutely, number 13, and absolutely no squirting.

It's pee. No squirting. You have to make clear that it's pee. Someone has to taste it and say, that's definitely pee. Yep. That's urine. But yeah, but like, and like the musical begins with Dick Powell, the husband from the Honeymoon Hotel, and like the same woman, what's her name?

Ruby Keeler, the mousy secretary who becomes hot. It begins with them and they're sort of like falling asleep by a waterfall. And like, I don't know, I just take this whole sequence as this kind of Freudian dream sequence of the man falling asleep and witnessing, like I said, thousands of wet women and a metaphorical demonstration of orgasm. And it's just being this sort of like, witness or enjoyer or owner of all women. It's just that to possess all women and like to get them wet basically. To possess women and get them wet.

And the way it leads to the pool sequence is all these like water nymphs come out and kind of like, you know, in Sorcel Dick Powell with their, you know, with their wiles, wearing these crazy wigs. like some real crazy, crazy wig action going on for that small portion. So if the second musical number, which is like, you know, this fantastic synchronized swimming and again, I would just like to underscore, especially given how many like birds eye view shots of women swimming, how unbelievably funny it is that in the reality of the movie, that this is supposed to be

something that people in a theater are watching. Yeah. Because I don't know, like seeing synchronized swimming at eye level or even slightly beneath eye level doesn't seem all that impressive to me. There's a bunch of heads popping up. I might as well be watching fucking water polo. Like, what? Like, I guess if you were really horned up, occasionally you would see like a feet with

some toes toes dart into the air for half a second. Sitting up out of your seat. I think this one is kind of the real crown jewel of this final medley. It's just so weird and lush lush and dreamy and like strange. Even even Cagney says this is the one that'll do it. This is the one that'll earn us the thing. So Shanghai, which I think is my favorite actually. That's my favorite one. Yeah. Yeah. That's like a victory lap. Yeah. Well, okay. I mean, I guess like, I just like the last thing

I want to say about sitting by a waterfall is that like, yeah, like there's lots of cheeky and sort of like a slightly dirty sense of humor in this movie. But like, the thing that strikes me about sitting by a waterfall is that like, if you can watch the sequence and forget that you're seeing a movie from like nearly a century ago, it's really like weird and dirty and horny even by the standards of the 21st century. Yeah, no, absolutely. And like, it's really like amazing and beautiful. And there's a

lot of like, Bugsby Berkeley like stuff that fills that, that feels the same way. And all of his like, so many of his musical numbers do the same like liminal space, like dream area, like crazy angles, crazy like sets that are ostensibly happening on a stage in front of a crowd. And it's really, it's really beautiful. It's really beautiful. And I guess like the thing that like makes you forget how weird and horny it is, is that like the style of music that they're performing is very like the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the,

the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, Bustin' makes me feel good. Yes. Which leads into probably the horniest and most offensive of these musical numbers.

Yes. The grand climax of this movie, Shanghai Lill. He cannot come down and he can lay him low, fighting for his... Shanghai Lill. I miss you very much, a long time. I think that you no love me still. I've been looking high, and I've been looking low. Looking for you, Shanghai Liv.

I think you go with other sweethearts. And very many tears I spill. He's been looking high, and he's been looking low. And the great part about this sequence is that like right before they put it on, it's the last performance of the night, they've gotten on the bus, they're at the third theater, and right before the leading man is in the dressing room with Vivian, the temptress, the evil bitch, who's gotten him drunk before he gets on the stage and with Vivian, the, the temptress, the evil bitch who's gotten him drunk before he gets on the stage. And he's like, I was not nervous or whatever. And Cagney is like, why I ought to you, you bum bricks. And then like they, they're going

up to the stage. He's like, you're going out there and they have a fight. And as the curtain comes up, Cagney tumbles onto the stage and has to do the lead male performance himself. And then you're like, yes, we can, we finally get to see a little bit of Cagney as a song and dance man. It's so and it's so beautiful. He really like it's it's the victory lap of the movie. It's like that's like one of my favorite parts is when he first goes out there, you can't see that it's him.

So it's like, oh, is it the other guy? I mean, obviously, it's going to be him because it's Cagney and he's like, but like at the time, it must have been crazy because this was like, it wasn't this his first like song and dance type picture. He started out as a song and dance man, like, but like he got he got famous for the public enemy and white heat. And I think this movie came out a year after the public enemy, which made him like a huge national celebrity. And I think he did this movie came out a year after The Public Enemy, which made him a huge national celebrity. I think he did this movie because he wanted to get back to his original musical roots.

He was tired of being kind of tough. He didn't want to be typecast as a gangster or a tough guy. Yeah. But it must have been so like a Marvel movie cameo moment for them when the camera pans up and it's just James Cagney hanging out with the squad there. And I guess this is why I wanted to do Cagney for this episode and highlight some of his comedic and musical performances because like Cagney is modernity.

Like his style of acting seems very, very modern and funny. And like everyone else in the movie does have these kind of mannered kind of sometimes theatrical performances that are a relic of like you know the early era of talking movies. That being said, I'm just trying to find a reference for like what would be the modern equivalent of James Cagney and it would be like I don't know like who's a modern like tough guy action star. It would be like if Keanu Reeves was like, in addition to doing John Wick, was also like a world class ballroom dancer or tap dancer or something like that. Or who could dance backwards downstairs? Yeah, like that's how talented you had to be to be a star. You have to be funny, tough. And like I said, do tap dancing moves that are like incredibly difficult and make it look like effortless. It's like Takeshi Kitano.

