My Top 25 Favorite Films: #20!!

After James Cagney made "One, Two, Three" in 1961, he didn't make another movie until he did "Ragtime" in 1981. Why? Retired? Disillusioned? Not happy with scripts he was getting?

After you see "One, Two, Three," you'll know the real reason. He was just plain tired.

Cagney has always been one of my favorite classic stars, who could play the gamut. From slaughtering people as a gangster to tapdancing down the stairs of the White House as George M. Cohan. Somewhere in the middle of all that, he's also a tremendously gifted comic actor and it's truly a shame he didn't do more of that.

In this Billy Wilder directed gem, Cagney ditches rapid fire bullets for even faster dialogue. He delivers it all like it's a Brad Penny fastball. And he literally doesn't stop for 115 minutes, and he's on camera for most of that. I can now appreciate the reasons behind his self-imposed film exile. I'm exhausted every time I watch the movie.

"One, Two, Three" doesn't get a lot of attention today, because people feel it is dated. It's set in Berlin during the height of the Cold War and right before they put up the Berlin Wall. In fact, by the time the picture was released, the barrier had already been in place for a while, which required a quick prologue that set the movie a year earlier. To do this, Wilder and his always brilliant co-writer, I.A.L. Diamond, reference Roger Maris' 1961 home run onslaught. The last time I watched the movie, I recorded the date they mention and the fact that Maris hit two homeruns that day vs. the Senators. I checked the record books. Wilder and Diamond had done their homework. But, I digress...

Instead of viewing "One, Two, Three" as a dated movie, it should be revered as a wonderful (and hilarious) history lesson of the tensions that were prominent in those days between the United States and the Communist Soviet Union. Sure, there are tons of jokes pointed at current events. Sputnik. Huntley and Brinkley. Spartacus. But, nevertheless, the script and story transcends it all. The writing is that good.

Cagney plays C.R. MacNamara, a Coca Cola bigwig assigned to West Berlin and always looking to impress the home office. His dream is to bring Coke across the border. And his upward corporate mobility can only be enhanced when his boss asks him to watch his vacationing 17 year-old hot-blooded daughter, Scarlett, deliciously played by Pamela Tiffin.

Everything is complicated when Scarlett secretly elopes (and gets pregnant) with an East German Communist (portrayed by Horst Bucholtz in what was probably his only comedy role). The second half of the movie is solely devoted to Cagney's frenzied attempts to turn Bucholtz into somebody that the boss would accept as a son-in-law. Along the way, you are joyously pelted with one gag after another. And Jimmy is not ashamed of drawing on his past. Red Buttons, in a cameo role as a cop, does his best Cagney impression. Cagney threatens somebody else with a grapefruit to the face. And, at one point, he conjures up Edward G. Robinson by using his "Mother of Mercy, is the end of Rico?" from "Little Caesar."

"One, Two, Three" also features one of the rare screen appearances by TV panelist Arlene Francis, who is fabulous as Cagney's wife, especially when she keeps referring to him as "mein fuhrer." I always wonder why she didn't get more film roles. She almost steals every scene she is in, even playing against Big Jim. Take a look at the trailer.

I have to watch "One, Two, Three" at least once a year. It reminds me why I try to be clever every day. I just wish I could be THAT clever.

This movie also contains what I consider the greatest line Wilder and Diamond ever wrote.

"I'd rather be in Hell with my back broken."

Hell indeed.

Dinner last night: chicken fingers and salad.