The Strawberry Blonde *** (1941, James Cagney, Olivia de Havilland, Rita Hayworth, Alan Hale Sr, Jack Carson) – Classic Movie Review 12,477

The pleasing 1941 romantic film The Strawberry Blonde stars James Cagney, Olivia de Havilland, Rita Hayworth. Dentist Biff Grimes (Cagney)’s unrequited love for society girl Virginia Brush (Hayworth) in the 1890s is told in flashback with songs of the era.

Director Raoul Walsh’s 1941 film The Strawberry Blonde stars James Cagney, Olivia de Havilland and Rita Hayworth, and features Alan Hale Sr, Jack Carson, and George Tobias.

The sentimental tale of dentist Biff Grimes (James Cagney)’s unrequited love for gold-digger strawberry-blonde society girl Virginia Brush (Rita Hayworth) in the 1890s is told in flashback in this pleasing, nostalgic romantic comedy set in New York City at the turn of the last century, i e around 1900.

Winsome Olivia de Havilland as Virginia’s less-glamorous best friend Amy Lind, vibrant Rita Hayworth, Alan Hale Sr as Cagney’s father ‘Old Man’ Grimes, and Jack Carson as Cagney’s old partner pal Hugo Barnstead help a dynamic Cagney to keep it bouncing along.

Heinz Roemheld’s music was Oscar nominated for the 1941 Academy Award for Best Scoring of a Musical Picture and contributes greatly to the atmosphere and rhythm of the film. It features songs from around 1900 such as ‘The Band Played On’, ‘Bill Bailey’, ‘Meet Me in St Louis’, ‘Wait Till The Sun Shines Nellie’ and ‘Love Me and the World Is Mine’.

Nan Wynn provides Rita Hayworth’s singing voice (uncredited).

It is a remake of Gary Cooper’s 1933 vehicle One Sunday Afternoon, under which title director Walsh remade it again as a musical in 1948.

Cagney found himself getting slotted into tough guy parts again and by 1940, he ‘wanted a nostalgic part – any part – to take him away from the gangsters he was now loath to play’.

One Sunday Afternoon started in 1933 as a hit Broadway play by James Hagan, but when Paramount adapted it later that year for Gary Cooper, it was the only real flop of his career and the only one of his films to lose money. But Cagney’s problem with it was that it was a remake, while Jack Warner knew it needed ‘complete retooling’. He told his production head Hal B Wallis to watch the Cooper film, saying: ‘It will be hard to stay through the entire running of the picture, but do this so you will know what not to do.’

The cast are James Cagney as T. L. ‘Biff’ Grimes, Olivia de Havilland as Amy Lind, Rita Hayworth as Virginia Brush, Alan Hale Sr as William ‘Old Man’ Grimes, Jack Carson as Hugo Barnstead, George Tobias as Nicholas Pappalas, Una O’Connor as Mrs. Timothy Mulcahey, George Reeves as Harold, Lucile Fairbanks as Harold’s girlfriend, Edward McNamara as Big Joe, Helen Lynd as Josephine, Herbert Heywood as Toby, Russell Hicks as Treadway, Frank Mayo as Policeman, Jack Mower as Streetcleaner, Peter Ashley, Roy Gordon, Tim Ryan, Dick Wessell, and Wade Boteler.

© Derek Winnert 2023 – Classic Movie Review 12,477

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