#781) White Heat (1949)

#781) White Heat (1949)

OR “Strong Arm of the Ma”

Directed by Raoul Walsh

Written by Ivan Goff & Ben Roberts. Story by Virginia Kellogg.

Class of 2003

The Plot: Arthur “Cody” Jarrett (James Cagney) is a tough, merciless gangster with one major Achilles’ heel: His psychological obsession with his mother (Margaret Wycherly). A successful train robbery by Jarrett and his gang catches the eye of the US Treasury Department, and a manhunt begins. Jarrett successfully evades the law by turning himself in for a lesser crime he didn’t commit that doubles as his alibi for the train robbery and spares him from the death penalty in a federal prison. With Jarrett behind bars in a state prison, the Treasury enlists undercover agent Hank Fallon (Edmond O’Brien) to pose as convicted criminal Vic Pardo, gain Jarrett’s trust, and learn who is laundering Jarrett’s stolen money. It’s a cops-and-robber thriller, with an added Freudian element and zero explanation of what exactly the titular “white heat” is. Is it the cops?

Why It Matters: The NFR calls the film “[o]ne of the toughest and most brilliant crime films ever made”. An essay by Raoul Walsh expert Marilyn Ann Moss unsurprisingly focuses on Walsh’s directorial contributions to the film.

But Does It Really?: “White Heat” is in the “minor classic” category of both classic Hollywood movies and gangster pictures. While “White Heat” isn’t as well-remembered as some of Cagney’s earlier gangster offerings, it is an entertainingly tense, well-scripted entry in the genre, with Jarrett’s psychological issues adding a nice complex layer to the proceedings. With a memorable star turn by Cagney and its iconic final moments, “White Heat” is more than worthy of its NFR status.

Wow, That’s Dated: Plenty of dated elements, mainly the pre-GPS direction finders the cops use to track down Jarrett. Also, among the places Jarrett and his gang hide out in are a drive-in movie theater and one of those newfangled “motor-hotels”.

Everybody Gets One: Screenwriters Ivan Goff and Ben Roberts first met in the late 1930s while they were both staff writers at Republic Studios. The met up again in New York during the war, collaborating on the play “Portrait in Black”, which had a successful Broadway run. Goff and Roberts continued their writing partnership for the next 40 years, and although “White Heat” was the peak of their screenwriting careers, the two had a successful run on television in the ‘60s and ‘70s, writing among other things the pilot to the original “Charlie’s Angels”.

Seriously, Oscars?: Warner Bros. didn’t have a lot of major contenders at the 22^nd Oscars, but “White Heat” snuck in with one nomination for Virginia Kellogg’s original story, losing to MGM’s baseball biopic “The Stratton Story”. Kellogg would be nominated in the same category the next year for “Caged”, based on her magazine article “Inside Women’s Prison”.

Other notes

Like “Angels with Dirty Faces”, “White Heat” was Cagney’s reluctant return to both Warner Bros. and the gangster genre. His last gangster picture was 1939’s “The Roaring Twenties” (also directed by Raoul Walsh), and he had left Warners Bros. in 1942 to make films under his own Cagney Productions. Following the financial failure of four consecutive Cagney Productions pictures, Cagney begrudgingly returned to Warner Bros. with a contract that stipulated script approval, as well as only one movie per year. Similar to his decision to make “Angels with Dirty Faces”, Cagney chose “White Heat” as his first picture because he knew another gangster movie would help raise his waning box office appeal. Cagney was unhappy with the initial drafts of “White Heat”, and several re-writes were commissioned. To what extent Cagney and Raoul Walsh contributed to these re-writes depends on whose memoir you read.
For those of you keeping score, this is one of two NFR Class of 2003 entries that features our protagonist robbing a train using explosives. And from the looks of it, Jarrett and his men used enough dynamite.
I’ve always enjoyed James Cagney’s screen work, and Cody Jarrett is a nice addition to his resume. The film makes the smart choice of building on top of Cagney’s established gangster persona; eschewing any major character introduction and going straight to the crimes. It helps that Cody is a more complex character than Cagney’s previous gangsters, with Jarrett’s reprehensible behavior nicely balanced by his mother fixation.
Speaking of Ma Jarrett, I’m digging Margaret Wycherly’s performance in this. From the get-go you understand the psychological grip Ma Jarrett has on her son, and the actress more than holds her own against a screen titan like Cagney. And Wycherly certainly has a lot more to do here than she did as Sergeant York’s mother. While the mother obsession plot line is a bit icky in a modern lens, it makes sense once you learn that Freud’s Oedipus complex theory was very big during the 1940s. After all, this is right after Laurence Olivier filmed a Hamlet that full-on makes out with Gertrude.
Virginia Mayo’s star was rising fast in the late ‘40s, and while I’m enjoying her work here as Jarrett’s tortured wife Verna, I think I get why Mayo’s career never took off. I’ve learned over the years that the best movie stars have very disciplined faces; they know to show restraint in their reactions and let an audience fill in the blanks. Mayo’s acting is just a little too expressive, which usually isn’t a problem, but sticks out more when playing alongside the perpetually stoic James Cagney.

