Here Comes the Navy (1934)

People are voting emotionally.

Just perfect...

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

With the birth of the production code, the fun pre-code frolics of Cagney and Joan Blondell were at an end. Thus Warner Brothers came up with a new dynamic screen team - James Cagney and Pat O'Brien. This is the first of the films they did together. Prior to the production code, O'Brien often played the same kind of roles that Cagney played - the fast-talking smart guy with big ideas and a big dose of attitude. Since you can't have two of these in the same picture, O'Brien was generally promoted to being the more traditionally respectable of the two in their films together, and such is the case here.The film starts with construction worker Chesty O'Conner (James Cagney) and naval officer Biff Martin (Pat O'Brien) trading at first verbal barbs and then punches. Chesty gets fired from his job because of the time he takes off recovering from the fight, and decides to go another round with Biff. Unfortunately, Biff's ship has put out to sea, so Chesty thinks the solution is to join the navy and get assigned to Biff's ship. He actually does wind up on Biff's ship, but soon learns he can't take to punching out officers whenever the mood strikes him. To complicate matters, Chesty takes a shine to Biff's sister, Dorothy (Gloria Stuart), and this just inflames matters more as Biff wants his sister to have nothing to do with Chesty. Warner contract player Frank McHugh provides the comic relief as Droopy Mullins, Chesty's stalwart friend and shipmate.The film works better than most made right after the production code, primarily because the teaming of Cagney and O'Brien worked so well. By turning down the volume a bit on O'Brien's screen sauciness and turning up the volume on Cagney's, the two play off of each other's dynamism perfectly. This film is also interesting for historical reasons - it was filmed on and around the U.S.S. Arizona, one of the ships that sank at Pearl Harbor seven years after this film was made.

For me, it's always cool to come away from a picture with something that was entirely unexpected. In the case of "Here Comes The Navy", I literally did a jump in my seat to see and hear mention of the U.S.S. Arizona, the famed battleship that went down during the infamous Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor that brought our country into World War II. I had only seen this huge ship before in documentary footage covering that historical event, so it was a rare treat to see aspects of daily routine occurring aboard ship during the film's run.The other treat of course, is catching Jimmy Cagney and Pat O'Brien in the first of their many team-ups for First National/Warner Brothers. You know, I still can't get over the fact that some of their best work together took place over seventy years ago! In this one, the duo is at odds with each other, as Cagney's character Chesty O'Connor, signs up for a stint in the Navy just to get aboard the ship commanded by his nemesis Biff Martin (O'Brien). There's not a whole lot of credibility to the timing and coincidence necessary for that particular circumstance to take place, but that's no problem for the movies. Complicating matters further, wouldn't you know, is that Martin has a sister (Gloria Stuart) that Chesty goes for, so right there you've got the makings for an even more heated rivalry.Speaking of which, that seemed to be a common plot element in many of the early Warner Brothers flicks of the era. In the 1937 prison movie "San Quentin", inmate Humphrey Bogart had a sister that the warden fell for, thereby giving the impression that Bogey's character was getting preferential treatment. The warden - Pat O'Brien! You really have to catch one of Cagney's early films to get a sense of where all that enormous talent came from. This picture offers a dance scene, part of the 'Iron Workers' Frolic', that allows Cagney to strut his fancy footwork. I got a kick out of the poster advertising the dance contest; I've never seen one before that promoted 'Big Doings'! Just another one of the visual treats you can appreciate from a picture from the 1930's. Another was catching Guinn 'Big Boy' Williams as the dance floor manager looking almost impossibly young, but in checking, I was shocked to learn that by the time of this movie's release, he had already been in over eighty pictures!!! Learning something new every day.Anyway, story wise, you won't find anything resembling an Oscar contender here, but you can still have some fun with this first Cagney/O'Brien team up. Character actor Frank McHugh, a frequent Cagney supporter is on hand to lend comic relief. His gimmick has to do with buying his mother a pair of false teeth - and to think, back then you could do it for twenty dollars! Now that's the good old days!

Here Comes the Navy (1934) ** 1/2 (out of 4) Standard action from Warner about a cocky loudmouth (James Cagney) who joins the Navy so that he can get even with a Captain (Pat O'Brien) but Cagney ends up falling in love with his sister (Gloria Stuart). This film starts off with a great bang but as the movie goes along things become quite predictable and rather flat. The first part of the movie is great with a lot of fighting and insults being thrown by Cagney. Needless to say Cagney is very energetic and delivers another fine performance. His relationship with Stuart is also handled very well as the two actors have a lot of chemistry together. O'Brien is in good form as well and he and Cagney do their magic unlike any other duo. The biggest problem comes in the middle where the story pretty much gets weighted down by the familiar bit where the cocky Cagney must learn what it means to be a normal human being and shut his mouth up before it gets him in real trouble. The action scene at the end is very nice as is the funny ending. The most shocking scene comes when Cagney sneaks off the boat in blackface.

Besides James Cagney and Pat O'Brien, there's also beautiful Gloria Stuart (63 years before her triumphant return to the screen in Titanic (1997)) as the love interest, and Frank McHugh providing comedy centered around his mother's false teeth. In a fight over a girl with Navy man O'Brien, Cagney is knocked out when his girl distracts him. And when O'Brien later steals his girl, Cagney is so angry he joins the Navy with the hope of getting even. Talk about holding grudges! After 3 months of basic training (shot on location at the Naval Training Station in San Diego, California), Cagney is assigned to the battleship U.S.S. Arizona, the ship O'Brien is on. The Navy allowed location shooting on the actual ship, which is the same one sunk at Pearl Harbor and is now in the harbor as a memorial. It's an impressive ship with unbelievable firepower and we see the big guns being loaded and fired in maneuvers. Meanwhile, Cagney had met and wooed Stuart, but she turned out to be O'Brien's sister! And O'Brien caused a rift, another reason for Cagney to get even with him. Because of a bad attitude problem, Cagney eventually is transferred to the dirigible U.S.S. Macon at Sunnyvale, California. Again, the actual airship is used and it is an awesome sight as it is pulled out of its hangar, dwarfing everything in view. As luck (and the script) would have it, the ship tries to land in windy weather but aborts, with O'Brien hanging on to a mooring line as it gains altitude. Cagney disobeys orders and climbs down the rope with a parachute to try to save the man he doesn't yet know is O'Brien.