In 1951 James Cagney's movie career had come of age. It had been 21 years since he had made his first feature with Warner Brothers and despite cementing his superstar status there, his relationship with Jack Warner had seldom been smooth. His period of operating as an Independent from the mid 1940's onwards under the guidance of his brother William, had not yielded the results neither of the Cagney brothers had expected and the films that were released during this period although artistically credible, had not found a favourable foothold with neither the public or the critics as they lacked the promotion and Hollywood 'ballyhoo' that would have ordinarily accompanied a release from a star of his calibre and his career had started to decline.
In 1949, he returned to Warner Brothers and the genre that had made him a star in the gangster classic 'White Heat' closely followed by another Gangster movie 'Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye'. However, it was a bittersweet return for Cagney as although these movies put him back on top, he was again being typecast as the 'thug' something he had spent most of the decade trying to escape from. Compensation came in the form of the opportunity to appear in another musical called the West Point Story with Doris Day and Virginia Mayo, however, it was his fourth movie after his Warner's return that gave Cagney the chance to stretch his acting canvas on a scale audiences had not really seen too much of.
In 'Come Fill The Cup', Cagney plays newspaper reporter Lou Marsh who is blighted by alcoholism. He is a good man with an all too human flaw. After turning up for work after missing five days due to a binge, he is fired and decides to climb into the bottle for good. He justifies his drinking to a bartender as follows:
"A lush can always find a reason if he's thirsty. If he's happy, he takes a couple of shots to celebrate his happiness. If he's sad, he needs them to drown his sorrows. Low, to pick him up. Excited, to calm him down. Sick, for his health and healthy, it can't hurt him. So you see Al, a lush just can't lose".
The fact that he says this quote whilst losing his job, his girlfriend Paula (Phylis Thaxter) and the respect of all of his friends and colleagues highlights his wilful denial.
We next see Marsh In what we must assume is a few months later, he is unshaven, scruffy and has been reduced to begging to random people in the street for small change to feed his addiction. One such person is Charlie Dolan, (James Gleason), who seems concerned enough to ask Marsh when he last ate, only to rebuked by the disinterested lush. After giving him a quarter, Marsh starts to make a beeline to the nearest bar, only to collapse when crossing the street narrowly avoiding getting run over by a truck. Marsh is taken to a hospital where a short montage shows his hellish recovery through Cold Turkey, night sweats and withdrawal psychosis.
Then comes the day that a sober and strong willed Marsh leaves the hospital determined not to have another drink after being told by his doctor that he will be an 'alcoholic for life' and 'alcohol is as poisonous to him as sugar is to the diabetic'. Outside waiting for him is Charlie Dolan, who being a reformed alcoholic himself, knows the uphill battle Marsh will now face and he invites Marsh to stay with him in his run down apartment block so he can offer the support he will no doubt need if he is to stay off the sauce.
After a period of aimless sobriety and menial jobs, as well as the news that his ex girlfriend Paula has now married the nephew of his old boss, Charlie suspects that Marsh may be in danger of falling off the wagon, unless his life is once again given some purpose, direction and stability. Charlie takes it upon himself to write to Marsh's old paper saying that he is now sober and to ask them if they are willing to give him a chance to redeem himself. His former editor agrees, but only offers him the shipping arrivals to start with until he has proven himself that he has beaten his addiction once and for all.
Six years pass and Marsh has not only stayed sober during this time, but he has worked his way up to be City Editor and now lives in a more spacious and luxurious apartment with Charlie in tow, with whom he has formed a firm and lasting friendship. He also employed a handful of ex-drunks in order to give them the stability he had found so they can also stay on the straight and narrow, none of whom had let him down.
Newspaper owner John Ives (Raymond Massey), impressed by Marsh's ability to, as he sees it, 'cure drunks' asks him to help out his nephew Boyd Copeland (Gig Young), the same nephew that has married Marsh's ex girlfriend all those years before who has also now become an alcoholic. Marsh protests, stating that he hadn't really cured anybody, and that he had only hired people who had already quit drinking in order to keep them busy and sober. Ives, shrugs this off as false modesty and effectively emotionally blackmails him into helping Boyd, by pointing that he had helped him six years ago by giving him a second chance.
Marsh flies to the Ives' palatial estate with Paula and Boyd is not there having gone out on yet another binge. The whole house is awoken in the early hours of the morning when Boyd comes home and starts playing his 'unfinished and will probably remain unfinished' piano concerto totally fortissimo.
It is revealed that Boyd has asked for a divorce from Paula so he can marry a Mexican dancer named Maria that he acquainted in Mexico, a revelation that not only breaks Paula's heart, but also has the potential to turn deadly as Maria is also the girlfriend of gangster Lenny Garr (Sheldon Leonard), who has already warned Boyd to stay away and left him with a souvenir of a minor knife wound to the back.
Through his contacts at the paper, Marsh finds out who exactly this Maria is and where she is now working and goes to see her to talk her out of her relationship with Boyd but without success and in the process comes face to face with Garr and warns him that if anything happens to Boyd, then he will use all his influence to put him behind bars for good.
Boyd moved in with Marsh and Charlie in the hopes that their influence will stop his drinking, but to no avail, after only a few days, Boyd escapes and goes straight to Maria's. Charlie knowing full well where to find him, goes there too and attempts to bring Boyd back. On the ride home, an inebriated Boyd, (who for some bizarre reason is allowed to drive), crashes the car and Charlie is killed. Marsh, who believing that Boyd's drunk driving has killed his best friend is devastated at Charlie's death and loses his cool and gives Boyd a beating at the crash site.
