Lloyd Hart (Jeffrey Lynn), Eddie Bartlett (James Cagney) and George Hally (Humphrey Bogart) are war buddies after falling into the same bomb crater. After the end of WWI, Lloyd goes back to practicing law. It's the start of prohibition. Eddie is out of luck without a job and Danny Green offers him his cab. He goes to see his pen pal Jean Sherman (Priscilla Lane) but she turns out to be a school girl. He gets thrown in jail after being tricked into delivering a bottle. Panama Smith (Gladys George) pays the fine to get him out of jail. Eddie soon joins Panama in the business. He becomes successful with a fleet of cabs. He keeps Lloyd as his reluctant lawyer. Then he runs into an older Jean. When he fights another bootlegger, he runs into George who's running liquor for the another guy. George convinces Eddie to join forces.The only problem for this movie is that Bogie doesn't come back until after an hour. So a warning to his fans, this is more a Cagney film. I would have preferred they stay together through the whole movie. That would make any double cross more compelling and any fights more heart breaking. There is singing, and there is gangster violence. It's a nice gangster movie with a couple of big gangster stars.

Three men (James Cagney, Humphrey Bogart, Jeffrey Lynn) who fought alongside each other in World War I try to make a go of it in 1920s America. Cagney tries to go straight but is pushed into a life of crime as a bootlegger. Bogart doesn't even try! He's rotten and he loves it. Lynn becomes a lawyer but soon finds himself pulled into the business by pal Cagney, while also falling for the girl Cagney's in love with (Priscilla Lane).James Cagney gives one of his finest performances of the '30s. Bogart is a deliciously evil villain. Every scene he's in, he's great. Lane and Lynn are fine but I found myself disliking their characters by the end. But that's probably more to do with my sympathies lying with Cagney. Gladys George is terrific as Panama Smith, a nightclub hostess who holds a torch for Cagney. A first-rate gangster picture like only Warner Bros. could do. Great direction by Raoul Walsh. If you're a fan of any of the stars involved or just a fans of WB gangster pictures in general, you just have to see this one.

Sometimes I come to a film because it looks like it can directly fulfill, sometimes because it can provide precious background to other things that matter, letting them stand. It's watchable in itself, this one; a misfit's rise and fall played against the passing of times. Released on the cusp of WWII, it opened a portal back to more careless times, taking us on a journey from WWI trenches through the highs of Prohibition to the lows of Depression, so we could have this clear moral stance: in the new world there's no room for scoundrels. Right.Interesting here is that only a year or two before Citizen Kane we have a similar saga about the passing of the times, but one that asks no fundamental question of us, casts no doubt on its testimony. It's as lurid and constructed as newspaper headlines of the time, a main contrast in Welles' film about its world-creating newspaperman. It's machinegun history written in the staccato sounds of a newspaperman's typewriter.What I really wanted to see though was Cagney. I am in the middle of a film noir quest looking for its machinery, and as an aside I was brought to explore its roots in 1930's crime stuff. Cagney is a force in this niche. He had so much energy that he could turn into presence. He is not just amused, he doesn't coast on pushing things back like Bogart; he throws himself on the encounter, bitterly cutting himself on the edges. Not so here. He was asked to play a basically decent guy led astray by the prospect of easy money, meaning to reflect the broader American endeavor that ended on Black Tuesday. Usually in a Cagney film he lets loose in the end. They asked of him here the precise opposite; he sleepwalks, numbed by failure, a human ruin clawing at redemption. He looks like he gives it his all, but it's just not who he is. It's as if you asked Welles to strut like Wayne. If you want to see Cagney in top form, look him up in Footlight Parade fully in command of a show, White Heat to see him face real demons.

