The style of put-‘em-up scuffles erupting from time to time in The Strawberry Blonde, directed by Raoul Walsh, is a glove-like fit for the belligerent character assigned to the impressive, balletic, and pent-up James Cagney, who had a background as a dancer segueing into his film career that shows in his powerful, tightly coiled movements. That character, Biff Grimes, is supposed to be a dentist in turn-of-the-century New York ready at any moment to fling himself into a fight as if to avenge the last scraps of his dwindling dignity—but we don’t really believe it. This man is neither lover nor dentist. He’s a fighter.
A street fighter to be exact, a rough wit, and his stint in prison following the consequences of his post as a financial fall guy for his friend’s business—some friend, I say—serves as his dental apprenticeship. He comes out the other side with a new profession, a wife who loves him, and a seething desire to revenge himself against this friend of his, Hugo, whose betrayals began years ago with a ditzy and conventional woman played by Rita Hayworth. And Biff had dibs.
This, in so many words, is the background of story to an action-packed foreground of movement, vigor, and liveliness following Cagney like a python slithering in the tall grass. He is simply unmissable. And these pseudo-fights of the trigger-happy Biff serve only to bring out the physical presence of the actor behind him, giving him many chances to release what we suspect is something dark and dangerous, but funneled toward an end determined by his goodness of heart.
It’s an uneasy balance in a man who has to shift between murderous bloodlust and a certain capacity for reflection and nobility, and he almost embodies the traits of a reformed villain in a comic book, someone still fighting vainly to keep his own nature in line. This might explain why his performance in The Strawberry Blonde is impressive: he’s able to convince us that his good and noble qualities somehow trump his baser and more vicious ones, and the result at the conclusion of the story is a character with flaws and failures, but also with heart and nobility.
And that final fight before he returns with a black eye, his wife reproving but then inspirited as they hear the band begin their song, is like the ultimate testament of the delicate balance of this character justifying not only why we love Biff, but why we love James Cagney, and why he remains to this day one of the greatest actors of the twentieth century.
He’s a flawed and rough-and-tumble Everyman who can be unapologetic in the extreme, and he hasn’t really changed in his essence—but he has evolved in some way. He reflects with his unique style and vigor what we all want from time to time, as life demands it: to be authentic and true to ourselves, while also being better than we were. From James Cagney, I’ve now discovered that the two aren’t always mutually exclusive.