He can be a talk show host. He could be a cop. He could be a gangster. He can be a goofball. Yeah. He's like so amazing in this number. And there's like, I spotted like a cameo in there, not cameo, but like a probably like early role. The first woman who's at the table singing in Shanghai, Lille is Anne Southern,

who's in a ton of stuff. Namely, I knew it was her because like I had just seen something with her called like Shadow on the Wall, which is like this really good movie that stars Nancy Reagan also. Oh, yeah. She's got herself. Yeah, it's about a Shanghai lil. I've been looking. Yeah, I've been looking low. I've been looking for my throat goat.

Like every Shanghai Nancy. I say Shanghai Nancy. So basically, like the premise of this musical number is that Cagney is like a sailor, an American sailor in China who's like gone AWOL because he's like, he's been, he's been, he's been frequenting the services of one particular lady of the night. But it was like, but the funny thing about the musical number is that like, oh, it's just like all about him. He's got to find his Shanghai lil. Like he, she's the best.

But then in the musical number, it goes around, you know, again, an opium den and whorehouse and has literally every person in the brothel be like, that's Shanghai lil. Ooh, she's, ooh, we're with every penny. She's everybody's gal. You know, like, there's that somewhere they go down the bar and there's like a procession of different nationalities of men. And they're all like in their own way. I believe one of them says at this point, she says she won't be mine for all of Palestine looking for my Shanghai will. It was made in 1933 people do math.

Think about that. Yeah. Yeah. There was another. And then like the other I prayed to Buddha and he'll bring back my bill. Like, yeah, that Oriental dame is detrimental to our profession. Yeah, it's so good. It's it's definitely then a bar room brawl gets started because someone calls Shanghai a little tramp and Cagney is not having any of it. And it begins the fantastic brawl scene, which is like choreographed.

It's basically just a dance number, like still. And it gives Cagney's character a chance to change out of the tuxedo he's wearing into like US Navy blues. You know, like he returns because like the MPs are raiding the whorehouse and they're like, sure,'s canceled. Everybody stop fucking Shanghai Will. You've had enough.'' Then we get this great number at the end of the musical number where it's like, ''It seems so odd given the rest of the movie.'' But then it becomes literally like,

and this is like 10 years before World War II, but it basically becomes like, ''Buy war bonds.'' Yeah, a ticker tape parade. It's this grand celebration of like US imperialism in 1933, where they all march in formation and do the thing where they flip the rifles around. Yeah, they're doing the gay little twirls with the guns. I'm glad one of them blow his brains out right after doing that. Yeah.

Looking in the mirror. Reporting for duty. If there was a mirror there, they would have all done it. Incredible. But yeah, they're twirling. And then they do the thing like that kind of, I don't know, like, I, whenever I see this, I think of like, you know, like these like mass demonstrations in like China or like Pyongyang, North Korea, where like you have like, thousands of people in a stadium, they each hold up a card, and it forms an image. And then they flip the cards and it shows another image and they do that here for the American flag and then the smiling face of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and he's just watching being like

he got a cigarette holder and he's like I love that Shanghai lil just wish I could dance just wish I could dance like that notice us daddy and then oh and then and then at the end like a Shanghai lil she shows up dressed as a sailor and Cagney is going to sneak her on board that big steamship ain't mine, he says, but he sneaks his Shanghai lil in a sailor's uniform aboard, you know, the USS Franklin Delano Roosevelt. But before he does, he takes out a deck of cards and he flips through them and it gives you this another sequence of like flip book stop motion animation.

Yeah. It's like really pulling out all the stops. And again, once again, this is something that's supposed to be seen by a theatrical audience and they're doing animated sequences. And they're picturing James Keckney holding up a deck of cards with tiny drawings on the top to an audience. Did everyone in the back see that? I can do it again. It's like the Mercury Theater, just like a full house, two balconies.

Yeah. And then the movie ends with like, he runs off stage. He's like, pushed back out to do a second bow. They've got the contract with the theater owner. The musical production company is saved. And then Cagney goes, I got an idea. And the secretary says, what, for another musical number? He goes, no, a wedding. He goes, why? He goes, for us. And then, of course, the ones that we've always wanted to get together at the end, they get together. They're going to get married. He finally has his real one. and they get together, they're gonna get married, he finally has his real one. I mean, honestly, a proto, His Gal Friday, which is another movie we're gonna get to fairly soon. But we see in that relationship, like, you know, like the work wife that becomes the real wife. Yes, it's a beautiful tale. It's a tale as old as time.

The movie ends with them, like, you know, getting engaged. But then it just shows you everything that's going to happen after that. Because then they're going to go to the honeymoon hotel, he's going to bust, and then the United States of America will enter World War II. It really is. I didn't even think about that. He didn't even think about that. And then he's going to get VD from Shane. I will. Hey, VD, that says for victory day. Absolutely.

It's a great format for like, Cagney is just like a very, a very talented comic and musical actor. But I always think of this movie like again, I just like I can't separate this movie from the the New Deal context that it was released in and how like the movie itself, I think, is kind of a metaphor for America and the Great Depression. Which will bring us to the second movie on today's agenda, 123, which is a movie about America in the throes at the height of the Cold War.

So you wanna take a quick break and then we'll knock out 123? Yeah, I'll be back in a second. a quick break and then we'll get knocked out 123. All right. We are back and we turn now from Footlight Parade to Billy Wilder's 1-2-3, which was released in 1961. And this is like 30 years have now passed in James Cagney's career. And the astonishing thing about this movie is that he's going even harder and faster than he did as a young man in Footlight Parade. I would sum up this movie by

saying, you know, they say like in sports, or boxing, strength hurts, but speed kills. This is a movie about how speed kills. And by kill, I mean, is funny. Because it's one quote to begin it, Billy Wilder said of this movie, we had to go with Cagney originally, he wanted Cary Grant for this role, you know, like the his girlfriend, his gal Friday, the fast talking bit. But he said we had to go with Cagney because Cagney was the picture. He really had the rhythm and that was very good. It was not funny, but just the speed was funny. The speed was very good how Cagney

figured it out. The general idea was let's make the fastest picture in the world. Hello, hello, Mr. Hazeltine? There's something important I'd like to discuss with you. It's about our daughter, Scarlett. Well, we'd be delighted to have her stay with us. It's just that... She's flying Pan Am. The plane is due in Berlin at 430.

