OVP: The West Point Story (1950)

Film: The West Point Story (1950)
Stars: James Cagney, Virginia Mayo, Doris Day, Gordon MacRae, Gene Nelson
Director: Roy Del Ruth
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Scoring of a Motion Picture)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2019 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different actress of Hollywood's Golden Age.  This month, our focus is on Virginia Mayo-click here to learn more about Ms. Mayo (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

If you've been following this blog at all over the past year, you know that one of my main quests has been about creating a better, more sustainable breath of classic cinema on streaming, and to start investing once again into physical media until streaming is able to sustain what we once counted on a Blockbuster Video to do.  A perfect example of this happened to me last night when I found out that the Virginia Mayo film I wanted to start out our month dedicated to the actress with was unavailable despite having been available when I began researching her in November.  Unfortunately, none of the early leading work of Ms. Mayo's career was available on streaming; either it was films that she had a supporting role in (against the rules for the project) or it was from arguably the peak of her career, 1949 or later.  As a result, we're going to be starting in the middle of Ms. Mayo's career as a headliner, which is a bummer as I quite liked the storytelling angle of watching her from beginning to end, and will be substituting in a different picture in two weeks from her career (where she's lead, but was arguably  more important for her male costar).  At this point, Mayo had been a leading lady opposite the likes of Bob Hope & Danny Kaye for several years at Warner Brothers, and had starred in the two true classics of her career (The Best Years of Our Lives and White Heat, both of which are splendid but I've already seen them so I couldn't cheat & include them, though you should check them out if you haven't seen any of Mayo's work as she's great in both).  Here, oddly enough, she's about to be upstaged by a star far-better remembered today in a musical, a genre tailor-made for the former Vaudeville star.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film follows Bix Bixby (Cagney), a tempestuous Broadway director who is out-of-work, and is recruited by a producer to go and produce an annual variety show at West Point, in hopes that Bixby can recruit the producer's nephew Tom (MacRae) to quit the military and instead join show business.  Bixby convinces his assistant/long-suffering girlfriend Eve (Mayo) to join him on the excursion, though they've broken up (sometimes they're dating, sometimes they aren't-the movie is weirdly fluid on the subject), and quickly upturn the show, and in order to get Bixby to stay on as the director, he has to join the military (because, you know, it's the movies and a 51-year-old James Cagney seems like a good recruit for such an endeavor).  Antics and romance follow, with Bixby & Eve falling back in love while Tom falls for a movie star friend of Bixby's named Jan Wilson (played by a young Doris Day in one of her first major roles).  The film ends with them performing, as Bixby regains his mojo, along with the book of the hit show he's put together at West Point.

The film is silly fun, and was even nominated for an Oscar for its score (which, while good, only features one properly memorable song in "By the Kissing Rock," which is basically a song supporting date rape so it's hard to raise the flag for it too high).  Cagney had just finished filming White Heat at this point in his career with Mayo, arguably his best performance, so he can be forgiven for this feeling a bit phoned-in at times, particularly considering the (by-then) song-and-dance man had done this schtick before more memorably.  As I said when I introduced the series, I'd never seen Mayo in a song-and-dance picture, and while her voice is dubbed, she's really lovely in this film and a helluva hoofer.  She likely owes the costume designer some thanks for making her legs so eye-popping (also, I'd thank God as when you could give Rita Hayworth a run for your money in the gams department, genetics are playing a part), but she's charming and has a ribald chemistry with Cagney.  She'd be the highlight of the film were it not for Doris Day coming in late in the movie and basically stealing it out from under her.

Day is lovely as Jan Wilson, playing the quintessential Doris Day girl-next-door, but in doing so from the sidelines you see how America quickly fell in love with her.  She has a polish and magnetic quality that's impossible to ignore, and while MacRae is hardly her equal as an actor, they're both ace singers & they sparkle when they dance and sing.  The film follows a familiar pattern with its script (such is the curse of a musical), but Day keeps it from veering off-course in the third act when you know exactly what's about to happen  (and are a bit frustrated at how convoluted the plot is getting), and within a year she'd be starring in I'll See You in My Dreams with Danny Thomas, a film that made her one of the biggest stars of the 1950's.  Mayo would also have one of her biggest hits of the 1950's coming within a year, but we'll get there next week.  In the meantime, share what your favorite early (starring) film of her career was in the comments, so that I can reach out for it someday even if it won't make the cut for this project.