One, Two, Three **** (1961, James Cagney, Horst Buchholz, Pamela Tiffin, Arlene Francis, Howard St John) – Classic Movie Review 3666

At 61, James Cagney is supremely energetic and wickedly funny in his last film before he retired for 20 years till his surprise comeback in Ragtime (1981).

In Billy Wilder’s 1961 movie classic Cold War spoof comedy, he plays an Irish American Coca-Cola salesman, C R ‘Mac’ MacNamara, who comes to Berlin with his wife Phyllis (Arlene Francis) to sell Coke to the Russkies.

Cagney is supposed to be chaperoning his boss Wendell P Hazeltine (Howard St John)’s daffy daughter Scarlett (Pamela Tiffin), who inconveniently weds a handsome young East German commie called Otto Ludwig Piffl (Horst Buchholz), who must become a noble and a capitalist before Scarlett’s pop and mom Melanie (Loïs Bolton) arrive in Berlin. Piffl? Oh dear, really?

An inspired and brilliant Wilder ensures that it is a hilarious, breakneck farce that keeps up a relentless pace for two hours. The screenplay reads ‘This piece must be played molto furioso. Suggested speed: 110 miles an hour – on the curves – 140 miles an hour in the straightways.’ And that’s what Wilder delivers.

It is based on a short play by Ferenc Molnar, who might well have been a bit surprised by all the detail snatched from the newspaper headlines hot off the presses in 1960 as Wilder and I A L Diamond were writing the screenplay on a daily basis.

Allegedly one scene took 52 takes, only seven fewer than the record by Marilyn Monroe in another Wilder film, Some Like It Hot (1959).

Cagney alleged Buchholz was uncooperative and tried all kinds of scene-stealing moves, which Cagney depended on Wilder to correct.

The film recorded a loss of $1.6 million, doing badly in the US and Germany, where the building of the Berlin Wall during production damaged the film’s marketing.

Joan Crawford, then on the board of PepsiCo, phoned Wilder to protest over the movie’s Coca-Cola connection. Wilder added a final scene where the last bottle from a vending machine is Pepsi.

After the disappointment of this, Cagney formally retired. But, unlike Cary Grant, he did come back 20 years later for one final movie, Ragtime (1981), as well as a TV movie, Terrible Joe Moran (1984).

Horst Buchholz died on March 3 2003, aged 69, in intensive care of pneumonia while recovering from a broken thigh bone.

© Derek Winnert 2016 Classic Movie Review 3666

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