What have we got here? Whatever it is, it's all ours for the next two weeks. Isn't that mommy? What are you been up to? I went to East Berlin. East Berlin? There's this bar over there. You're not engaged again, are you been up to? I went to the East Berlin. East Berlin? There's this boy over there. You're not engaged again, are you?

No. Thank God. You're married. For a minute now, I was afraid. She married a communist? How are we going to explain this? And boy oh boy does Billy Wilder pull it off and Billy Wilder with James Cagney, who really is, he's talking in, James Cagney's character is talking

in pretty much every second of this film. Yes. It's really amazing. I had never even heard of this movie before, honestly. And like, I loved it so much, I watched it like three times. I was like, this is so good. This is, okay, 123 is a very, it's like a very unheralded Billy Wilder movie.

And fans from season one will remember the episode we did 1-2-3 is a very, it's like a very unheralded Billy Wilder movie. And fans from season one will remember the episode we did about double indemnity and Sunset Boulevard. And the genius of Billy Wilder is one of the greatest filmmakers of all time. I would say 1-2-3 is like, it's not like a masterpiece like those two movies, or it's not as well regarded as a movie like Some Like It Hot or The Apartment. But I think it is very, very, very worth seeing. It is incredibly funny.

It is just like it's just lighthearted. It is just like every moment there's something happening. There's a joke every 10 to 20 seconds, basically. And Cagney is just giving it his all in this movie. He's going so hard. He's really he's really killing it. Like the ending, this kind of has its own analog to the ending of Footlight Parade where it's like, all right, time for the razzle dazzle, time for the song and dance.

And we'll get to it, but there's a sequence at the end that really is, it's like the climax of just full Cagney for like 40 minutes or a half hour. Oh my oh god. Yeah. Well, as we'll get to it, the scene where he is an unbroken monologue that takes up maybe five minutes unbroken of screen time. But when he's he's talking to the haberdasher, yeah, ordering the different kinds of clothes for auto, and he keeps saying don't tell him it's French. He's not gonna like that.

for Otto and he keeps talking. Don't tell him it's French. He's not gonna like that. Yeah. Without the Algeria stuff. Don't tell him it's French. The situation in Algeria. Snap, snap, snap. So listen, what this movie is about is that James Cagney plays, this movie is about Coca-Cola imperialism. And this is one of my favorite inclusions of a brand in a movie. Because I love Coca-Cola being the stand-in for like American capitalism and in this movie James Cagney plays a Coca-Cola executive in West Berlin who is in charge of like uh whose dream is to open up Coca-Cola open up the Soviet Union to Coca-Cola

beverages yeah he's he's gonna be the I guess he wasn't around yet though but he's gonna be the, I guess he wasn't around yet though, but he's gonna be the Nixon of, he's gonna be the Nixon of Cola. And like, you know, he is a company man through and through, and his dream is to be put in charge of all the European distribution of Coca-Cola in the London offices. And like, you know, he's a company man climbing the ladder and his office is in West Berlin. A little interesting factoid about this movie. This movie began shooting in Berlin in 1961, but when the Berlin Wall went up on August 13th, 1961, he and his crew had no choice but to move to Munich to complete the movie. And now this movie, the Brendan Burr Gate plays a huge part in the comedic,

you know, fodder for this movie, because this is a very much an east versus west movie. This is just a, like I said, like a totally over the top farce of capitalism and communism at like the very height of the cold war. This movie came out in 1961. And actually, I think it was well received, but it was not commercially successful because basically the Cuban Missile Crisis happened not too long after it. And the jokes in this movie about like, they give us cigars, we give them rockets, you know, the Soviet beverage commissars. I think maybe you hit a little too close to home. The Soviet rockets. Boom to Venus. American rockets. Boom. Miami Beach. Miami Beach.

A little too close to Cuba. This is funny because like in 1961, the Soviets were on top of the fucking world with the space program. You know, like we were kicking our ass at this point. So basically, like, Coca-Cola, Coca-Cola executive James Cagney loves West Berlin, which has all of the blessings of democracy, which in his mind basically means plentiful Coca-Cola machines and beverages everywhere. Well, and I, something I love about the way that like the Berliners are portrayed, it's like they're all ex-Nazis. Well, yeah, in East Berlin, it's in East Berlin, they're all communists. And in West Berlin,

it's all Nazis like top to bottom. It is crazy. And you know, keep in mind, Billy Wilder is the details of his family history, which is like, you know, he's lost half of his family in the Holocaust. So one of the best jokes early in this movie is Cagney comes into his office and his sort of like his his assistant like his number two guy at the West Berlin Coca-Cola Corporation is a is um what's his name uh uh Schiller Schlemmer Schlemmer Schlemmer so yeah his his number two guy at the West Berlin offices of the Coca-Cola Corporation is a guy named Schlemmer, who throughout the entire movie, every time Cagney addresses him,

like clicks his heels together like he's standing at attention. And Cagney's character, who's named McNamara, which I think probably a reference to Robert McNamara, wasn't even in government at that point. I think he was a Ford executive who was like, he was, Robert McNamara, wasn't even in government at that point. I think he was a forward executive who was like, he was Robert McNamara, as a as a car company executive was like the epitome of like modern capitalism. And I think Billy Walters character in this movie is parodying that or I think the fact that he's named McNamara is probably a reference. But anyway, he's constantly giving Schlemmer shit about what he did during the war. And he's constantly berating him to stop like, you know know Prussian obedience and discipline. Yeah. Clicking his heels together. He's like Schlemmer take a memo and he's like, yeah, I'm on my boss. So he says Schlemmer, what did you do during the war?

