Torrid Zone (1940)

I wanted to but couldn't!

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

It is a whirlwind of delight --- attractive actors, stunning couture, spectacular sets and outrageous parties.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

"Torrid Zone" was the final film with real life friends, James Cagney and Pat O' Brien. They made several memorable films together for the studio, "Angels With Dirty Faces" being the best. The above is a light-hearted and amusing film about the various struggles on a Mexican plantation. The script is fairly standard but the cast really a lot to the screenplay by giving good performances and demonstrating a flair for light comedy. Ann Sheridan is a very good leading lady for James Cagney. She plays a card shark and nightclub singer who is on the run. They and O' Brien play off each other to amusing effect. The gunfight scenes add a bit to the proceedings as well.Released in 1940, "Torrid Zone" probably did respectable business at the box office.

Even in comparison to today, when films shoot on location, Warner Brothers' tropical set looks like the tropics. It's not distracting; I'm thinking of the obvious painted backdrop in the last scene of "Treasure Island." In 1940's "Torrid Zone," Pat O'Brien is Steve Case, who manages the Banana Company in the Caribbean. His life has been no game since his co-worker, Nick Butler (Cagney) left to take a job in Chicago and continually sends him mocking telegrams - collect.He needs Nick to take over one of the plantations, so he makes a deal with him - just work for two weeks. Nick agrees; the money will be useful.There are also troubles with the rebel Rosario (George Tobias), who is on a hunger strike. The prison is afraid that he'll die before they can shoot him. Steve says, then just shoot him now. But Rosario escapes.Then there is Lee Donley, an earthy, sexy nightclub singer whom Steve wants on a ship bound for the U.S. She doesn't want to go and tells Steve "The stork who brought you must have been a vulture." Lee meets Nick, and sparks fly. Nick meanwhile has a flirtation with the wife Gloria (Helen Vinson) of a former manager Bob Anderson (Jerome Cowan). Lee ends up staying at their house and walks in on a kiss between Nick and the wife. There's a lit cigarette on the floor. Lee picks it up. "I believe Chicago fire started in a very similar manner," she says. "The Chicago fire was started by a cow," an aggravated Gloria says. Lee remarks, "History repeats itself." You just can't beat dialogue like that, and that's one of the things that makes "Torrid Zone" so much fun. Cagney, O'Brien, and Sheridan are all known commodities, with Sheridan at the top of her game, sparring with both Cagney and O'Brien, looking great, and doing her own singing. When she has to be serious and heartbroken, she is.Even Rosario's impending death is handled with some humor.Very good and recommended, a real treat from Warners.

This was the final film for James Cagney and Pat O'Brien who in my opinion invented the buddy film. O'Brien would be leaving Warner Brothers the following year and the two of them would not get together in another film until Ragtime in 1981 in which they both had small parts.It's a typical fast paced comedy for both of them, they were incapable of doing anything else together. O'Brien slowed down when he was in a clerical collar and Cagney when he was doing a nostalgic film, but together the lines go at light speed. Except when Ann Sheridan is concerned. Director Bill Keighley always slowed the pace for Sheridan because he didn't want anyone to miss some of her tart sayings. She has some of the best lines ever in her career. Typical being when she tells O'Brien that the stork that brought him must have been a vulture. Or when she's constantly one upping Helen Vinson who made a career of playing the other woman.O'Brien is the hardnosed manager of a tropical fruit company and he's in big trouble because a local Sandinista type bandit leader, George Tobias, is wrecking his operations. Another distraction is Ann Sheridan whose redheaded beauty he figures is too much of a distraction to the men where redheads are scarce. Notice how O'Brien tells the local authorities what to do. More truth than humor in that situation.He's desperate enough to hire back his number one troubleshooter James Cagney who gets the job done, but always gets himself in a jackpot where women are concerned. He's taken a fancy to Sheridan and she him.A couple of other reviewers have pointed out the obvious similarities between this and The Front Page. The first film version of that classic play is the one where Pat O'Brien made his screen debut as the ace reporter. However he did it on Broadway in the role of the editor which he's playing here.Perhaps this might be better described as another version of His Girl Friday. I can't say remake because both films came out at the same time. Sheridan comes off the same way as Rosalind Russell does in His Girl Friday, but Keighley also wants to accent her sensuality as well as her sharp tongue. He succeeds admirably because no woman in their previous films quite put off both Cagney and O'Brien the way Sheridan does.The woman sure had oomph.

This remake of "The Front Page" is an improvement, as far as I'm concerned. The combination of Wald/Macaulay and the Warner Brothers stock company is sure-fire ("They Drive By Night"!) Ann Sheridan is vivacious as a trodden-upon showgirl, singing "My Caballero" and trading vicious quips with the scheming O'Brien and the dynamic Cagney. Special mention must go to George Tobias, one of the funniest character actors of the studio age, who plays Rosario, the guerilla leader sentenced to death "just because I shoot a man..."