Almost all of Cagney's early roles were that of a gangster or a fast-talking con-man. Starting in the 40's as the major studios ramped up their production of patriotic films in anticipation of war, Cagney starred in some military roles such as "The Fighting 69th" and "Captains of the Clouds". However, it was still the same old wise-cracking gangster or con-man - he was just in uniform. Don't get me wrong, I never get tired watching Cagney play these kinds of parts, but I've read that the typecasting was a source of friction between himself and Warner Brothers.

This film is a real departure from the kind of role that Cagney had grown tired of by 1934. In it he plays Biff Grimes, a dentist at the beginning of the 20th century. Biff has had a series of misfortunes heaped upon him throughout his life. To begin with his Dad (Alan Hale) is a ne'er-do-well, and he has a "friend" Hugo F. Barnstead (Jack Carson) who is always managing to get the best of him and then some. Hugo works up from small slights such as not paying back money or leaving Biff with the tab to stealing and marrying Biff's ideal girl and finally setting Biff up to take the fall in some substandard work Hugo's company has done for the city. After Biff gets out of prison after serving time for a crime he didn't commit, he has a chance to get even with Hugo -as in killing him - and make it look like an accident. Since most of the movie is told in flashback, and Cagney is playing a likable if somewhat gullible fellow who has been deeply wronged, you don't know how it will end or what he will do. The supporting cast is great in this one. Jack Carson was always playing the slippery type in Warner films around this time, and he does the job of playing Hugo with believable gusto, always making excuses for his part in Biff's predicaments. Rita Hayworth is cast as "the strawberry blonde" that Biff loses to Hugo, and Olivia De Havilland plays the girl Biff ultimately marries. She turns out to the one piece of good luck that Biff has as she is tough and loyal in a crisis.

A bittersweet romantic comedy, this is one of my favorite post-code Cagney films.

I have a soft spot for this movie, it makes me cry and it challenges me. It hovers eagle-like over other pieces of quaint, nostalgic Americana in its brilliant mise-en-scène by overlooked film-maker Raoul Walsh, its crisp and very acute script, and its wonderful acting.

James Cagney is the small-town dentist, just out of jail, having been framed by his business partner and boyhood best friend, Jack Carson. Carson married the local beauty, Rita Hayworth of the film's title, and left Cagney with Hayworth's best friend, the free-thinking, no-nonsense Olivia De Havilland. And now, after all these years, Cagney learns that Carson is on his way to his dentist's practice with a bad tooth-ache. What to do ...?

There is such pain underlying all the ebullient humor of 'The Strawberry Blonde', and as usual Walsh gets away with superlative results from mixing genres. From the first frames of the bulldog chasing the cat and the two different social environments on each side of the garden wall, on one side throwing horse-shoes, on the other playing cricket, Walsh wastes no time and is always to the point, telling his story.

Everybody in this movie is perfect. Hayworth waltzes through it all by way of her radiant looks, but Cagney surpasses himself as this charming bigot, always with a black eye to show for the numerous scrapes he gets into.

Olivia De Havilland deserves a whole chapter to herself. I doubt if she was ever better than as the tough kooky, Amy, who never tires of preaching women's lib to Hayworth's Virginia ("I refuse to listen to advanced ideas!"). "What did we come for if not to be trifled with?", she asks, indignantly, of Virginia, seated as they are on the bench in the park, waiting for their beaus. She calls marriage "an institution started by the cavemen and endorsed by florists and jewelers" and insists on her right to pick up men by winking at them. De Havilland is hilarious, and you also notice the vulnerability beneath the feminist swagger.

Not everybody will care for 'The Strawberry Blonde'. If you only give it a superficial look, you will find it dated and cutesy, whereas it is everything but.

The Strawberry Blonde was the second and best version of this film and gives James Cagney one of his best screen roles. This version was sandwiched in between a 1933 version and a 1948 musical version under its original title of One Sunday Afternoon.

Most people think of James Cagney as the sharp, know it all from the city streets. He's certainly played that part often enough especially in his early days at Warner Brothers. But there was a softer, more nostalgic side to Cagney and it comes out in films like this one, Johnny Come Lately, and The Time of Your Life. And of course his most famous piece of turn of the last century nostalgia, Yankee Doodle Dandy.

Part of Strawberry Blonde's charm is the nice musical background of turn of the last century popular music. Makes you feel that you really are back in the New York City of Tammany Hall. In fact some aside references to Tammany are in the script.

The plot is simple, Cagney and Jack Carson are after the same woman, the glamorous Strawberry Blonde played by Rita Hayworth. She's of course got a plain jane girlfriend in Olivia DeHavilland.

One unusual twist for Cagney is that normally he's the con man in films. Here he's the butt for all of Jack Carson's cons. Some of them have tragic results for Cagney.

The ending is sweet however for both Cagney and DeHavilland. Lots of truth in that old adage about being careful what you wish for.