And he says, oh yeah, he was I was in the underground and he goes fighting with the resistance. He goes, no subway conductor. And he goes, I bet you didn't even know about Adolf Hitler. And he goes, who? We were down even know about Adolf Hitler. And he goes, who? We were down there. We didn't know what was going on up there. We were down. Later in the movie, when it is one, he recognizes the newspaper man and he's like, oh, he was my commanding officer in the SS. And then he says, no, you don't get it. I was just the pastry chef. The SS pastry chef. And then he goes, and then when he says, no, you don't get it. I was just the pastry chef. The S.S. pastry chef. And then he goes and then when he says slumber, he's like, he's like,

if you don't do this, you're going back to the SS. And by that, I mean smaller salary. Like I said, like these are the these are these are the kinds of riffs that are happening like every three seconds in this movie at breakneck speed. And it doesn't stop. And again, like I think this is like even though he doesn't three seconds in this movie at breakneck speed and it doesn't stop. And again, like I think this is like, even though he doesn't really dance in this movie, I think this is just such an impressive comedic performance by Cagney because he really is the entire movie. Yeah. He doesn't let up even once. His physicality is like really incredible.

Oh, it's so funny. And one of my favorite things is the actress who plays the secretary. Oh, there of course is a sexy secretary. There's got to be. Yes, the sexy secretary is when she walks around, the way she walks is so incredible. I'm like obsessed with, she's like bouncing slash strutting slash galloping around the office. Yep. And of course, and of course, Cagney is having an affair with her. And like she's teaching she's giving him German lessons and his Cagney's wife, the Cagney's wife in this

movie is also hilarious. She has great great lines in this movie. But his wife is about to take the kids on vacation. And Cagney says, time to brush up on the umlaut with my secretary. He's taking time to brush up on the umlaut. And so like, it opens and like I said, he's in his office. And everyone in all the German employees, as soon as he enters the office, they all stand at attention to see him. Yeah, there's a really funny scene. Every time he gets out of his car, his driver runs to open the door for him. He gets on the elevator and then the driver runs up one flight of stairs

to open the door for him to get out on the second floor of the building. But it has to like, so much of this movie takes place in the Coca-Cola offices of West Berlin. And the thing I was struck by in this movie is just thinking about how many unbelievably cool like offices and the way Billy Wilder includes like the interior spaces of offices in these movies. Like think about we talked about double indemnity. Yeah. Insurance company office the apartment the huge New York insurance company in the apartment. Remember the scenes of like Jack Lemmon sitting at his desk in that movie? Oh yeah. He loves a good office. I mean, like I could go on, but like Billy Wothers movies love having like these incredible sets, like the way he shoots them and the lighting and everything,

the way like these kind of geometric spaces like sort of like organized and then the intense organization and like layout of these offices and then contrasted with the absolute chaos and hijinks of the human beings in them, which is usually like if Footlight Parade was about America in the Great Depression, this is about America like on top of the world at the height of the Cold War. But what are both movies really about? What is what is the American character really summed up as? Being horny in the workplace. Yes. And the comedic potential that that involves. And they even like, there's a part in the movie where they need something from the Russian

beverage commissars. The Soviet, those are my favorite characters in the movie. There are three Soviet beverage commissars that are negotiating with a Coca-Cola company and they keep slightly Trying to like do a deal where they get the secret formula like yeah, you know, we'll just have Coca-Cola and he goes no deal Yeah, and the best like I like halfway through the movie There's a part where they need something from the commissars Which we'll get into, but like the trade that they want to make is like, he just keeps having his secretary like be sexy in front of them. They're like, we'll give you my house, my car, like you can have anything you want.

And he's like, no deal. But like, it's like, oh yeah, horniness is, you know, it's universal, but it's but Americans are the best at it. Yes, exactly. Yes. Yeah. Americans are the best at being horny. And that is why we prevailed in the Cold War. Yes.

And that's why one of the commissars defects at the end. But yeah, can't can be like his dream is to close the deal with the Soviet Union to distribute Coca, to bring freedom behind the Iron Curtain. And by that he means Coca Cola. Coca Cola, yeah. And there's a scene where he's talking to his boss back in Atlanta and he's bragging about it and he goes, Napoleon blew it, Hitler blew it, but Coca Cola is going to pull it off, meaning conquering Russia.

But then like as the plot of this movie develops, this is basically like a about like an hour and a half or two hour demonstration of the classic sitcom plot line that involves, but my boss is coming over for dinner tonight? What? Yeah. The roast is burnt. What are we going to do? So basically the plot of this movie involves that the CEO of Coca-Cola is calling up Cagney for a favor, which basically means he has to babysit the CEO's sort of wild party girl daughter Scarlett, played by Pamela Tiffin, who's also extremely funny in this movie. And she's a wild child. She's been engaged like 10 different times.

