Plantiana Yawn. Poorly Filmed Snooze Fest.

KnotMissPriceless Why so much hype?

Ghoulumbe Better than most people think

Arianna Moses Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

alexanderdavies-99382 "The Strawberry Blonde" is another film that showed what kind of an actor James Cagney is when given a different film to make. The film is based upon a successful play and was remade several years later with Gary Cooper. This "Warner Bros" film has a period setting, it is based during the 1890s. The sets, the costumes, the lighting, they all contribute to a great film. There is a well balanced combination of humour and of drama. Raoul Walsh's direction is very good as he was the right choice for this kind of film at "Warner Bros." The director knew how to produce the right performances from the main cast and they are outstanding. Originally, Ann Sheridan was supposed to be cast as the blonde in question but she had been suspended by Jack Warner. "M.G.M" loaned Rita Hayworth for this film instead. The plot unfolds via a flashback. This is initiated when Cagney learns that his old nemesis - played by Jack Carson - is on his way to Cagney's dental surgery with toothache. Then Cagney thinks back to all that has happened and the film begins properly. Olivia De Havilland plays Cagney's wife and the latter character has to decide whether he married the right woman or not. Alan Hale has some great scenes with James Cagney as his father, including a rather touching final scene. Olivia De Havilland surpassed herself in this film and was a great leading lady for James Cagney. Her performance is amongst the best of her career. Jack Carson scores as the devious and thoroughly dishonest chiseler. Rita Hayworth is good but I haven't seen any other of her films so I can't honestly say how good a performer she is. This is a masterpiece of drama and light comedy.

utgard14 Delightful comedy starring James Cagney as Biff Grimes, a turn of the century dentist who reflects on the past while plotting revenge on a former friend who wronged him. Cagney is terrific in one of his best comedy roles. He's so charming and likable, with a twinkle in his eye in every scene. Rarely has he been better than he is here. Olivia de Havilland flexes her comedy muscles as a suffragette who falls in love with Biff. Cagney and de Havilland make for a marvelous pair. It's a shame they didn't do more movies together. For her part, Rita Hayworth is good as the titular character, although most of the heavy lifting comes from other players. She's basically supposed to look beautiful and be an "ideal," and she does that quite well. Great support from Alan Ladd as Biff's father, George Tobias as his friend, and Jack Carson as the villain of the piece. Carson was a likable actor but he had a very limited range, so usually I either love him or hate him depending on if the part fits him or not. This one thankfully does. Wonderful use of music from the period. Really adds to the light and cheerful atmosphere of the film. It does take a darker turn in the second half, but only briefly, and it manages to come out on the other side without losing any momentum. Remake of a 1933 film called One Sunday Afternoon starring Gary Cooper. Remade again in 1948 under the original film's title. This version is far and away the best of the three.

misswestergaard "Strawberry Blonde" has tremendous energy. It's a love letter to fin-de - siecle America, here a feisty, urban "melting pot" of the burgeoning middle-classes. This is a Horatio Alger America, a place rife with go- getters and plenty of opportunity, where immigrants from different nations (Irish and Greek) strive arm in arm. James Cagney, Olivia DeHavilland and Rita Hayworth give delicious, youthful performances in "Strawberry Blonde". Perhaps a bit too old for their respective roles, the actors nevertheless conjure the bold charm of a younger America. An avaricious coquette, an ambitious scrapper and a sensitive would-be suffragette, these are characters with big, bright expectations. And they are perfectly suited to the lively, bustling world director Raoul Walsh presents here. Walsh gives us a kind of turn-of-the-century paradise, a world of graceful hats and high necked-dresses, foamy beer and bright brass bands, horse drawn carriages, friendly policemen and dinner at Tony Pastor's. It's a world that's clean and optimistic, but not yet fully tame. Cagney's Biff Grimes has a temper. At the merest wisp of provocation, he puts up his dukes. But his fisticuffs don't count as brutality here, instead they are rough play, a manifestation of energy and virility and will. "Strawberry Blonde" may venerate traditional values, but it also celebrates desire and appetite and possibility. It's an appealing vision. And probably a perfect inspirational vehicle for its original WWII audiences. "Strawberry Blonde" works as both a paean to a spirited, self-sacrificing working class AND a promise of satisfactions to come.

joeparkson This is the kind of movie Cagney wanted to make once he got the clout; his brother William Cagney is the producer. The theme is that trying to be something you're not may not give you the life you really wanted.In "Strawberry Blonde", Cagney turns his streetwise, toughguy image on its head. His character Biff Grimes is nowhere near as streetwise or as tough as he pretends to be. He keeps saying "I don't take nothing from nobody!", but in fact he loses every fight and gets played for a sucker again and again.Cagney dominates this movie, but the rest of the cast also nails their parts. "The Strawberry Blonde" character Virginia Brush is played by Rita Hayworth just before her WWII pin-up fame. This was a hard character to make sympathetic. She toys with Biff's adoration and ultimately stands up Biff in order to marry the more successful Hugo Barnstead. She does reveal herself poignantly; "Remember how all the boys used to whistle at me? Today I'd have to do the whistling." Jack Carson plays the phony Hugo Barnstead to such perfection that he got typecast in this part. In the 1960s Carson was still doing these parts; he played a used car salesman who suddenly cannot stop telling the truth in an episode of "The Twilight Zone".A radiant Olivia DeHavilland plays Virginia's best friend Amy Lind as a would be emancipated woman. Amy and Biff begin with a mutual dislike of each other, but what they really dislike is each other's facade. It all changes in a bittersweet scene where Amy goes to tell a waiting Biff that Virginia has eloped with Hugo. The masks come off, and Amy and Biff discover that they actually like each other. She is not the girl that Biff has longed to marry all his life, but he seems to fall in love with her after he marries her.Spoiler: Years later, Biff sees how the unhappy Virginia has made life miserable for Hugo with her nagging, and realizes that while he thought he'd been getting the short end all his life, he's actually a happy man and Hugo's not.The funniest lines go to Biff's barber friend Nick Papalas (George Tobias), and his deadpan deliver is a riot."My, how dees foreigners murrder de Eengleesh language" "Eef I marry Virginia, she turn out deefferent. Woman with seventeen kids, got no time to nag!" Credit should also be given to the director Raoul Walsh who recreated a nostalgic look at a more peaceful time on the eve of WWII. This movie is almost a musical; period songs are sprinkled throughout. It begins with college students singing "Bill Bailey"; there is actually a barbershop quartet in a barbershop singing "In The Evening By The Moonlight". The melody "When You Were Sweet Sixteen" plays whenever there's a scene between Biff and Amy.The song "The Strawberry Blonde" is sung or played by different characters throughout the movie. In Cagney's autobio, he says his mother was on the set during the filming and he waltzed with her to this song before the whole cast. Cagney's mother was a strawberry blonde in her youth, and the film's title was changed from "One Sunday Afternoon" to reflect this.I do wish that Warners had sprung for technicolor film on this movie. This is a far better movie than "Captains Of The Clouds" which was done in color.