Surprising no one, the movie Jarrett, Verna, and Ma watch at the drive-in is a Warner Bros. picture: the war film “Task Force” starring Gary Cooper. Now playing at a theater near you!

This movie is to the Treasury Department what “Double Indemnity” is to insurance investigation. I had no idea working with the Treasury Department is so action-packed. Characters are getting shot in the line of treasury duty!
Edmond O’Brien is one of those actors who wasn’t on my radar until I started this blog, and he delivers here in a role similar to his work in “The Killers”. “White Heat” was a big turning point in O’Brien’s career, playing the second lead alongside Cagney. Allegedly the only reason O’Brien didn’t get above the title billing in “White Heat” is because Warners didn’t want people to see Cagney & O’Brien on a marquee and think that Cagney was reuniting with his old co-star Pat O’Brien. I can’t confirm that story, but it’s so dumb it just might be true.
In the film’s second act, things pivot from a cat-and-mouse chase to a prison drama. It’s not a bad change, but it does become a different movie.
I’ve been on a bit of an “MST3K” run recently, so imagine my surprise when Sid Melton (aka Monkey Boy) shows up here as one of the prisoners. Primarily an actor of TV and cheap B movies, Melton miraculously has two NFR appearances (this and “On the Town”).
[Spoilers] Unfortunately, both of this film’s iconic moments are major spoilers. The first is Jarrett’s breakdown in the mess hall upon learning about his mother’s death. Jack Warner tried to get Walsh to film the scene in a chapel to save money (smaller set, less extras), but eventually agreed on the original setting, with the proviso the scene be filmed in under three hours. Apparently, Cagney’s unrestrained reaction was a surprise to everyone on set, and it still packs the intended punch today.

Man, what a bastard Jarrett is. Throughout the movie he leaves one of his men for dead and shoots another one in cold blood, to say nothing of his verbal and physical abuse towards Verna. This level of screen villainy is a fun trade off with the rules of the Code era: We know Jarrett has to pay for his crimes by the end of the movie, so he might as well do as many bad things as possible before he goes.

After Jarrett’s prison escape, the movie shift gears again and becomes a third movie about the gang planning a payroll heist at a chemical plant in Long Beach. If nothing else, this third gives us Cagney’s modern retelling of the Trojan Horse tale.
Once Jarrett learns that Vic Pardo is actually Hank Fallon, he starts shouting “A coppah! A coppah!”. Sure that’s one gangster movie way to respond, but this was a missed opportunity for Cagney to call someone “you dirty rat!” It was right there!
[Spoilers] The film’s most iconic moment is when Jarrett, alone on top of a huge spherical gas tank and surrounded by cops, goes out in a literal blaze of glory: shooting the tank and shouting “Made it Ma! Top of the world!” as he sets off an explosive chain reaction. This ending would be perfect if we didn’t get Hank’s superfluous coda: “He finally got to the top of the world, and it blew up in face.” We know, Hank, we were there too.

Legacy

“White Heat” opened in September 1949, and was a critical and box office success. Since then, it has maintained it status as one of the best gangster pictures ever made (and certainly once of Cagney’s best). Although Cagney spoke well of “White Heat” in his later years, he considered its brief shooting schedule (six weeks) a hinderance to what could have been a better movie.
2003 was a big year for “White Heat”; in addition to its NFR designation, the American Film Institute named Cody Jarrett one of the 50 best screen villains of all time (with “Made it, Ma! Top of the world!” making their list of 100 best movie quotes two years later).
“White Heat” gets its share of parodies and references, mostly people shouting “Top of the world, Ma!” when doing their Cagney impression. The film’s prison infiltration plotline was borrowed for “Naked Gun 33 ^1/3“, which isn’t a great movie, but it does have a very funny line when Fred Ward learns of Leslie Nielsen’s betrayal: “I treated him like my brother – the one I didn’t kill.”
It’s been a while since I’ve referenced the film noir love letter “Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid” on this blog, and Cagney makes an appearance there via repurposed clips from “White Heat”, with Steve Martin disguising himself as Ma Jarrett.

And finally, the Madonna song “White Heat” gets its name from the movie. Some of Cagney’s dialogue from “White Heat” is sampled, and just like the movie, the song doesn’t explain the title either, although I suspect Madonna’s idea of “White Heat” is a little different.