Cagney and Stanwyck On Low-Watt Setting
Metro Youth Exploitation Minus The Youth: These Wilder Years (1956)
Tycoon James Cagney wants to locate the son he
sired, then abandoned, twenty years before, Barbara Stanwyck's adoption agent
determined to prevent his making the connect. There's a wayward teen girl, also
with child, to rouse responsibility in button-down Jim, this role a distinct
depart from shouts to hoarseness his lot in just-previous two, Mister Roberts
and Love Me Or Leave Me. Emotional content plays well thanks to Cagney/Stanwyck
parlay --- they skip romance to salvage kids in trouble, infant and otherwise. MGM
sold this as exploitation, pushing hard the underage preggers theme, that maybe
a reason why adults stayed home with TV to Loews loss of $629K. MGM tanked on
so many in '56 as to make just showing up an effort.
Sets and backgrounds here are drabber than
anthology on free-vee, the home town Cagney returns to like some faceless berg
on a later Twilight Zone (in fact, the same backlot was utilized for both). For
all we see of Jim's character reaction, it's as though he's never seen the
place before. What saves These Wilder Years is performance: great acting
against bare walls. Halfway-in Walter Pidgeon shows up to high-power represent
Cagney in court, and the two share three lengthy bar-booth conversations, each
a primer aspirants might consult for masterful playing. Sentiment
builds steady to mature pay-off as lessons are hard-learned and reconciliations
effected, Cagney et al doing much with content that might have sunk like stone
in less capable hands. Warner Archive has released These Wilder Years on
gratifying 1.85 with quality their usual fine.
It is a good film. The first time I saw it was a pan & scan version, on TNT Latin America, which has an annoying dubbing in Spanish probably made recently.
ReplyDeleteDick Dinman has some interesting thoughts about "These Wilder Years" and one of his favorite actors, Walter Pidgeon:
ReplyDeleteHey John, The thing that has never failed to burn me up about THOSE WILDER YEARS is the fact that MGM callously demoted Walter Pidgeon's billing to co-starring under the title designation which he hadn't submitted to since the late '30's/early 40's. Even when Metro threw what were essentially glorified bit parts at him (as in SOLDIER'S THREE and DREAM WIFE) Pidgeon always had above the title star billing and it would have cost them zero $ to accord him the same respect on his last film under exclusive MGM contract. (I happen to be a huge Pidgeon fan and you can imagine my awe when as a teen I played a small part with him in a stock version of TAKE HER, SHE'S MINE.) Incidentally THOSE WILDER YEARS, after playing to an empty State theater in N.Y., ended up as a barely visible second feature on the N.Y. multiples tucked under THE FASTEST GUN ALIVE which as you know was dollar for dollar MGM's most profitable film of an otherwise disastrous year.
Cheers, Dick Dinman