The Bride Came C.O.D.

The Bride Came C.O.D. (William Keighley, 1941) Supposedly, the idea was that Cagney wanted to do something lighter than his typical tough-guy gangster act, brought in his brother to produce, hired the sharp twins-writing team of Julius and Philip Epstein and started casting about for the romantic lead to play opposite him. Ann Sheridan, Ginger Rogers, Rosalind Russell, and Olivia de Havilland were all in the mix at some point. But, somehow, Bette Davis got the part. Evidently, she wanted a change of pace from her dramatic roles and she and Cagney got on famously making Jimmy the Gent seven years earlier, so...why not?

 

But, did anybody consider the trouble that might come from putting the two biggest rabble-rousers on the Warner lot starring together in the same movie? One or two of the studio brothers might have been asleep at the switch, but the film did get made with neither of the stars being "suspended" but up-staged by some of the wiliest character actors ever in supporting roles.

The story is alarmingly close to Capra's It Happened One Night: A socialite, Joan Winfield (Davis) is sand-bagged with a marriage proposal in front of a night-club audience by her bandleader boyfriend, Allan Brice (Jack Carson), who is prodded into making the announcement by gossip columnist (Stuart Erwin) under deadline. Under pressure, she agrees, but California having a 72 hour waiting period before they can get hitched creates a problem. It's decided—by the scandal-monger—that they can fly to Vegas to tie the knot sooner. When her father (the booming Eugene Pallette) finds out he's apoplectic; he doesn't want the wedding to go through at all!

That's where cash-strapped pilot Steve Collins (Cagney) makes a landing in this mess. He's about to have his plane repo'd, but makes a deal with "Pater" Lucius K. Winfield to make a unscheduled stop from Las Vegas to Amarillo, Texas (where the father will pick her up), but with Joan only and it's been negotiated for his standard freight rate—$10 a pound. When the wedding party shows up at the local air-strip, the bridegroom-to-be and the mouth-piece are coaxed off the plane by Collins' mechanic Pee Wee (George Tobias, remembered best as neighbor Mr. Kravitz on the "Bewitched" TV series) and the pilot takes off with the prospective bride much to her protest. Technically, it's kidnapping, even if it's for hire.

But, Joan is a fierce fighter and once she gets ahold of a parachute, she'd determined to jump out of the plane en route, foiled by Collins banking the plane and throwing her—repeatedly—back into the cabin. But, all that maneuvering causes the plane to stall, and they end up crashing in the desert, close to the ghost-town of Bonanza that had sprung up around the old Enterprise mine. Hilarity ensues. The comedy is broad, bordering on slapstick, what with prat-falls and Joan constantly falling into cactus plants ("Oh, there must be something magnetic to a cactus that attracts me right to it...or vice versa!"). And Davis plays it broadly, trying to eke out the last drop of humor from any given situation...while Cagney just reacts to what she's doing, with either exaggerated laughter or venom.

In Bonanza, things get more complicated, what with search-parties looking for the pair under the command of William Frawley, and the town's only existing citizen (Harry Davenport) a mass of eccentricities and a way of changing sides at the drop of a plot-point. Soon, Collins is in jail, Joan goes on a wild desert ride in a flivver, and both end up lost in that abandoned mine, all the while waiting for either the fiancee or the father or both to show up before anything can get resolved. Cagney's character remains a bit stalwart, but Davis' changes her mind every ten minutes of movie-time. Things are further confounded with the minutiae of state law, matrimonial provisions, and some dubious reverse psychology. If everything was under federal law things would be a lot simpler, but the plot wouldn't go anywhere. State laws are funnier and more suited for comedy.

The movie was popular when it came out, and, as something changes every few minutes, one can see why audiences found it entertaining. And while Davis is out of her element, she is amusing, and Cagney doesn't fall easy victim to caricature until his laughing scenes. The only one who really disliked the film, in fact, was Davis, who didn't like the script, hated the desert heat of Death Valley, and was no fan of cactus, as she evidently did fall into one while filming. It's a light-weight vehicle pushed by two powerful steam-engines, so it's a bit of a mismatch. But, seeing the two play off each other rather seamlessly is the film's greatest strengths.

Roxie Hart

Roxie Hart (William Wellman, 1942) Think of it as Chicago without the music and dancing (except for a couple numbers), because that's exactly what it is. This version, adapted (by Nunnally Johnson and Ben Hecht,) from the play and 1927 movie version called Chicago, tells the same story of a dancer, Roxie Hart (Ginger Rogers) near the end of her career, who decides to take the rap for the murder of booking agent Fred Casely, found dead in Roxie's apartment. Roxie didn't do it (a difference from the other versions, thanks to the Production Code), but like a certain hotel developer, when things are sagging somewhat, you should do something really crazy to get attention.

The movie is done in flashback in a bar (one run by William Frawley) that's a hangout for newsies. "The new kid" (Ted North) is working a murder investigation and is full of stories. In an ink-stained version of "Can You Top This?" veteran newsman Homer Howard (George Montgomery) tells him the story to end all bets—a murder case he covered in 1927.

George Montgomery serves as the Teller of the Tale at a bar frequented by newsies.

He tells the story of Roxie Hart and how, when the agent is murdered in the Hart apartment (presumably by her husband as the police suspect), she is persuaded to "takes the fall" because a woman would never be convicted of murder in Chicago. Besides, any publicity is good publicity. Her husband, Amos (George Chandler) hires courtroom sheister Billy Flynn (Adolphe Menjou) to defend Roxie by using the press to gain sympathy, depict her as a weak woman who acted in self-defense...and show a lot of leg to the all-male jury.

Roxie enjoys the headlines and the attention, confident that she'll never hang. But, then disaster strikes—another woman is convicted of a horrible crime and calls are made to be less lenient on female criminals and it knocks Roxie out of the headlines. The only thing to do is up the ante with more salaciousness and hearts and flowers.

For Rogers, who, after letting Astaire lead for most of her career, it was another opportunity to do something a little different and show off her comedy and acting gifts. With Roxie Hart, she takes a big gamble—looking unsympathetic to the audience. Roxie Hart is a deeply, cynical black comedy with a lot of laughs (it made Stanley Kubrick's "Top Ten Favorite Films" in 1963) and an assured directorial hand by veteran director William "Wild Bill" Wellman (who'd already straddled many genres with The Public Enemy, Nothing Sacred, A Star is Born, Beau Geste, and the first "Best Picture" Oscar winner, Wings). Its stinging farcical tone still resonates—enough for Bob Fosse to update it in 1975, where the unholy marriage of justice, news-mongering, and fame felt remarkably contemporary.

But, even the resultant musical doesn't diminish the sense of raucous, crass fun in this film version of Roxie Hart.

In 1963, when asked by Cinema Magazine what his favorite films were, director Stanley Kubrick chose these:

I Vitelloni (Federico Fellini, 1953) 
Wild Strawberries (Ingmar Bergman, 1958) 
Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941) 
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (John Huston, 1948)
City Lights (Charles Chaplin, 1931)
Henry V (Laurence Olivier, 1945)
La Notte (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1961)
The Bank Dick (W.C. Fields, 1940)
Roxie Hart (William Wellman, 1942) Note: at one point, he said this was his favorite film
Hell’s Angels (Howard Hughes, 1930)