Never Steal Anything Small | |
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Directed by | Charles Lederer |
Written by | Charles Lederer (Screen Story and Screenplay by) |
Based on | The Devil's Hornpipe by Maxwell Anderson and Rouben Mamoulian |
Produced by | Aaron Rosenberg |
Starring | James Cagney Shirley Jones |
Cinematography | Harold Lipstein |
Edited by | Russell F. Schoengarth (as Russell Schoengarth) |
Color process | Eastmancolor |
Production company | Universal Pictures |
Distributed by | Universal Pictures |
Release date |
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Running time | 94 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Never Steal Anything Small is a 1959 American CinemaScope comedy-drama musical film directed by Charles Lederer and starring James Cagney and Shirley Jones. It is based on the play The Devil's Hornpipe by Maxwell Anderson and Rouben Mamoulian.
Jake Macllaney will do just about anything to win the presidential election of longshoreman union Local 26. When he encounters young upright attorney Dan Cabot and Cabot's attractive wife Linda, Macllaney breaks up their marriage, pursues Linda, and pins a grand larceny rap on Dan.
Filmed in color, this musical was directed by Charles Lederer. It is about racketeers infiltrating the labor movement. Cagney plays a dishonest but charming union boss. This was Cagney's final musical film. Jones, who plays a happily married woman whom the labor leader wants to steal away, performs a lively musical number, spoofing television commercials. The film features a duet by Cagney and Williams on "I'm Sorry, I Want a Ferrari."
James Francis Cagney Jr. was an American actor, dancer and film director. On stage and in film, he was known for his consistently energetic performances, distinctive vocal style, and deadpan comic timing. He won acclaim and major awards for a wide variety of performances. Cagney is remembered for playing multifaceted tough guys in films such as The Public Enemy (1931), Taxi! (1932), Angels with Dirty Faces (1938), The Roaring Twenties (1939), City for Conquest (1940) and White Heat (1949), finding himself typecast or limited by this reputation earlier in his career. He was able to negotiate dancing opportunities in his films and ended up winning the Academy Award for his role in the musical Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942). In 1999 the American Film Institute ranked him eighth on its list of greatest male stars of the Golden Age of Hollywood. Orson Welles described him as "maybe the greatest actor who ever appeared in front of a camera".
Yankee Doodle Dandy is a 1942 American biographical musical film about George M. Cohan, known as "The Man Who Owned Broadway". It stars James Cagney, Joan Leslie, Walter Huston, and Richard Whorf, and features Irene Manning, George Tobias, Rosemary DeCamp, Jeanne Cagney, and Vera Lewis. Joan Leslie's singing voice was partially dubbed by Sally Sweetland.
Shirley Jones is an American actress and singer. In her six decades in show business, she has starred as wholesome characters in a number of musical films, such as Oklahoma! (1955), Carousel (1956), and The Music Man (1962). She won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for playing a vengeful prostitute in Elmer Gantry (1960). She played the lead role of Shirley Partridge, the widowed mother of five children, in the musical situation-comedy television series The Partridge Family (1970–1974), which co-starred her real-life stepson, David Cassidy, son of Jack Cassidy.
The year 1959 in film involved some significant events, with Ben-Hur winning a record 11 Academy Awards.
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Charles Davies Lederer was an American screenwriter and film director. He was born into a theatrical family in New York, and after his parents divorced, was raised in California by his aunt, Marion Davies, actress and mistress to newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst. A child prodigy, he entered the University of California, Berkeley at age 13, but dropped out after a few years to work as a journalist with Hearst's newspapers.
Cara Williams was an American film and television actress. She was best known for her role as Billy's Mother in The Defiant Ones (1958), for which she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, and for her role as Gladys Porter on the 1960–62 CBS television series Pete and Gladys, for which she was nominated for the Emmy Award for Best Lead Actress in a Comedy. At the time of her death, Williams was one of the last surviving actors from the Golden Age of Hollywood.
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John Paul Jones is a 1959 biographical adventure film from Warner Bros. Pictures, filmed in the Technirama process, about the American Revolutionary War naval hero. The film, shot in Dénia, Spain, was produced by Samuel Bronston and directed by John Farrow, from a screenplay by John Farrow, Ben Hecht, and Jesse Lasky Jr. The film is based on the story Nor'wester by Clements Ripley. The music score was by Max Steiner and the cinematography was by Michel Kelber. It was the final film directed by Farrow.
Tribute to a Bad Man is a 1956 American Western film directed by Robert Wise and starring James Cagney about a rancher whose harsh enforcement of frontier justice alienates the woman he loves. It was based on the short story "Hanging's for the Lucky" by Jack Schaefer, the author of Shane.
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Partners in Crime is a 1928 American comedy silent film directed by Frank R. Strayer and written by George Marion Jr., Grover Jones and Gilbert Pratt. The film stars Wallace Beery, Raymond Hatton, Mary Brian, William Powell, Jack Luden, Arthur Housman and Albert Roccardi. The film was released on March 17, 1928, by Paramount Pictures. A print of the film exists in the Library of Congress film archive.