Hard To Handle

A breakneck pace and Cagney's rat-a-tat performance are what elevate this minor trifle to heights it shouldn't have achieved. Twenty-eight years later, Cagney was to prove he hadn't run out of steam, when he played an equally frenetic role in ONE, TWO, THREE for Billy Wilder. Cagney is a quick-witted hustler who promotes various items from fad diets to reducing lotions to marathon dances, a female college, a treasure hunt, and a grapefruit association (no doubt this was an inside joke, for it was Cagney who electrified audiences when he smashed a grapefruit in Mae Clarke's face in 1931's PUBLIC ENEMY). Donnelly's daughter, Brian, is in a marathon dance contest, and...