HE WAS HER MAN

 

HE WAS HER MAN is the seventh and final Warner Bros. film in which both James Cagney and Joan Blondell appeared. It is an unusual farewell to their partnership, since both performers go against their expected wisecracking personas. 

James Cagney plays Flicker Hayes, a safecracker who has just gotten out of prison. A couple of his old underworld comrades want Flicker to do a job for them, and after some haggling, he accepts--but Hayes is convinced that these men were the reason why he wound up in the stir, so he turns informer and tells the police about the plot. The cops arrive right before the burglary takes place, and Flicker gets away--but a police officer is killed in an ensuing shootout. The cop killer gets the chair, and his confederates decide to track Flicker down in order to get revenge. Flicker takes off to San Francisco, where he encounters down-on-her-luck Rose (Joan Blondell). The young woman has a marriage proposal from an immigrant fisherman named Nick Gardella (Victor Jory), but she doesn't have the money to go down the coast to meet up with him. Flicker enables her to take the trip, and he accompanies her after he finds out that Nick lives in a remote small town. Flicker and Rose grow more attracted to each other, much to the consternation of the latter, who feels guilty for having promised Nick that she will be his wife. As Flicker and Rose try to figure out how to deal with their situation, a couple of hoods have discovered where Hayes is, and are wasting no time getting to him. 

Despite the criminal subplot of HE WAS HER MAN, the movie has very little in common with the typical snappy, fast-paced urban based Warner Pre-Codes. Much of the action takes place in the small fishing village where Nick Gardella lives, and James Cagney and Joan Blondell are much more subdued and restrained here. It's as if Warners were giving two of their biggest stars a chance to do something different. Cagney's Flicker still has some cockiness about him, but he's less brash, and the actor even speaks slower than normal. Joan Blondell doesn't get to use her normal sarcastic comebacks or tough dame attitude--her Rose is sad and thoughtful, constantly worried about whether she should take off with Flicker or keep her promise to the kindhearted Nick. (Cinematographer George Barnes gives Blondell several soulful closeups, as well he should, as he and the actress were married at the time this film was made.) 

Earlier this summer I wrote a blog post on the film THEY KNEW WHAT THEY WANTED, and while watching HE WAS HER MAN it became obvious both movies have much in common. Both stories deal with a woman searching for a better life who agrees to move to rural California and marry a kind immigrant who she barely knows. Both movies even share a pre-wedding festival. HE WAS HER MAN has the advantage of having James Cagney, but he constantly defies expectations in it. He wears a small mustache, and when he goes on the run, the viewer assumes he will shave it off--but he doesn't. (Was the mustache a symbol that this isn't the typical Cagney characterization?) One is so used to Cagney taking the bull by the horns and getting what he wants due to the force of his personality that it's off-putting to see how Flicker deals with things. The ending is very surprising--I'm sure Cagney fans who saw this movie back in 1934 were probably shaking their heads. 

Nearly every time I've seen Victor Jory in a film he's a bad guy, so it's somewhat hard to see him as the earnest, hard-working and well-meaning Nick. (Nick is supposed to be Portuguese, but Jory's affected broken English makes the man seem Italian.) Harold Huber and Russell Hopton are the hard-boiled types who track down Nick, and Frank Craven plays a sneaky informer. Veteran Warners director Lloyd Bacon gets a lot of the rural village setting. 

HE WAS HER MAN gives James Cagney and Joan Blondell a chance to show off their acting range--out of all the movies the two both appeared in, this one definitely sticks out. The question is--is this the type of picture Cagney and Blondell fans really want to see them in?