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The uneven course of their romance does net require Miss Clarke to function as target for Cagney's grapefruit throwing, as she did in Public Enemy, but the affair is at least brightly controversial. When Johnny catches the ward leader and his fiancee's boss trying to destroy evidence he has collected to show that both of them are grafters, the result is the most satisfying foot-&-fist work shown on the U. S.
screen since the Louis-Schmeling fight.
Johnny Cave renders their hulking gorilla (Joseph Sawyer) senseless with one punch, has the ringleader arrested, locks the police captain out of the room while he settles his old score with the ward leader by mopping up the floor with him.
In addition to delighting admirers of Actor Cagney, Great Guy, directed by John Blystone, produced by onetime Actor Douglas Maclean, sets the industry an example of what a young company can do by spending its money on good actors and good writing instead of big names, ponderous sets and over-pretentious publicity. Good shot: Johnny Cave's ex-prizefighter, ex-bootlegger pal (Edward Brophy) amicably welcoming a dowager into his house by complimenting her on how much facial surgery has improved her appearance.
That Girl from Paris (RKO). Like
most Hollywood productions starring opera singers of established reputations, Soprano Lily Pons's second cinema vehicle is really less a moving picture than a recorded concert with illustrations on the screen. As such it is satisfying entertainment. Vivacious little Diva Pons yodels a nameless vocal exercise, an adaptation of Panofka's Tarantella, an Arthur Schwartz tune called Seal It With a Kiss and, for the inevitable climax on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera, the Una voce poco fa aria from The Barber of Seville, in which she turns loose the fastest high C yet released on a Hollywood sound track. All these correspond to the school figures of cine-musicomedy. The real pyrotechnics of That Girl from Paris come when Diva Pons puts classical touches on The Blue Danube to a background of swing jazz.
The result should qualify Composer Schwartz for some sort of award for the most satisfying musical novelty of 1936.
The story of That Girl from Paris, which it took four screenwriters to concoct, deals with the transatlantic romance between a Paris singer and a U. S. bandleader (Gene Raymond). Its real purpose —that of punctuating a series of closeups of the star which could be exciting only to her dentist—is transcended occasionally by moments of brash comedy contributed by the _ band's mercurial drummer (Jack Oakie) and its sad-visaged Communist pianist (Mischa Auer).