Yeah. And he just has to like make sure she behaves in like while he babysits her in Berlin. Yeah. And basically, he eventually the CEO is like, oh, like, yeah, I'm excited to the all right. I'm coming. I'm coming over and I can't wait to see my daughter. And he's like all cocky like she had a great time. You know, she's been going to museums, going to concerts, museums. he's like all cocky like oh she had a great time you know she's been going to museums going to concerts museums she's been well behaved and um they he gets the call

from his wife oh she's gone and it turns out that she's in east berlin and she's been going across through the brandenburg gate every night and coming back in the morning. And what she's been doing is having a romantic tryst with a young, a young communist, a young sexy communist. Played by Horst Buchholz, a young man named Otto, who's like, you know, an East German, like an East German communist party member and like his character is so funny. And like, yes, the movie becomes a contest of wills between the communist Otto and the hyper capitalist James Cagney aren't you gonna take your hat off I take my hat off when that coca-cola so like so like he so he finds that this is where he asked his

wife like she's missing. And then he goes, maybe she was kidnapped by a white slave ring. Yeah, we got some reference to white slavery in this movie. Yeah. And like the joke being, it would be preferable that she was kidnapped by a white slavery ring and have the CEO of Coca Cola's daughter be not engaged to, but in fact, married to young Otto, the communist revolutionary. And I love this scene where they announced their wedding and they show, here are our

rings forged from the steel of the cannons that fought at Stalingrad. And it's just like it's nonstop with the communist capitalists back and forth. Yeah. One of my favorite lines is like, you can't be married to you can't be married to this guy. And because the daughter blows up a balloon that says Yankee go home. Yeah. He's like, what are you talking? You can't be doing that. Your father's coming. And she's like, no, where I'm from in Atlanta, they hate the Yankees.

Yeah, everybody hates Yankees. Where I'm from, what's the big deal? It's like she's just like, you know, this onergenue party girl who's like a rich girl who's like, you know, she's just in love and flirty and she's not aware of the like Cold War context, you know, communism. She's like, because she just thinks like, I'm going to be rich no matter what. So yeah, I'm with this handsome young guy. He's been expanding my mind. And she's like, yeah, she's like, well, you know, mom and dad are great. Maybe not so

much ideologically, but Otto's been teaching me. It's so good. Okay, should I don't just do Cagney lines in this movie, but like, when he finds out she's engaged to a communist, he like gets on the phone and he's like calling like the State Department and he says, get me Dean Rusk, Dean Acheson, any Dean will do, get him on the phone. Basically, Cagney, he realizes that like, okay, so his boss is like, landing like the next day. And he's coming with his wife and he's like, now, you told me you took good care of my daughter and I'm coming earlier than expected. And like he has to deal with this cascading crisis of the fact that the Coca Cola CEO's

daughter has married a communist and now he's going to, in Otto's words, try to break up a happy socialist marriage. Yeah. And his plan for this is he gets auto arrested by the Stasi. But after he does that, the daughter Scarlett passes out and they call a doctor. And the doctor is like, oh, she's pregnant. So he's like, oh, fuck. So then he's gotten some of his got his, like some, some of his contacts

like find the East German marriage certificate and like, you know, like bring it to him so they can destroy it. And then he's like, are you crazy? You got to get that back. You got to get that marriage certificate back. Because now it's like, oh, thank God, like I broke up the marriage fine. But like now he broke up a marriage to like now she's pregnant out of wedlock, which is even worse than her being married to a communist. Now they have to like, he has to get him back from the Stasi. And the way that he gets him arrested is so funny.

So the auto the horse book called its character auto he drives everywhere on a motorcycle with like a sidecar, a good good proletarian worker. He doesn't have a Mercedes or anything like that. Yeah. And throughout the movie like there are these um Yankee go home balloons like the opening scene of the movie is a parade in East Berlin where people have like big posters of Nikita Khrushchev and balloons that say Yankee go home and Schlemmer his SS assistant is like oh it makes me so mad I want to make balloons that say Ruskie go home. And then Cagney's like, Hey, there's an idea. So he gets Schlemmer to make a balloon that says Ruskie go home and puts it on the tailpipe of his

motorcycle. So that when he stopped at the gate, they see it but also the first thing that clues them in is that he gives them as a wedding present. His cuckoo clock, which is repeated joke in this movie. Yeah, it's a cuckoo clock that on the hour Uncle Sam pops out and trills Yankee Doodle Dandy. And he wraps a copy of the Wall Street Journal. The East German border guards are like, do do do do do do do do do do do. And then it's a Wall Street Journal Yankee Doodle Dandy cuckoo clock. Hey, this guy's not on the level.

He's an Americana spy. And one of my favorite gags about the movie is when it cuts to the inside of the Stasi headquarters and they're torturing him by playing yellow polka dot bikini. Itsy bitsy teeny weeny yellow polka dot bikini. And he's like, turn it off! No! No! Totally.

Yeah, but the way that they're gonna save him from Stasi jail, he's going to call in a favor with the Russian bottle. Yeah, the beverage commissars. So it's this amazing scene where the repeated audio motif throughout this movie is the song Entrance of the Gladiators, which is the clown song. It's the song that's like, da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da song about clowns. Hey everybody, this is Chris from the edit. I don't want to blow up Will and has a spot too much, but the song used in the movie is in fact, Aram McAchaturian's Saber Dance, which does indeed go like this. And not enter the gladiators from Julius Fucic, which is the song traditionally associated with clowns and the circus and goes a little like this.