THE ROARING TWENTIES (Warner Brothers, 1939), directed by Raoul Walsh, is a nostalgic look back into an era recollected by New York City columnist, Mark Hellinger. Taken from his original story, Hellinger introduces THE ROARING TWENTIES with this forward message: "It may come to past that at some distant date, we will be confronted with another period similar to the one depicted in this photo-play. If that happens, I pray that the events, as dramatized here, will be remembered. In this film the characters are composites of people I knew and the situations are those that actually occurred. Bitter or sweet, most memories become precious as the years move one." The story gets underway as Hellinger's treasured memories are presented in documentary style with voice-over narration by John Deering depicting the decade fondly known as "The Roaring Twenties."1918: The Great War (World War I), Eddie Bartlett (James Cagney), an American soldier on a battlefield falls into a shell hole where he encounters George Hally (Humphrey Bogart), followed by another soldier, Lloyd Hart (Jeffrey Lynn) who also drops in on them. After the Armistace is signed, ending the war, the men return to the United States, going on their separate ways. 1919: Time marches on. Soldiers return home to find the world has changed and are unable to return where they left off. George returns to his saloon business; Lloyd studies to become a lawyer; and Eddie, unable to get his old job at the garage, earns his living driving a taxi during off hours for his pal, Danny Green (Frank McHugh). Eddie comes to Minneola, Long Island, to meet Jean Sherman, the girl to whom he's been corresponding by mail during his days at war, only to become disappointed when Jean (Priscilla Lane) turns out to be a teenager attending high school. 1920: Prohibition begins, speakeasy's form with crime on the rise. Eddie, still driving a taxi, delivers a package for a passenger to hostess, Panama Smith (Gladys George), of the Henderson Club. He gets arrested when detectives find the package to be liquor. Upon his release, Eddie joins forces with Panama in the bootlegging racket. 1922: With his huge profits, Eddie buys his fleet of cabs. He becomes reacquainted with Jean Sherman, now an attractive young woman working as a chorus girl. Through his connections, Eddie gets her a job as a night club singer (somewhat inspired by popular vocalist, Ruth Etting). 1924: Bootlegging and crime are at its peak. The Panama Club, owned by Panama Smith, is established. Eddie teams up with George Hally. Jean falls in love with Lloyd, Eddie's personal lawyer. 1929: Black Tuesday, October 29th, Stock Market Crash. Jean becomes Lloyd's wife; Eddie and Panama, like everyone else, face financial ruin while George becomes head of a syndicate. 1932-33: Franklin Roosevelt becomes the president of the United States; Prohibition ends; Mark Hellinger's character study unfolds with big climatic finish.To help the story along, selected old-time popular songs from the roaring twenties era are selected, including "Carolina in the Morning" (dance number); "My Melancholy Baby," "I'm Just Wild About Harry," "It Had to Be You," "My Melancholy Baby" (all sung by Priscilla Lane); and "In a Shanty in Old Shanty Town" (sung by Gladys George). Other members of the cast include Paul Kelly (Nick Brown); Joseph Sawyer (Sergeant Pete Jones); Elisabeth Risdon (Jean's Mother); and John Hamilton (The Judge). As much as Cagney and Bogart make a great pair of friendly rivals, THE ROARING TWENTIES proved to be their third and final collaboration together, their second being a western, THE OKLAHOMA KID (1939). A well-crafted screenplay with memorable scenes, newsreels, realistic gun-plays, authentic costumes and hairstyles reflecting the roaring twenties are an added plus here. While Cagney and Lane share equal billing above the glittering title, and Cagney being the central character throughout, by film's end, it's Gladys George, whose excellent portrayal in the Texas Guinan style, who literally steals it from the rest of the cast. She even has the now famous closing line. No doubt her performance was deserving for an Academy Award nomination (Best Supporting Actress category), which, sadly, she did not get. Regardless, she makes the movie the true classic it's become. Along with Cagney and Bogart's ANGELS WITH DIRTY FACES, THE ROARING TWENTIES was one of their most revived movies on broadcast television in the 1970s. In 1974 alone, THE ROARING TWENTIES had five broadcasts from New York City television within a span of a few months/or weeks. Its continued popularity had led THE ROARING TWENTIES onto home video (later DVD) and finally cable television where it turns up regularly on Turner Classic Movies. THE ROARING TWENTIES simplifies a bygone era while Warner Brothers simplifies its grand style in crime themes that continues to be looked back with great admiration as one of the studio's finest accomplishments of its time. (***)