The West Point Story *** (1950, James Cagney, Virginia Mayo, Doris Day, Gordon MacRae, Gene Nelson) – Classic Movie Review 7177

Director Roy Del Ruth’s 1950 musical comedy The West Point Story stars James Cagney eight years after his last musical Yankee Doodle Dandy as gambler Bill Bixby, an on-the-skids Broadway theatre director who produces a show for the cadets at the West Point military academy, aided by lovely Eve Dillon (Virginia Mayo) and Jan Wilson (Doris Day), and abetted by various mild complications.

It is advertised by Warner Bros as ‘another Dandy’. It is fine enough but it is not ‘Dandy’. Even with nice co-stars Virginia Mayo, Doris Day, Gordon MacRae, Gene Nelson, Alan Hale Jr and Roland Winters and a music score by Sammy Cahn and Jule Styne, this is a rather contrived, dull, shallow and often daft show, with fairly low-grade songs and some low-interest dialogue.

But the 51-year-old Cagney is still light-on-his-feet and still has the stuff and Day is bubbly fun personified.

The songs include ‘It Could Only Happen in Brooklyn’, ‘Military Polka’, ‘You Love Me’, and ‘Ten Thousand Sheep’.

Also in the cast are Raymond Roe, Wilton Graff, Jerome Cowan, Frank Ferguson, Russ Saunders, Jack Kelly and Glen Turnbull.

Tommy Kelly (1925–2016).

Tommy Kelly, who plays one of the cadets, died aged 90 on 25 January 2016. He played the title role in the 1938 movie version of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and went on to appear in Gone With the Wind, Peck’s Bad Boy with the Circus (1938), Irene (1940), The Magnificent Yankee, Life Begins for Andy Hardy, Mug Town, He Walked By Night and Battleground.

Ray Heindorf was Oscar nominated for Best Music, Scoring of a Musical Picture and the Writers Guild of America voted it Best Written American Musical.

James Cagney – The Signature Collection Volume 2 : West Point Story / Torrid Zone / The Fighting 69th / The Bride Came C.O.D. [DVD]

Cagney re-convened with Day for Love Me or Leave Me (1955).

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 7177

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