Though Hesse is indeed right that that is not a song for gladiators, but instead a clown song for clowns. Back to the episode. But like the secretary is like dancing and like being like a super sexy on the table and the beverage commissars are like getting sluttier and more and more worked up. And meanwhile, keeps cutting back to Cagney and he's like playing with his lighter he's like nope can't do it you got to get him out of jail we'll give you anything. It's another example of how generous this movie makes with the ha ha and the funny is like in that scene like okay so he's being hosted by the Soviet beverage commissars and like the Communist Club

of East Germany and like they're all hanging out there. And like as the secretary dances on the table and like disrobes more, the Soviet beverage commissars are getting so horny, they start pounding the table. And as they pound the table, the big poster of Nikita Khrushchev that's like frames the entire stage like sort of rolls up like a map that you have in like a classroom and is Stalin underneath it. like sort of rolls up like a map that you have in like a classroom and is Stalin underneath it. Yeah. And there are two there are two guys like totally frozen like stoically staring at a

chessboard as they're like banging on the table with their shoes like the pieces just start shifting around and they don't even react. Oh, speaking of chessboard, I think probably one of my favorite lines in this movie is when Otto is saying to Scarlett like we, we're married, and that means like we're leaving from Moscow tonight. And like, you know, like he says, we've like the state has given us an incredible apartment only a short walk away from the bathroom. Then he says, honey, it's easy, we can leave tonight.

All I need is my second shirt, my chessboard and 200 books. Young communist man. All I need is 200 books of theory and economic practice. He's really dressed like that type that he's playing still exists in areas of Brooklyn today. That's what I was thinking. It's mostly dressing the same way, but like usually a lesbian. Because he's wearing like Birkenstocks. Yeah.

It's crazy. And also throughout the movie they keep saying his character doesn't wear shorts. And by that and that, it means underwear. Because like, that's bourgeois to wear shorts. Basically, they finally relent and they're like, all right, we'll try to get Otto out of there. And they pull a switcheroo, a beautiful drag. A little some like it hot number where they put Schlemmer in a polka dot dress.

Which ensues into like a chase through the Brandenburg Gate, which that's another... It's so crazy to look at an East and West Berlin movie where there's not like 12 layers of razor wire and guard towers. Gun turrets guarding the entrance to West Berlin. No, you could just like kind of drive through I mean, they're a checkpoint and in the the car chase scene is really funny because like the Soviet commissars realized that they've been Hood winked with a little little cool cross-dressing classic classic cross-dressing, you know One pull the old one to you think you're getting a sexy lady, but what no

It's just he has balloons where this tit should be that say, Yankee, go home. Yeah. But the funny thing is that the Soviet commissars keep trying to bribe James Cagney with their new Soviet automobile, which they say is a perfect replica of a 1937 Chevy. And as they're chasing them through East Berlin, more and more parts of the car keep falling off as they hit a bump in the road. The fucking fender just drops off the car. Yeah. The headlight falls out and eventually the brake pedal stops working and the steering wheel comes off and they just fucking collide with the Brandenburg Gate, which ensues with

them getting off scot-free and escaping. I also really like when the beverage commissars are debating with themselves about whether they're going to basically betray the motherland to help this capitalist Coca-Cola executive. And they're like, comrades, be sensible. You're single. I'm a married man. You know, if I def- if I betray, like, they're gonna kill my whole family. They'll kill my wife, my mother-in-law, my brother-in-law. And then he just waits and goes, okay, let's do it. Yeah. Alright comrades, let's get in on this.

And then they're debating among themselves. They held a little vote and they're like two against three. We're doing it. And then the third guy's like, uh, comrades, I just want to let you know, I'm actually not with the beverage com- I'm not with the beverage administration. I'm actually a KGB spy sent to keep tabs on you. And they're like, okay, definitely not doing it. Then he goes, but I vote to do it. They're like, two out of three, we're doing it. So good. That's like one of my favorite lines.

So they get they get Otto back from the stasi and then like the climate like the last 30 or 40 minutes of the movie it was just like just in Cagney's office as They try to do basically kind of like a my fair lady to Otto and take and take him from like a dirty Bushwick communist. Yeah, you're like a proper gentleman into a proper like Titled a landed gentry and they do that by getting like basically this like very like like a German aristocrat whose like family is destitute, but he has the title. He works as a men's room attendant. And they get him to adopt Otto.

And one of my favorite lines is that the bathroom attendant shows Cagney, he gives him as part of the deal his family crest and a photo of the family castle. And he goes, here's the family castle. Unfortunately, it was damaged in the war. And he goes, what? American Air Force? He goes, no, Turkish cavalry, 1685. Yeah. So good. And I love like, this is the real like the song and dance portion of the movie where Cagney is just totally on another planet, like another plane of existence. Like, all right, we need the the Habitature, we need a manicurist.

What we need is, you need to get me a painter to paint the family crest on the side of my Mercedes. It's like it's here where like Cagney like he he devotes like every resource of the Coca-Cola company to like yeah to this plot to pull one over on the CEO and his wife by making it seem like they've taken such good care of their daughter that she's married now to like German aristocracy to a proper gentleman. And this involves like you know this mad this mad cap, like, it just, it just, it seems that people coming in and out of his office constantly and him like orchestrating this

kind of controlled chaos. Like, if anything, like I said, this is a metaphor for like, what is sold as the positive aspects of capitalism in contrast to like sort of stayed, you know, sort of static Soviet bureaucracy. Cagney represents the kind of the forces of creative destruction as you know, economists might say about the free about free markets is that it's just like this protean sense of being able to similar to Footlight Parade to change and sort of lie, cheat, steal, but just like do anything to get to get over on people. And that is the freedom that America and capitalism provides for the world.

And my favorite gag from this sequence is as Cagney's like going like into the conference room where they're fitting his suit, then back into his office where he's calling like other people and like trying to get in touch with this bathroom attendant who he knows is the nobleman. He as he's walking in and out of the desk pool in the office, every time he walks in, everyone stands up at attention and he just goes, Seats and Mocking. And it's every single time and he says it like with like he gets more and more exasperated with like having just it's like more and more of a throwaway thing every time he like goes through again, he's like, so it'sENMARKEN! He says it faster and faster. It's so good.

