Cagney is his usual cocky screen self in Lady Killer, a movie that starts light and gets even lighter as it goes along.
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James Cagney hit it big in 1931 with the movie "The Public Enemy," and by the time "Lady Killer" rolled around in 1933, he had pretty much solidified his image as a Hollywood superstar. He could do tough guys, he could do comedy, he could do song-and-dance, he could even do Shakespeare. In "Lady Killer" he does a comedic tough-guy, and he does it like almost no one before or since.
In "Lady Killer" Cagney is a wisecracking New Yorker who works his way up from a theater usher through a gang of thieves and then on to become a leading light in Tinseltown. While the filmmakers intend all of it in fun, it isn't quite as radical as it may seem. Cagney himself grew up in a tough part of NYC's East side. Fellow actor George Raft had numerous underworld connections. And real-life mobster Bugsy Siegel harbored ambitions of someday becoming a movie star.
Here, Cagney plays Dan Quigley, a smart-aleck who starts out as a New York City movie-theater usher whose boss fires him for insubordination. Then the plot turns to the same device that Warners used in one of Cagney's previous pictures, "Smart Money," only there it was Edward G. Robinson in the lead; namely, the Cagney character gets suckered in a card game by a pack of con artists. So, he gets even with them, quickly becoming the gang's leader in a string of burglaries. When things get too hot for him back East, Quigley heads West, to Los Angeles, where he eventually winds up in the motion-picture business. Because he's bright and confident, with loads of charisma, he quickly rises there, too, becoming a full-fledged star. But his old gang finds him out and further trouble looms.
Cagney is his usual cocky screen self in "Lady Killer," a movie that starts light and gets even lighter as it goes along. How do we know it's going to be a comedy all the way? In the lobby of the theater where we first find Quigley working, a lobby poster proudly proclaims an Edward G. Robinson gangster flick! Then, by the time Quigley reaches Hollywood, the story has turned into a full-blown spoof. (Quigley is a hoot in a costume drama, complete with a Hungarian director.) The actual director of "Lady Killer," Roy Del Ruth, would get used to such movies. In the coming decades he would helm projects like "Kid Millions," "Folies Bergere," "Broadway Melody of 1938," "Topper Returns," and "The Babe Ruth Story" in a long career of light films.
As the gangsters, we have Douglas Dumbrille as the slick Spade Maddock and Leslie Fenton as the henchman Duke. As the heroine, we have Margaret Lindsay as Lois Underwood, a Hollywood leading lady. And as a gangster's moll, we get Mae Clarke as Myra Gale. You may remember Ms. Clarke as the young woman in whose face Cagney famously shoved a grapefruit in "The Public Enemy." In "Lady Killer," Cagney's character does even worse things to her, but this time he does them more in a spirit of fun than menace.
WB made "Lady Killer" just before Hollywood's self-imposed Production Code in 1934, so there are certain things the filmmakers could get away with that the studios wouldn't tolerate again for another thirty years or more, a bit more leeway in terms of violence, sexual innuendo, and revealing clothing.
But it's really Cagney who sustains the picture from beginning to end. His famous strut, his dancer's carriage, his expressive gestures, his cocksure attitude, his nonchalance, his flippant patter, his total self-confidence both as a character in the film and as an actor all carry the day, making "Lady Killer" a minor comic gem.
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