White Heat [Blu-ray]

Overview

In later years, James Cagney regarded White Heat with a combination of pride and regret; while satisfied with his own performance, he tended to dismiss the picture as a "cheap melodrama." Seen today, White Heat stands as one of the classic crime films of the 1940s, containing perhaps Cagney's best bad-guy portrayal. The star plays criminal mastermind Cody Jarrett, a mother-dominated psychotic who dreams of being on "top of the world." Inadvertently leaving clues behind after a railroad heist, Jarrett becomes the target of the feds, who send an undercover agent (played by Edmond O'Brien) to infiltrate the Jarrett gang. While Jarrett sits in prison on a deliberately trumped-up charge (he confesses to one crime to provide himself an alibi for the railroad robbery), he befriends O'Brien, who poses as a hero-worshipping hood who's always wanted to work with Jarrett. Busting out of prison with O'Brien, Jarrett regroups his gang to mastermind a "Trojan horse" armored-car robbery.

Product Details

Release Date:	05/21/2013
UPC:	0883929280308
Original Release:	1949
Rating:	NR
Source:	Turner Classic Movie
Presentation:	[B&W, Wide Screen]
Sound:	[Dolby Digital Mono]
Language:	English
Time:	1:53:00
Sales rank:	14,461

Special Features

Commentary by film historian Dr. Drew Casper; Leonard Maltin hosts Warner Night at the Movies 1949 with newsreel, comedy short So You Think You're Not Guilty, cartoon Hopeless Hare and theatrical trailers; Featurette White Heat: Top of the World

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

James Cagney	Arthur Cody Jarrett
Virginia Mayo	Verna Jarrett
Edmond O'Brien	Hank Fallon/Vic Pardo
Margaret Wycherly	Ma Jarrett
Steve Cochran	Big Ed Somers
John Archer	Phillip Evans
Wally Cassel	Giovanni Cotton Valetti
Fred Clark	Daniel Winston
Ford Rainey	Zuckie Hommell
Fred Coby	Happy Taylor
G. Pat Collins	Herbert, the Reader
Mickey Knox	Het Kohler
Paul Guilfoyle	Roy Parker
Robert Osterloh	Tommy Ryley
Ian MacDonald	Bo Creel
Ray Montgomery	Ernie Trent
Jim Toney	Brakeman
Leo Cleary	Fireman
Murray Leonard	Engineer
Terry O'Sullivan	Radio Announcer
Marshall Bradford	Chief of Police
Milton Parsons	Willie Rolf, the Stoolie
John Pickard	Government Agent,Government Agent
Eddie Phillips	Government Agent
Robert Foulk	Guard at Plant
Jim Thorpe	Convict
Eddie Foster	Nat Lefeld,Guard
Lee Phelps	Tower Guard
Perry Ivins	Simpson, the Prison Doctor
Nolan Leary	Gas Station Owner
Grandon Rhodes	Psychiatrist
John McGuire	Psychiatrist
Harry Lauter	Radio Patrolman, Car A
Ray Bennett	Guard
Harry Strang	Guard
Jack Worth	Guard
Bob Fowke	Guard
Arthur Miles	Guard
Sid Melton	Russell Hughes
Fern Eggen	Margaret Baxter
Sherry Hall	Clerk
Garrett Craig	Ted Clark
Larry McGrath	Clocker
George Spaulding	Judge
Buddy Gorman	Popcorn Vendor
Claudia Barrett	Cashier
De Forrest Lawrence	Jim Donovan
George Taylor	Police Surgeon
Stanton Herzog	Accountant
Carl Harbaugh	Foreman
Wally Cassell	Giovanni Cotton Valetti
Hank Fallon	Edmund O'Brien
Joel Allen	Operative
John Butler	Man
Max Steiner	Composer

Technical Credits

Ben Roberts

Ivan Goff

Virginia Kellogg

Raoul Walsh	Director
Ben Roberts	Screenwriter
Ivan Goff	Screenwriter
Louis F. Edelman	Producer
Roy Davidson	Special Effects
H.F. Koenekamp	Special Effects
Louis Edelman	Producer
Virginia Kellogg	Screenwriter

Editorial Reviews

James Cagney's career was filled with largely indifferent films in which his incredible charisma and overwhelming acting ability enabled him to deliver unforgettable performances. In White Heat, however, he found a vehicle worthy of his talents. This potentially routine police procedural was elevated to the level of a cinematic classic by skillful direction, brilliant performances, and a story line built on fascinatingly perverse relationships between the characters. Psychotic mama's boy and gangster Cody Jarrett (Cagney) executes a daring train robbery, which sets off a chain of events that leads to his downfall at the hands of an undercover detective (Edmond O'Brien). Cagney had said "no more" to gangster films and left Warner Bros. years before, unhappy with the studio's exploitation of his familiar tough-guy screen persona. White Heat marked his triumphant return, and he pulls out all the stops -- his chilling prison breakdown was based on a childhood visit to an insane asylum. Director Raoul Walsh specialized in action films, creating efficiently told tales of masculine behavior and ambition, and this was one of his best.

Barnes & Noble - Amy Robinson

James Cagney made his name on screen as a criminal, and he gave his last truly great outlaw performance in White Heat, which may well be the most intelligent and striking work of his career. While Cagney always knew how to lend his characters a charismatic menace, his Cody Jarrett in White Heat is both menacing and uncomfortably bizarre. Given to strange semi-epileptic seizures, sudden bursts of horrible violence, and a bizarre attachment to his mother that stops just short of incest, Cody represents the criminal as head case, at once fascinating and disturbingly unstable. Cagney manages to lend Cody just enough of his traditional tough-talking, wise guy veneer that he seems like a conventional screen criminal at first, but it doesn't take long for Cody to reveal himself as a full-blown psychotic, and the perversely self-immolating "Made it, Ma! Top of the world!" finale is only the most spectacular symptom of his madness. Raoul Walsh's direction is hardly as audacious as Cagney's performance, but it is crisp, efficient, and briskly paced, and in a way Cagney's portrayal may well be all the more effective in this context. While White Heat's narrative often seems like the traditional story of a charismatic bad guy who will be forced to pay for his crimes in the last reel, it instead houses a different and most puzzling sort of villain, who paved the way for the stranger, more brutal outlaws who would dominate crime cinema in the 1960s and 1970s.

All Movie Guide - Mark Deming