Plot
Producer Harry Eberhart offers unemployed Broadway musical director and past nemesis Elwin "Bix" Bixby the job of staging the annual 100th Night show at the United States Military Academy in West Point, New York. Eberhart wishes for his talented nephew Tom Fletcher, a cadet at the academy, to become a Broadway star.
Bix and his assistant and girlfriend Eve Dillon travel to West Point to make a Broadway-level production of a show written by Tom and his friend Hal Courtland. After Bix slugs cadet and cast member Bull Gilbert, the academy's commandant wants to evict him from academy grounds, but the cadets in the show, led by Tom, appeal to the commandant, requesting that Bix might be permitted to live as one of them as a temporary cadet. The commandant is dubious because of Bix's history but agrees to the request.
Bix persuades Jan Wilson, a chorus girl whom he had discovered and has become a movie star, to accompany Tom to a dance at the academy. She is given the role of a princess in the show after Bix persuades the commandant to break with tradition of only permitting male cadets to appear in shows. After Jan and Tom fall in love, Tom sends a resignation letter to the academy and flees to New York to be with Jan. Tom proposes marriage but Jan declines, believing that Tom must graduate and serve his commitment. Bix, Bull and Hal travel to New York without approved leave in order to retrieve Tom, who is devastated by Jan's rejection.
Bix intercepts and destroys Tom's resignation letter before it is received, but Tom, Bull and Hal are arrested on their return to the academy by order of the commandant and confined to quarters except when on duty or in class. The show is threatened with cancellation.
Bix and the cadets in the show arrange a meeting with the French premier, who is visiting the country on a diplomatic mission. They know that a visiting dignitary can request amnesty for cadets' disciplinary offenses and approach the premier as the one man who can save the show.
Harry visits West Point to see the show, presuming that he will return with his nephew, who will then begin his Broadway career. Deciding that her love for Tom is more important than her career, Jan arrives at the academy just in time to appear in the show and reconcile with Tom.
Backstage, Bix defiantly tells Harry that Tom must remain a cadet and tries to punch Harry but instead strikes Hal, knocking him unconscious and injuring his leg. With Hal unable to perform, Bix takes the stage with Eve for the dance number "It Could Only Happen in Brooklyn."
Before the show's finale, Tom calls Bix to the stage and presents him with the show's book and libretto so that Bix can produce the show for Broadway. The show's finale is then performed.
Production
The film project, with a working title of Classmates, was developed by producer Louis F. Edelman starting in 1948, with Irving Wallace writing the screenplay. The United States Military Academy in West Point, New York appointed a committee of four officers and 24 cadets to assist with the production, and Major Robert Bringham consulted with Edelman and Wallace in Hollywood. [5] Colonel William Proctor from the academy served as the film's technical advisor. [6] The production staff attempted to convey the human aspects of the academy rather than relying on film clichés involving strict discipline and order. [5]
In December 1948, Jack Carson, Gordon MacRae and Doris Day were slated as the stars of the film. [7] James Cagney was announced as the lead in March 1949 after signing a contract with Warner Bros., the studio for whom he had worked for many years, having departed after his Academy Award-winning performance in Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942). The deal included Cagney's starring role in White Heat and another feature, speculated to be John Paul Jones , a film that was not produced until 1959 and without Cagney. The contract also included a three-film commitment for Cagney's struggling production company, which yielded Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye (1950) and A Lion Is in the Streets (1953) for Warner Bros. before folding. [8]
Warner Bros. location head William Guthrie consulted with the Department of War in Washington, D.C. to receive the agency's approval. Songwriters Sammy Cahn and Jule Styn e visited the U.S. Military Academy for inspiration, and Wallace and fellow writer Charles Hoffman traveled to West Point to review the script with the academy's leaders. [9] [10] The academy granted 40 cadets a leave of absence to appear in the film as extras. [11]
Cagney reported to the studio long before production began for three weeks of intensive dance rehearsal, as he had not danced in a film since Yankee Doodle Dandy in 1942. [12]
Director Roy Del Ruth supervised location shooting at West Point, which was completed in May 1950. [13] Studio production began in June [14] and wrapped by mid-August. [15]
Reception
In a contemporary review for The New York Times, critic Bosley Crowther wrote: "The measure of Mr. Cagney's impact upon the whole tenuous show is patently indicated when he is not on the screen. For then the thing sags in woeful fashion, the romance becomes absurd and the patriotic chest-thumping becomes so much chorus-boy parade. ... However, the show is Mr. Cagney's—as much as there is of it. And he makes it twirl like a baton when he has it in his veteran hands." [2]
Critic Philip K. Scheuer of the Los Angeles Times wrote: "The tortuous, hard-to-follow story seems forever struggling to impose an authentic, documentary quality on the light framework of a happy-go-lucky musical. ... The overall treatment reflects little glory on West Point—not because of such a break in precedent (one expects these liberties in a movie) so much as because the whole approach is brassy and tasteless." [1]
According to Warner Bros. records, the film earned $2,146,000 domestically and $744,000 internationally. [3]
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