And we mentioned the five minutes of just probably spitting like several hundred words every minute where he's ordering clothes from a haberdasher that is just so funny. And I don't know. All I think of is just't know, like, I only think of it just like the nonstop jokes and gags in this movie and like just how many funny throwaway lines there are. Like, for instance, there's a scene where Scarlett is talking to Cagney's wife, and she's telling her about being married to Otto and she goes, Ma, he's, have you ever made love to a revolutionary? And then the wife goes, No, but I necked with a Stevenson Democrat voice.

And like, as like, when I think about this movie, or like really all of Billy Wilder's movies, I think like, you know, the interesting thing is like, the way he treats infidelity in his movies is like very, is it maybe is it maybe it's because he's European? Yeah, like I don't like how would you, like, the way his movies treat marital infidelity? Because they're like often like the centerpiece of the plot, but they're like, it's always like treated as something kind of normal. And if not immoral, then just sort of like a feature of adult life that like tacitly everyone understands.

Well, I think the wife, the wife character says it all when she discovers that he sent Otto to prison and she's mad at him. And she brings up, she's like, I know what your language lessons are, you think I'm stupid? And he's like, why haven't you said anything ever? And she's like, I didn't want to be a nagging American. That's definitely how he feels about it. It's something for a wife to bring up in an argument if there's ever like, especially for like a powerful man. Yeah. I'm sorry. My favorite, favorite line in the movie is when his wife is confronted him about his numerous infidelities and she says,

you know, maybe after 16 years of marriage, like everything gets stale, like an old beer, and he goes, honey, I'm dealing with enough right now. Do you have to bring up a rival beverage? When she says, when like all this stressful shit is happening and she's in the office and she's like, I wonder what it's like over at the Pepsi offices. One of my favorite parts of this movie is what a brand loyalist can like how loyal like what I love about this movie is like more than America, more than even capitalism or his family. Cagney is loyal to Coca-Cola.

He just loves Coca-Cola and everything it represents. And like his dream of world peace is like, there's a map in the office with like pins on a map for everywhere Coca-Cola is distributed. And there's like the huge space of like Russia and China is just off the board. But like his vision of world peace is really one in which Coca-Cola

is sold everywhere. And you know, we're almost there. We're almost there. We're almost there. We're close. Antarctica, that's the only that's the last frontier. I also love the wife actually also like she does get the last laugh because earlier in the movie she's like, why can't we get a job like back like back Atlanta and he says Atlanta that's that's Siberia with mint juleps. So she and the family want to go back to Atlanta because the kids have never have quote never tasted a peanut butter sandwich before. And he's like, No, we're going to London, I'm going to run the entire European branch. But then at the end of the movie, the boss is like, say like, no, we're going to London. I'm going to run the entire European branch. But then at the end of the movie, the boss is like, say, like, I guess I'll give the European branch to my new son-in-law.

You can get a job back in Atlanta. And so he has to like go when he goes crawling back to the wife, he's like what she does get the last laugh on him. It's like any movie is this like they've they like they've gotten auto adopted by some disgraced count from like Lower Bavaria and they've dressed him in like a tux and tails and a big top hat. They've given him like a flower for his lapel. They've given him the finest clothes and they've painted the family crest on the side of like

Cagney's Rolls Royce. Then they're in the car driving to the airport to meet Scarlett's parents as they disembarked from the plane. Cagney, once again, is ticking off everything. Otto now owes him for the money that he put into my fair lady him. Another great line, Otto goes, I've been a capitalist for three hours and I already owed $10,000. Cagney goes, that's the beauty of our system.

Everybody owes everybody else. Yeah, it's so good. So I feel like it's just like this madcap rush to the airport. They pull it off, you know, but they pull it off so well that the CEO gives his new son-in-law the job that Cagney wanted. And then, of course, like he sees his wife and kid, they're getting on a plane to America and he's like, well, I guess I'm going home. You know, they're reunited.

His kids and wife love him again. And The Great has one of the best last shots of a movie ever. Right before they get on the plane, he goes up to the Coca-Cola machine that's like on the tarmac of the airport. He puts in change, gets three cokes for his wife and two kids.

He reaches in to get the last bottle for himself and it's a bottle of Pepsi. And he holds it up and goes, Schlemmer! And then the end. It's just like nothing is ever perfect. You know, there's always something going wrong. And this case, the Coke machine is stocked with Pepsi's. It's so good. This really blew my mind. I was like, this is a new

fave for me. It's yeah, it's unbelievably fun. And it's just like, yeah, it's like I guess like a lesser Billy Wilder movie, but like, man, is it fun? And apparently, there's an interesting fact about this movie, apparently, Cagney never had a problem with any actor he worked with. But for some reason he hated Horst Buchholz's illness movie. And I think you can kind of tell in some of the scenes, like where he does the grapefruit thing to him and he's like, I just like fruit for dessert. Yeah.

There's a real animosity behind his voice. Yeah. And Cagney did not do another movie after this until his very last movie in 1981, right before he died. He was in Milo Shormann's ragtime in one small role. But yeah, this is like... I mean, I can see why he didn't do another movie for 20 years because he just like, he put poured all of his energy into doing this one.

Yeah. This must have been very draining, I imagine, for pretty much everyone involved. They leave it all on the screen. It's so good. And Hesse, have you seen Ernst Lubitsch's Ninocchka? Yes, of course. Yeah, Billy Wilder wrote that, right? Oh, did he? I didn't realize. Yes, it was. Ninocchka was written by Billy Wilder, Charles Brackett, and Walter Reich.

