RUN FOR COVER (1955)

After literally exploding on screen in WHITE HEAT/’49, James Cagney had trouble finding a worthy follow up until his 1955 annus mirabilis with top-grossing MISTER ROBERTS, an Oscar® nom for LOVE ME OR LEAVE ME, a splashy song-and-dance cameo in THE SEVEN LITTLE FOYS and this exceptional chamber Western for Nicholas Ray, also on a run at the time.* Cagney’s riding into a new town with young John Derek, a local he’s just met, when they’re mistaken, and nearly lynched as train robbers. It all gets sorted out, but not before Derek is seriously injured and taken to the farm of Jean Hersholt (in his last feature) & Viveca Lindfors to recuperate. Cagney warms to the whole situation, romance with Lindfors and surrogate father to Derek, a hardluck type who now adds a limp from his shattered leg to the chip already on his shoulder. The main action has them joined as sheriff & deputy with a bank heist to track, a bunch of suspicious townsfolk and a host of personal demons coming unleashed. The twists & turnarounds in plot & character are unusually well-handled, even surprising (this is after all a Stranger-Comes-To Town Western), with plenty of strong perfs backing it up, certainly the best thing Derek ever did. Working with Ray and Cagney can do that for you. Story an early credit for married team Harriet Frank & Irving Ravetch and scripted by Winston Miller with MY DARLING CLEMENTINE and ROCKY MOUNTAIN on his Western C.V. It’s also stunningly shot by Daniel L. Fapp; the original VistaVision prints must have been gorgeous. The quality tells. It should be as well known as Cagney’s other 1955 films.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *And what range Cagney shows in these four films! Comic tin-pot tyrant; thug with a limp; revisiting George M. Cohan and this ‘faraway guy,’ as his friend Pat O’Brien called him in real life.