Each Dawn I Die (1939)

This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

Ok... Let's be honest. It cannot be the best movie but is quite enjoyable. The movie has the potential to develop a great plot for future movies

Directed by William Keighley, with a screenplay written by Warren Duff and Norman Reilly Raine, this drama features James Cagney, George Raft, and Jane Bryan (among others). What begins as a fairly interesting story becomes rather muddled and unbelievable toward its end, though it's definitely NOT formulaic. However, there's no faulting the acting whether it's Cagney's intensity, Bryan's commitment, or Raft's tough guy persona.Cagney is a newspaper writer who upsets the wrong people as he's trying to expose graft and corruption linked to some local officials (Thurston Hall, and Victor Jory). So, he's knocked on the head and put in a runaway automobile with a broken bottle of alcohol. The car runs into another car which turns over and bursts into flames, killing its three young occupants. Cagney is therefore wrongly accused and sent to the "big house" for 1-20 years. Bryan plays his girlfriend (Selmer Jackson appears briefly & uncredited as his editor) who works to get him out of prison.On the way to prison, Cagney meets gang leader Raft, who has a grudge against another tough on the inside named Limpy (Joe Downing). Max Rosenbloom plays Red, one of Raft's gang who's also in prison; Clay Clement plays Raft's lawyer. George Bancroft plays the honest Warden Armstrong, perhaps the fourth biggest role in the film; Willard Robertson and John Wray play tough guards who aren't above prisoner abuse. Stanley Ridges, Edward Pawley, and Paul Hurst play other convicts.Cagney looks the other way while Raft knifes Limpy, though he later denies doing it. After Bryan visits Cagney in prison, and brings his mother (Emma Dunn), Cagney agrees to help Raft escape. When Raft escapes, because Cagney had alerted his press friends to be ready for it, Cagney ends up having to go to "the hole" where he goes somewhat crazy for the injustice of it all. Because he won't admit to helping Raft, Bryan's appeal to Raft, now on the outside, for assistance is heard loud and clear. In an effort to feel like a "square guy" for once, like Cagney, Raft works to clear the newspaperman which leads to him actually giving himself up to get back into prison in order to locate Polecat (Alan Baxter), a con that had been one of Limpy's gang. Obviously it's at this point where the believability of the plot is lost.

THIS IS ONE of those pictures that has been a part of the TV late movie scene for years. It was no doubt an item that Warner Brothers licensed to Associated Artists Productions in the early 1950's as a part of their own "Lend-Lease" program to the upstart television industry. As such, lumped ion with so many other titles, it is perhaps, somewhat under-appreciated.IN SUMMARIZING THE picture, what we have here is a sort of pulp story of the innocent being framed beyond a shadow of a doubt and how the "good" tough guy influences those less than model citizens encountered in the State Pen. (no Schultz, not Penn State!) THE NEARLY IMPOSSIBLE task of clearing his own name by Mr. James Cagney's character, the somewhat clichéd crusading newspaperman, provides us with the bulk of the story. His job is rendered even more difficult by his environment in the State's "Big House"; as his framed offense of vehicular homicide is so widely known to the public as to afford him absolutely no sympathy. Besides, as we know, just about everyone in the big house says they were framed.ENTER THE TRULY hardened bad guy in the person of Mr. George Raft. He is introduced as the convict who just happens to be handcuffed to Cagney on the prison train. As it turns out, he is a sort of modern day St. Dismas*, as his highly cynical, world weary persona is so moved by Cagney's actions as to basically sacrifice his own life for him.IN THE PTOCESS of the failed attempt, several others are saved, including 'Fargo Red', a somewhat dim-witted Con; as portrayed by 'Slapsie' Maxie Rosenblum.IT IS OUR humble opinion that EACH DAWN I DIE should be considered in a much more serious light than it currently has; if only for one word and virtue that moves its story along. And that word, friend Schultz, is REDEMPTION.NOTE: * St. Dismas is the name given by tradition to the man known as "The Good Thief" in Christian, New Testament scripture. He is one of the two men who were crucified along with Jesus. He is the man who stated that while the two of them were deserving of their deaths ob the cross, Jesus was not. Our Lord told him, "Today you will be with me in Paradise."

Although innocent, reporter Frank Ross (James Cagney) is found guilty of murder and is sent to jail. While his friends at the newspaper try to find out who framed him, Frank gets hardened by prison life and his optimism turns into bitterness. He meets fellow-inmate Stacey (George Raft) and they decide to help each other.Rather than be the good guy ("G Men") or the bad guy ("Public Enemy"), here we have Cagney as an innocent newspaper reporter framed and then sent to prison, where he becomes a little bit hardened. Maybe not quite a bad guy, but not really the good guy, either. It is a nice transformation, and an interesting commentary on prison life.I am not very familiar with George Raft (I actually know him more from reading Mafia history than from film), but if he is like he is here in other films, I need to see more George Raft.