But like, you know, that's another... I would recommend Ninochka as like a kind of a precursor to 123. Came out in 1939 with Greta Garbo and it's another really funny, kind of sweet romantic movie. But it is a very funny, once again, satire of communism and capitalism. Like, you know, while the Soviet Union was still a thing. Yes, and it's a classic Garbo. It is really very similar to this, honestly. Yeah. Yeah. And that movie, Greta Garbo, is a steely eye,

like a steel willed Soviet bureaucrat who comes to Paris to sort of like document the decadence of the West and then falls in love with a classic gentleman who like sort of breaks through her icy Soviet exterior and gets her to live laugh love. Isn't there like, she has like these jewels like her family jewels were stolen or something or is that? I don't remember that in New York, but I haven't seen it in a while.

Yeah, I might be thinking of something else. But yeah, it's a great it's a great great movie. The thing that interests me a lot about 123 is that like a movie that came out at the height height of the Cold War, like a year before the Cuban Missile Crisis, when like everyone thought, like, we were going to kill like, there's a good chance civilization may end. Like, what do you make of like Billy Wilder's treatment of capitalism and communism? Because like, look, this is, you know, it's an American movie. And many of the jokes are at the expense of like, you know, the Communist Party and like, you know,

dumb young radicals or whatever. But I just think, I really think all of the jokes in this movie about communism and capitalism just hit so perfectly. And are like also very not mean spirited, you know, like, yeah, for like an ideological, like an intense ideological dispute between right and left. This movie has such a fun, light way of treating all of it. Like, yeah, it really doesn't come off as like a particularly anti-communist like the movie, even though it kind it kind of is, I guess. But like they really do like something about like the way they also poke fun of like the capitalists like brain and especially the Nazis in West of Berlin.

The whole West German government and down to the guys working at Coca-Cola, we're all ex-SS officers. People sitting at the desks in the desk pool at the Coca-Cola office are just card-car carrying former members of the Nazi party. And like, it's really, yeah, it feels kind of balanced and very just goofball, more goofball core than anything. Like, it's definitely doesn't like come off as having that bad of like an ideological slant. It doesn't really have an axe to grind. I think it's just like, what Billy Wilder is concerned with is just like the pratfalls and hijinks

that result from people being horny. Yeah. And people being caught in social situations in which their own actions have sort of done them in. And how do I get out of something that my own actions have sort of done them in. And how do I get how do I get out of something that my own actions have put me in that usually resolves? It's usually about like my dick to begin with. Like, yeah, that that's me. It's like it's not about ideology.

It's about humanity. And that is humanity is just getting in trouble for being horny. And that's kind of like Cagney's superpower in the movie is that he's not horny. He's like, in fact, his, his wife is kind of a very, like he's, they, it seems like they have a very, you know, plane relationship. The only, it seems like his relationship with his secretary, his affair with her is mostly just like, as he says in the movie, fringe benefits. It's just like, it's what you're supposed to do if you're this.

Yeah. I feel like if you're an executive of a large, you know, corporation or firm, you know, yeah, it's like, of course, you have to have a secretary who's one point he says she's someone says she's bilingual and Cagney goes, you're telling me. It's like having a driver, you know, it's like, of course, I'll take it. I would say disagree with you. He is horny, but he's horny for Coca Cola. He's horny for the district. Yes, oh, that's true.

That's true. He is horny. He is horny. He is horny. He is horny. He is horny. He is horny. He is horny.

He is horny. He is horny. He is horny. He is horny. He is horny. He is horny. He is horny. It's so good. It's not about freedom or capitalism. It's just such a good beverage. It's so pleasing to drink and think about that he wants to share. He'd like to buy the world a Coke. Yes. And if we could just get all these nuclear missiles out of the way, then everyone in the world could just enjoy a nice refreshing Coca-Cola.

And wouldn't that be that's isn't that paradise? Isn't that utopia? That's what the globalists are working towards. And I'm with them and I'm with them. I'm with them. That's a great place to end this episode. So that was, that was James Cagney, I guess like for a further investigation into Cagney, Hesse, do you have any other Cagney films that you'd like to recommend?

I mean, Public Enemies, obviously. Do you have any other Cagney films that you'd like to recommend? I mean, Public Enemies, obviously. Isn't there... What's the comedy that he's in where he's on a train? Is that him? I don't know that one. I might be thinking of a different actor, but Public Enemies, all of his mob movies are so crazy.

I recommend White... Because like we've shown you the nice guy Cagney in the movies. We've shown you him like lighthearted, fun, just rat-a-tat-tat, just joking, dancing. But he also, you know, I mean, the full range of his talents, he also can be really nasty and scary, as you see in The Public Enemy and White Heat is the other one I would really recommend. Yes, White Heat is amazing. White Heat is the famous one with, made it ma, top of the world!

Yeah, it's really good. And I guess the final thing I will say about Cagney to link back to season one and our Burt Lancaster episode. I will just shout out this like Burt Burt Lancaster, James Cagney product of the New York City public school system. He went to the Stuyvesant High School and was born on Avenue D in 1899. Oh, so it's not not so far from from you or I. Yeah, born born at the dawn of the 20th century.

I must reiterate, the man simply was modernity itself to which you and Tony Soprano are saying shut the fuck up. Yeah. All right. Until next time, it's our next movie mindset. We are signing off for James Cagney. Hessa, talk to you soon. Bye. I'd like to buy the world a home and furnish it with love. Grow apple trees and honey bees and so white turtle dust. I like to teach

the world to sing. Sing with me. Perfect harmony. Perfect harmony. I like to buy the world a coke and keep it company. That's the real real thing I like to teach the world To sing, to learn, and to make people happy And I'd like to buy the world a coat And keep it company It's the real thing What the world wants today It's the real thing.

What the world wants today is the real thing.