Solemplex To me, this movie is perfection.

Bea Swanson This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

Jonah Abbott There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

Phillipa Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

utgard14 Delightful comedy starring James Cagney as Biff Grimes, a turn of the century dentist who reflects on the past while plotting revenge on a former friend who wronged him. Cagney is terrific in one of his best comedy roles. He's so charming and likable, with a twinkle in his eye in every scene. Rarely has he been better than he is here. Olivia de Havilland flexes her comedy muscles as a suffragette who falls in love with Biff. Cagney and de Havilland make for a marvelous pair. It's a shame they didn't do more movies together. For her part, Rita Hayworth is good as the titular character, although most of the heavy lifting comes from other players. She's basically supposed to look beautiful and be an "ideal," and she does that quite well. Great support from Alan Ladd as Biff's father, George Tobias as his friend, and Jack Carson as the villain of the piece. Carson was a likable actor but he had a very limited range, so usually I either love him or hate him depending on if the part fits him or not. This one thankfully does. Wonderful use of music from the period. Really adds to the light and cheerful atmosphere of the film. It does take a darker turn in the second half, but only briefly, and it manages to come out on the other side without losing any momentum. Remake of a 1933 film called One Sunday Afternoon starring Gary Cooper. Remade again in 1948 under the original film's title. This version is far and away the best of the three.

misswestergaard "Strawberry Blonde" has tremendous energy. It's a love letter to fin-de - siecle America, here a feisty, urban "melting pot" of the burgeoning middle-classes. This is a Horatio Alger America, a place rife with go- getters and plenty of opportunity, where immigrants from different nations (Irish and Greek) strive arm in arm. James Cagney, Olivia DeHavilland and Rita Hayworth give delicious, youthful performances in "Strawberry Blonde". Perhaps a bit too old for their respective roles, the actors nevertheless conjure the bold charm of a younger America. An avaricious coquette, an ambitious scrapper and a sensitive would-be suffragette, these are characters with big, bright expectations. And they are perfectly suited to the lively, bustling world director Raoul Walsh presents here. Walsh gives us a kind of turn-of-the-century paradise, a world of graceful hats and high necked-dresses, foamy beer and bright brass bands, horse drawn carriages, friendly policemen and dinner at Tony Pastor's. It's a world that's clean and optimistic, but not yet fully tame. Cagney's Biff Grimes has a temper. At the merest wisp of provocation, he puts up his dukes. But his fisticuffs don't count as brutality here, instead they are rough play, a manifestation of energy and virility and will. "Strawberry Blonde" may venerate traditional values, but it also celebrates desire and appetite and possibility. It's an appealing vision. And probably a perfect inspirational vehicle for its original WWII audiences. "Strawberry Blonde" works as both a paean to a spirited, self-sacrificing working class AND a promise of satisfactions to come.

calvinnme Almost all of Cagney's early roles were that of a gangster or a fast-talking con-man. Starting in the 40's as the major studios ramped up their production of patriotic films in anticipation of war, Cagney starred in some military roles such as "The Fighting 69th" and "Captains of the Clouds". However, it was still the same old wise-cracking gangster or con-man - he was just in uniform. Don't get me wrong, I never get tired watching Cagney play these kinds of parts, but I've read that the typecasting was a source of friction between himself and Warner Brothers.This film is a real departure from the kind of role that Cagney had grown tired of by 1934. In it he plays Biff Grimes, a dentist at the beginning of the 20th century. Biff has had a series of misfortunes heaped upon him throughout his life. To begin with his Dad (Alan Hale) is a ne'er-do-well, and he has a "friend" Hugo F. Barnstead (Jack Carson) who is always managing to get the best of him and then some. Hugo works up from small slights such as not paying back money or leaving Biff with the tab to stealing and marrying Biff's ideal girl and finally setting Biff up to take the fall in some substandard work Hugo's company has done for the city. After Biff gets out of prison after serving time for a crime he didn't commit, he has a chance to get even with Hugo -as in killing him - and make it look like an accident. Since most of the movie is told in flashback, and Cagney is playing a likable if somewhat gullible fellow who has been deeply wronged, you don't know how it will end or what he will do. The supporting cast is great in this one. Jack Carson was always playing the slippery type in Warner films around this time, and he does the job of playing Hugo with believable gusto, always making excuses for his part in Biff's predicaments. Rita Hayworth is cast as "the strawberry blonde" that Biff loses to Hugo, and Olivia De Havilland plays the girl Biff ultimately marries. She turns out to the one piece of good luck that Biff has as she is tough and loyal in a crisis.A bittersweet romantic comedy, this is one of my favorite post-code Cagney films.

louis-king Cagney departs from his tough, street smart persona to play the gullible, not so tough Biff Grimes. Notice how he loses fight after fight; in one scene he's a barroom bouncer tossing his drunken father out asking his father not to put up too much of a fight "I'm supposed to be a tough guy".He gets suckered time after time by Hugo and Virginia. That wouldn't have happened to other Cagney characters! His best scenes are with Olivia DeHavilland. What chemistry. Sometimes no dialog, just glances.The main characters play off each other phenomenally. Even the minor characters are superb. Who was that fat German who blew beer foam into Cagney's face? He was great! The period music is so woven into the story that the movie almost becomes a musical. The lovely theme that's played whenever Olivia DeHavilland come into the scene is "When You Were Sweet Sixteen". Unlike the title song "Strawberry Blonde", it's never sung in the movie but it was popular at the turn of the century. Perry Como made it one of his hits in the early 1940's.The movie is such a nostalgic, funny, (sad at times) look back at the turn of the century that you wish you could go back there with them.It's amazing that director Raoul Walsh also made the brilliant, violent, cynical "White Heat" with nary a sentimental, lovable character.