James Cagney and Joan Blondell play hotel employees who team up as con-artists in Blonde Crazy (1931), directed by Roy Del Ruth. While immensely enjoyable in their own ways, neither of these films exploit the lively dynamic between Blondell and Cagney as well as Blonde Crazy. He Was Her Man is a surprisingly downbeat slice-of-life character study that qualifies as a tragedy in its story of a former prostitute engaged to marry an immigrant fisherman (Victor Jory) and the two-bit gangster (Cagney with an unbecoming moustache) who comes into her life and almost wrecks her last shot at happiness. It’s true that Joan and Jimmy were eventually teamed again romantically in Footlight Parade (1933) and He Was Her Man (1934) but in the former picture she is reduced to playing his faithful, loving but mostly ignored secretary until the climax when she is responsible for his big success and he rewards her with a marriage proposal and brief peck on the lips. In an unforeseen twist, Blondell ends up falling in love with Cagney’s competitive younger brother Eddie (Eric Linden) and further aggravates a riff between them, incurring Jimmy’s wrath – their confrontation scene is one of the strongest in the picture but for the most part Blondell is relegated to the sidelines here. Blondell plays the practical, wisecracking best friend of Ann Dvorak who tries to discourage her from wasting her time on Cagney’s inattentive race car driver. ![]() Their next assignment together was Howard Hawks’s The Crowd Roars (1932) but they weren’t paired romantically in this one either. rushed them into other productions without taking any time to nurture and develop Blondell & Cagney as a screen team (this was long before post-screening marketing surveys). They are a potent, sizzling combo in this down and dirty tale of two grifters (one unrepentant, the other reluctant) and it should have elevated them to the top tier of beloved screen couples but it didn’t…possibly because the film, directed by Roy Del Ruth, was seen at the time as a standard studio programmer and no more than that despite its merits. It wasn’t until their fourth film, Blonde Crazy, that the two actors were front and center as the leading couple and top billed together on the marquee. ![]() In the latter gangster drama, Blondell has a minor role as the wife of Matt Doyle (Edward Woods), who is the title character’s best friend. In their next two films together, William Wellman’s Other Men’s Women (1931) and The Public Enemy (1931), Joan and Jimmy only share one scene together in the former (where they appear with different dance partners in a hotel ballroom). ![]() James Cagney (left), Joan Blondell and Edward Woods appear in a publicity photo for The Public Enemy (1931).
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