Lady Killer

Cagney in comedy: a talent often forgotten when one thinks of this most energetically violent of actors. Here the story is tailor-made for his persona. He plays a hood who, for reasons of hiding out and making big money, goes to Hollywood; he serves his time in small parts (very funny, this), but by using the shrewdness and dishonesty he exploited in his life of crime (and writing enormous quantities of fan mail to himself), he graduates to star; whereupon his past threatens to catch up with him. The whole film is witty and fast, hurtled along by Cagney's stylish delivery, and offers a few sharply satirical swipes at Hollywood en route.