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He Was Her Man James Cagney Joan Blondell 1934 pre-Code He Was Her Man James Cagney Joan Blondell 1934 pre-Code He Was Her Man James Cagney Joan Blondell 1934 pre-Code
Flicker Hayes
James Cagney
Rose Lawrence
Joan Blondell
Nick Gardella
Victor Jory
Released by Warner Brothers | Directed By Lloyd Bacon

Proof That It’s Pre-Code

  • Early on, Flicker Hayes (Cagney) agrees to rob a safe filled with junk and “nose candy.”
  • Rose Lawerence (Blondell) plays a prostitute who decides to marry a kindly sailor named Nick (Jory). Because Blondell’s character is clearly a prostitute (who may or may not sleep with Cagney’s character at several points in the picture), the movie ran into censorship issues.

He Was Her Man: She Was Shortchanged

“And suddenly I knew if nothing else meant anything in the world to me but you, that was the answer. The only one that mattered.”

On July 4th a few weeks back, my dad called me up on the phone. “I turned on TCM and guess what movie was on?”

Yankee Doodle Dandy,” I said immediately. It was something above an educated guess since the film had been a staple in the house since my teen years. My dad loves it and brings it up practically any time we talk about old films. To my family, James Cagney will always be that idealized version of George M. Cohan, the gutsy song and dance man who defined America in the first half of the century but never lost his humility or his loyalty. As his character said (and my father often repeats), “My father thanks you. My mother thanks you. My sister thanks you. And I thank you.”

He Was Her Man James Cagney Joan Blondell 1934 pre-Code

It’s a raw connection to his emotions that I love to see when I watch a Cagney flick. While He Was Her Man may be kind of a dud, Cagney, despite a poorly advised mustache, brings a genuine, quiet anger as he portrays a man whose life was deferred and destroyed for reasons out of his control. He has integrity, and that may be all.

The movie is Cagney’s last film of the pre-Code era and is a gangster melodrama, but instead of the intensity and anger of The Public Enemy, he’s functioning on pensiveness. He plays Flicker Hayes, a safe cracker who turns stool pigeon to get revenge on a couple of guys who betrayed him and sent him up the river for a stretch. The mob learns that he was behind the raid and plans to track him down.

Flicker flees the east coast and winds up in San Francisco. There he meets reformed prostitute Rose (Blondell) who is planning to head down the coast of California to a Portuguese fishing village. There she’ll be marrying a kindhearted but dull emigre who doesn’t care about her past. Flicker tags along with her both to find a quiet place to hide out and because he definitely has developed a thing for Rose along the way, though she’s not so sure if the sentiments are shared.

He Was Her Man James Cagney Joan Blondell 1934 pre-Code

It’s a pretty slow, dramatic slog– no wisecracks or antics from Cagney or Blondell here, just a straight drama. It’s about two people with a smudge of darkness on their souls that try to negotiate just what they want out of life in a unrelentingly hostile environment. Lots of steely eyed discussions, romantic longing, and the downbeat of realities. It’s a Depression Era film through and through, as two people come to grips with the consequences of their actions and must accept reality over their desires. As nice as those kisses and longings are, they’re victims of their own choices and there’s no going back.

He Was Her Man does show off Cagney and Blondell’s dramatic chops and showcases how far sound films had come in 7 years since Don Juan premiered. Shot in Monterey, California, the movie feels completely different than many of the backlot-bound productions that the two stars were usually stuck in. It gives the film a richer, looser feeling, but it also adds to the sombre tone, as the world feels very immediate and real.

He Was Her Man James Cagney Joan Blondell 1934 pre-Code

A lot of films like this– for example, The Purchase Price— are about the pleasures of the simplicity of rural life, but He Was Her Man never take that rosy view. Nothing seems preferable here, as life is long and hard even for the fishermen that Rose and Flicker take refuge with. The small town people are a bit more forgiving… but it feels like the movie just views them as naive. There’s no relief in small town life or values, as even a wedding is just a break from a more trudging work.

That may be my biggest fault with the movie, as it’s plot is predictable and its nihilistic tone is hard to take. If you want an example of the skill of Warner Brothers and its evolution, both in trying to tell mature stories about the Depression and life, this is a good example, especially since its take on redemption (and use of sympathetic prostitutes and gangsters) would soon be banned under the code. But it still feels like a wasted opportunity, with Cagney and Blondell treated to such wooden characters that their charisma is nullified.

He Was Her Man James Cagney Joan Blondell 1934 pre-Code

If you want to read more about Cagney and the other films he made during this era, feel free to check out my Cagney page. Cagney had a long career ahead of him, though his immediate future was laced with disputes with Warner Brothers and their labyrinthine contract system. He’d constantly battle them for better pay and better conditions, and they always acquiesced as he was one of their biggest stars and moneymakers.

Besides the aforementioned Yankee Doodle Dandy, which netted Cagney a Best Actor Oscar, his other films through the next few decades would include gangster film deconstructions like Angels With Dirty Faces and White Heat. But he didn’t pigeonhole himself, also appearing in comedies like Billy Wilder’s great One, Two, Three, musicals like The West Point Story, and even a Western called The Oklahoma Kid.

