NEVER STEAL ANYTHING SMALL (1959)

Rarely seen New York Waterfront musical is too odd to ignore.  Written by Charles Lederer as his third & last directing gig, it’s based on an unproduced play by Maxwell Anderson & Rouben Mamoulian.  (And what a shame Mamoulian, fresh off directing SILK STOCKINGS/’57, isn’t calling the shots.)  SPOILERS!  The off-kilter story has James Cagney, in his last song-and-dance turn*, using force to grab the reins of the dockworkers’ union, then using the perks of his new position to woo the pretty young wife of his handsome young house lawyer (Shirley Jones; Roger Smith), even hiring aggressive redhead gal-pal Cara Williams as Smith’s secretary with benefits.  So when Cagney’s caught lifting freight off one of his boats, he’s happy to let Smith take the fall for him . . . if only it didn’t make the guy look like a hero to the union members.  (Ending the film just when things are starting to get interesting.)  Less musical then cockeyed dramedy with a few songs folded in & color-coordinated sets, you can see how this might have worked in a big production number for Cara & Cagney, set in an EastmanColored shiny bright showroom of European sports cars of the day.  If only the songs had pizzazz to match the settings.  In its favor, Cagney is positively gleeful, and the little remembered Ms. Williams very 1950s Va-Va-Voom.  But the sheer weirdness of the thing (like accented Mafia bossman Nehemiah Persoff aping Lee J. Cobb in ON THE WATERFRONT/’54) ain’t enough to bring this mediocrity to life.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: City Hall politics was in the musical comedy air of 1959 with Jerry Bock/Sheldon Harnick’s FIORELLO! (never filmed) a smash on B’way.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Cagney almost made two more musicals, nearly coming out of retirement when Jack Warner offered him cockney ne’er-do-well Alfred P. Doolittle in MY FAIR LADY/’64; as well as John Ford’s disastrous remake of WHAT PRICE GLORY?/’52, developed as a musical (note Cagney’s partnered with song-and-dance man Dan Dailey), but which wound up losing all but one of it’s songs.