Otto Penzler ranks, analyzes, & celebrates the 106 greatest crime films of all-time. Catch up on the series and find new installments daily here.
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White Heat (1949)
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TYPE OF FILM: Gangster
STUDIO: Warner Brothers
PRODUCER: Louis F. Edelman
DIRECTOR: Raoul Walsh
SCREENWRITERS: Ivan Goff and Ben Roberts
SOURCE: Original story by Virginia Kellogg
RUNNING TIME: 114 minutes
PRINCIPAL PLAYERS:
James Cagney………………………………………………………….………Arthur Cody Jarrett
Virginia Mayo………………………………………………………………….………Vera Jarrett
Edmond O’Brien………………………………………………..…………..Hank Fallon/Vic Pardo
Margaret Wycherly……………………………………………………………………….Ma Jarrett
Steve Cochran……………………………………………………………………….Big Ed Somers
John Archer……………………………………………………………………………Philip Evans
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DID YOU KNOW?
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In one of the most famous scenes in cinema history, Cody Jarrett, the gangster played by James Cagney, is in the prison mess hall when he learns that his mother, on whom he has a pathological fixation, is dead. He goes berserk, screaming and whimpering as he walks and crawls across the crowded tables, slugging prison guards in a nearly balletic sequence. While a young boy, Cagney had visited the famous institution on Ward’s Island in New York’s East River. The pathetic screams of the insane stayed in his memory, and he replicated them in this scene. Although the scene required the use of hundreds of extras, with numerous camera angles, it was shot in a single morning.
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THE STORY
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After a robbery of a mail train nets $300,000, Cody Jarrett and his gang, including his wife, Verna, and his mother, hide out in an isolated cabin. Big Ed Somers, one of the gang members, thinks Cody is crazy and hates the idea of having all that money while freezing in the middle of nowhere. Under stress, Cody has one of his more and more frequent headaches, which he describes as “like having a red-hot buzz saw inside my head.” As he recovers, his ma hands him a drink and tells him, “Top of the world, son.”
One of the gang members, badly burned during the robbery, is left behind when the gang changes hideouts, and fingerprints discovered by the Treasury Department point to the Jarrett gang as the robbers. When the T-men close in, Jarrett turns himself in for a minor robbery committed at the same time as the train heist, which left four dead, and he is sentenced to one-to-three years in prison. The Feds facilitate this so they can have one of their own, Hank Fallon, pose as convict Vic Pardo to share a cell with Cody and thereby learn the identity of the man who fences the stolen money.
Cody’s mother visits him in jail to tell him that Big Ed and Verna have taken off together but that her son will soon be out and “on top of the world.” Cody tells her he’ll take care of Ed when he gets out, but his mother doesn’t want Ed to live that long; she says she’ll take care of him.
Cody later learns that his mother is dead and goes insane in the prison mess hall. Soon after he escapes with Pardo. He finds Big Ed and Verna and, with his wife’s connivance, kills the dismal Ed. The gang then plans a big robbery at a gas plant, using a large tanker to sneak in. The police and T-men surround the plant, and the gang is wiped out. Cody, laughing hysterically, climbs to the top of one of the gas tanks, where marksman Fallon shoots him several times, finally firing into the gas tank. As it explodes, Cody looks skyward and yells, “Made it, Ma. Top of the world.” On the ground, Fallon says, “Cody Jarrett. Finally made it to the top of the world, and it blew right up in his face.”
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Raoul Walsh had worked with Cagney before (The Roaring Twenties, 1939) and understood good action sequences. But he also trusted Cagney to bring something more to the motion picture than action and allowed the actor to make suggestions about Cody Jarrett’s relationship with his mother. It was Cagney who suggested that Jarrett be comforted in her lap after one of his headaches—one of the most memorable scenes in any gangster movie.
Cody Jarrett was one of Cagney’s greatest screen roles in a career with many. The film may have produced the two scenes for which he is most remembered: going crazy when he learns of his mother’s death and his roaring demise atop the gas tank as he screams, “Top of the world.” His career had slowed since the megahit, Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942), in which he played song-and-dance man George M. Cohan. The subject of the deranged outlaw seemed a sure hit, and it was, but Cagney came to hate it, frustrated that he would be most remembered for his role as an insane, Oedipal loser.
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BEST LINE
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Cody’s wife Verna, trying to convince him to keep all of the gang’s money and spend it on her: “I’d look good in a mink coat, honey,” she says. Cody replies, “Mm. You’d look good in a shower curtain.”