Released in the summer of 1939, near the tail end of a decade's worth of hugely popular and influential gangster films from Warner Brothers, the studio's "Each Dawn I Die" is perhaps best remembered today for one reason: It is the only film to feature James Cagney and George Raft as costars. Raft HAD appeared in cameo parts in the 1932 Cagney films "Taxi!" and "Winner Take All," but those roles were nothing compared to the part he enjoyed in "Each Dawn I Die," in which he gets to completely dominate the usually irrepressible Cagney, and even emerge as the hero of the film. Rapidly paced and ultimately fairly moving, the film packs quite a bit of action and story into its 92 minutes, did justifiably great business at the box office, and remains yet another gem from "Hollywood's greatest year."In the film, Cagney plays an investigative newspaper reporter named Frank Ross. After writing a story about the town's crooked D.A., Ross is knocked out by thugs, splashed with booze, and set behind the wheel of a moving car. Three people are killed in the resultant smash-up, and Ross, effectively framed, is sent to the Rocky Point Penitentiary, doing "one to 20 years" for vehicular manslaughter. In the prison, he is assigned to hard labor in the twine-making factory, where he encounters "Hood" Stacey (Raft), a lifer with whom he bonds. To make a long story short (and "EDID" DOES feature a rather complex plot; this is a prison film with more on its mind than the usual big-house set pieces), Ross actively abets in Stacey's escape from the "Graybar Hotel," so that Stacey might use his underworld connections to prove Ross' innocence. But is there really honor among thieves, and will Ross be released before his imprisonment transforms him for the worse? In an increasingly suspenseful story line (based on the novel by Jerome Odlum), these are the main questions that come to the fore....Fans of Cagney's cocky, pugnacious tough-guy roles of the 1930s may be a bit surprised at how "EDID" spools out. His Frank Ross character may start out that way, but life at Rocky Point has a way of finding the cracking point of even the sturdiest nuts. Indeed, Cagney's sobbing breakdown before the parole board is simply stunning, and audiences would have to wait a full decade to see Cagney do a similar prison freakout scene of such affecting power (I am referring, of course, to Cody Jarrett going bonkers in the mess hall, in 1949's immortal "White Heat"). Cagney is aces in the film, despite playing the more passive role; his Frank Ross suffers terribly while doing time, and the viewer wonders if he will ever emerge the same man that he was at the film's opening, or become toughened and animalized, as was the case with Paul Muni's James Allen character in the superb Warners film "I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang" (1932). Raft, surprisingly, matches Cagney scene for scene, and I only say "surprisingly" because Raft is apparently held in low esteem, in many quarters, for his thespian chops. But he is just terrific here, and his real-life association with gangsters gives him an air of verisimilitude that easily brings him up to Cagney's level. Cucumber cool, he easily emerges as the film's most admirable and resourceful character (viewers would have to wait a full 20 years to see Raft essay an equally likable gangster role, as Spats Columbo, in "Some Like it Hot"), while the growing admiration and friendship between the two men is very much the heart and soul of this picture. Cagney, a product of NYC's Lower East Side, and Raft, who was raised in NYC's Hell's Kitchen, make a marvelous team in this, their only real pairing. They are hugely abetted by a roster of great supporting actors, including pretty Jane Bryan as Cagney's sweetie; George Bancroft as the ineffectual warden; Maxie Rosenbloom as a fellow convict, who gives the film what little humor it possesses; and the dependably hissable Victor Jory as the crooked assistant D.A. and later, stunningly, the head man at Ross' parole hearing. Director William Keighley, who had worked with Cagney before, on 1935's "'G' Men," and who would go on to work with him three more times (on 1940's "The Fighting 69th" and "Torrid Zone" and 1941's "The Bride Came C.O.D."), fills his frame with constant movement, utilizes effective close-ups, and keeps the action moving at a rapid clip. The dialogue in the film is as rat-a-tat-tat as the rapid-fire machine guns that the National Guard utilizes in the film's (seemingly obligatory) riot sequence, and a repeat viewing may be necessary to fully capture it all (it was for me, anyway). Culminating with an explosive finale in which every character gets pretty much what he deserves (at least, in accordance with the Production Code of the time!), "Each Dawn I Die" is a hugely satisfying affair, and a great success for everyone involved in it.