Cagney was, as the cliche goes, a true original. A poor kid growing up on the streets of New York, he was the product of tough streets and developed a determined sense of playfulness that made him a force to be reckoned with. Whether people think of him as the snarling hood smashing a grapefruit into Mae Clarke’s face, the tap dancer letting loose to the tune of “Shanghai ‘Lil”, or a smart aleck flirting with Joan Blondell (often badly), he was a loose canon that became a star on his own terms. His pre-Code films are vastly different in quality, tone, and theme, but Cagney’s versatility made them all watchable– and he is one of the defining stars of the sound era because of it.

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Trivia & Links

  • Condemned by the Catholic legion of decency and not reissued after the full enforcement of the Production Code in July 1934.
  • The Acidemic Journal sounds pretty indifferent to this one, but talk about Victor Jory’s ability to play a convincing sap.

Believe it or not, the big surprise here is Victor Jory as the chump, the kind of guy usually played by Edward G. Robinson or Ralph Bellamy. Jory might not be as good an actor as those guys, but he does have a deep voice, a looming height, the stoic poise of a stock company Sitting Bull, and gravitas that belies his then-lean years. He might have a bizarre accent and mangled fisherman syntax but he’s no rube. Cagney and Joan might talk faster and hustle more but Jory’s tortoise wins the race.

He Was Her Man James Cagney Joan Blondell 1934 pre-Code

  • TCMDB talks about Cagney’s upcoming career

Less rebellious than her co-star, she simply took what the studio offered her, though she would later confess that at the time she didn’t even know what prostitutes did. Cagney used to kid her about her innocence, calling her “the most nave sophisticate he’d ever seen in his life” […]

Providing strong support in He Was Her Man was Victor Jory, who had moved into character roles after being unsuccessfully groomed for stardom at Fox (where, admittedly, he played leading roles primarily in low-budget films). Jory’s role as the decent fisherman who almost loses Blondell to Cagney was different from the more villainous roles, like Jonas Wilkerson in Gone with the Wind (1939), for which he would be best remembered. Despite juicy roles like Wilkerson and Oberon in Warner’s all-star A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1935), he would find his best opportunities on stage.

Directed by Warner’s studio director Lloyd Bacon, the film lacks the kind of action most folks expect from a Warner’s gangster film. Its countryside by the seas location instead of the big city is also a change of pace from what is generally expected. While this is not a must see, it is worth a look and Cagney and Blondell completist will be pleased.

Awards, Accolades & Availability

  • This film is an obscure one. I wish you luck in finding it!

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Danny

Danny is a writer who lives with his lovely wife, adorable children, and geriatric yet yappy dog. He blogs at pre-code.com, a website dedicated to Hollywood films from 1930 to 1934, and can be found on Twitter @PreCodeDotCom.

7 Comments

Elizabeth Penrose · July 24, 2015 at 7:31 pm

Some time — New Year’s Eve? — I’d like to see a post from you about this overall project, how you see it, and how your perceptions have changed from the first posts. Your writing skill has definitely increased, and your insight about movies has grown.

keri · July 25, 2015 at 9:01 am

I agree with Elizabeth Penrose! It would be a neat little retrospective – especially since you cite The Purchase Price here and mentioned the other day that you think your opinion might be different than it was when you first saw it,a t the beginning of this blog.

Also, you mention The Oklahoma Kid as Cagney’s Western. When I finally saw it a few months ago, what struck me was how it hit all the notes of most of the gangster films I’d seen, just set in Oklahoma. It was a lot more interesting and watchable than most of the other Westerns I’ve seen (at least until the late 60s), perhaps because of that. It’s almost a shame that they kept Cagney typecast like that, instead of letting him explore other Western roles, like they did with his tap-dancing stuff.

    Danny · July 26, 2015 at 11:10 pm

    The blog’s 3rd anniversary is coming up in October, so that may not be a bad idea. I’ll write it down and see if anything comes of it– most of my non-review stuff either ends up going into a different page on the site or I just feel it’s not the most pleasant thing in the world and shelve it. Maybe this’ll be different.

    As with the Purchase Price, there have been a few movies I’ve really wanted to revisit– that one, Call Me Savage, Emperor Jones, etc– and really do up. But there’s always so many other things in the queue, and with my other writing activities for The Black Maria for the summer, I’m actually falling behind on my queue for reviews. Maybe whenever I catch up, I can jump back into the fray…

Judy · July 26, 2015 at 5:31 pm

It’s a while since I saw this one, but I remember feeling rather lukewarm about it and thinking the role didn’t give Cagney enough scope – although, if memory serves, I thought it was quite a good role for Blondell and gave her a chance to show more of her dramatic talent. And yeah, not much wisecracking.

    Danny · July 26, 2015 at 11:35 pm

    He Was Her Man is actually a lot of Cagney capital-A Acting, and I’m not really sure that’s what anyone really wanted out of him. Blondell does also get to act, but her part is less showy– and I think the part itself is kind of built on a conflict between happiness and past failures that never really crystallizes because she doesn’t really get to make her final choice: Cagney does it for her. I think it’s an interesting idea for the movie, and made with a genuine sense of frustration at an undeniably cold world, but it doesn’t really become satisfying.

Patricia · August 14, 2015 at 10:59 pm

I understand Cagney would grow the mustache when he was particularly annoyed at Jack Warner. Jack hated it, and to get his goat, Cagney would refuse to shave it.

    Danny · August 16, 2015 at 1:09 pm

    Ha! This is one of my favorite pieces of trivia now. Thanks!

Comments are closed.