However, the experience of the crash and Charlie's death has also had a severe impact on Boyd and has been the catalyst needed for Boyd to want to give up the booze for good. Sadly losing his friend is also the catalyst that could see Marsh take his first drink in over six years. In fact, he is in a bar, drink in hand about to take a sip, when one of his workers rushes in to tell him that it wasn't Boyd's drunken driving that had caused the crash, but the break lines of the car had been cut and Boyd couldn't have stopped that car irrespective of his blood alcohol level. Realising that this was murder and under no illusion who was responsible, Marsh leaves the bar, drink untouched determined times nail Lenny Garr to the wall.
Meanwhile, Boyd is at Marsh's apartment going through cold Turkey and the accompanying DT's, haunted by Charlie's death. In desperation he rummages around the place until he finds a bottle of whiskey that Charlie kept as his 'quart of conscience', he also finds a gun and instead of taking a drink, decides that the gun would offer a more permanent solution to his addiction. Marsh arrives just in time to prevent Boyd's suicide and decides that despite John Ive's wishes, a hospital would be the best place for Boyd to get well.
After a period in the hospital Boyd is released clean and sober and is determined to stay that way as well as salvage his failing marriage. In the interim, Marsh has been putting the screws on Lenny Garr, but Maria is a loose end that needs to be tied up. Maria begs Boyd to help her with money to leave the country convinced that Garr is trying to kill her and so Marsh concocts a plan to not only reunite Boyd with his wife, but to get Maria to turn on Garr and testify against him.
On Marsh's instructions, he gets Boyd to bring Maria to his place and so he can convince her to testify and when he is gone, he also summons Paula so she can see the efforts that Boyd has been making to stay sober by placing photos of her around his apartment and in particular on the bar in front of all the liquor bottles. However Garr has followed Boyd and after he has returned to the apartment with Maria, he holds them all at gunpoint and explains how he is going to tie up these loose ends by staging a murder/suicide incident where Boyd and Marsh kill Maria when they were drunk and attempts to get them to take a drink. Garr is overpowered and is killed by Marsh when they struggle over the gun and not only does Marsh get his front page story, but Boyd and Paula are reunited and an appreciative Ives thanks Marsh for his efforts.
Come Fill the Cup is a great noir style melodrama and shows Cagney as more than just a tough guy who dances occasionally. Here we see him play a character that does not start strong, but finds strength within his greatest weakness. Gleason is brilliant as Charlie and you do share Cagney's emotion when he dies. Gig Young is brilliant as Boyd Copeland and his cold Turkey scene shows us that he could play more than the comic characters that we usually associated him with.
A great hidden Cagney movie and one worth watching.
Enjoy!
In 1949, he returned to Warner Brothers and the genre that had made him a star in the gangster classic 'White Heat' closely followed by another Gangster movie 'Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye'. However, it was a bittersweet return for Cagney as although these movies put him back on top, he was again being typecast as the 'thug' something he had spent most of the decade trying to escape from. Compensation came in the form of the opportunity to appear in another musical called the West Point Story with Doris Day and Virginia Mayo, however, it was his fourth movie after his Warner's return that gave Cagney the chance to stretch his acting canvas on a scale audiences had not really seen too much of.
In 'Come Fill The Cup', Cagney plays newspaper reporter Lou Marsh who is blighted by alcoholism. He is a good man with an all too human flaw. After turning up for work after missing five days due to a binge, he is fired and decides to climb into the bottle for good. He justifies his drinking to a bartender as follows:
"A lush can always find a reason if he's thirsty. If he's happy, he takes a couple of shots to celebrate his happiness. If he's sad, he needs them to drown his sorrows. Low, to pick him up. Excited, to calm him down. Sick, for his health and healthy, it can't hurt him. So you see Al, a lush just can't lose".
The fact that he says this quote whilst losing his job, his girlfriend Paula (Phylis Thaxter) and the respect of all of his friends and colleagues highlights his wilful denial.
We next see Marsh In what we must assume is a few months later, he is unshaven, scruffy and has been reduced to begging to random people in the street for small change to feed his addiction. One such person is Charlie Dolan, (James Gleason), who seems concerned enough to ask Marsh when he last ate, only to rebuked by the disinterested lush. After giving him a quarter, Marsh starts to make a beeline to the nearest bar, only to collapse when crossing the street narrowly avoiding getting run over by a truck. Marsh is taken to a hospital where a short montage shows his hellish recovery through Cold Turkey, night sweats and withdrawal psychosis.
Then comes the day that a sober and strong willed Marsh leaves the hospital determined not to have another drink after being told by his doctor that he will be an 'alcoholic for life' and 'alcohol is as poisonous to him as sugar is to the diabetic'. Outside waiting for him is Charlie Dolan, who being a reformed alcoholic himself, knows the uphill battle Marsh will now face and he invites Marsh to stay with him in his run down apartment block so he can offer the support he will no doubt need if he is to stay off the sauce.
After a period of aimless sobriety and menial jobs, as well as the news that his ex girlfriend Paula has now married the nephew of his old boss, Charlie suspects that Marsh may be in danger of falling off the wagon, unless his life is once again given some purpose, direction and stability. Charlie takes it upon himself to write to Marsh's old paper saying that he is now sober and to ask them if they are willing to give him a chance to redeem himself. His former editor agrees, but only offers him the shipping arrivals to start with until he has proven himself that he has beaten his addiction once and for all.
Six years pass and Marsh has not only stayed sober during this time, but he has worked his way up to be City Editor and now lives in a more spacious and luxurious apartment with Charlie in tow, with whom he has formed a firm and lasting friendship. He also employed a handful of ex-drunks in order to give them the stability he had found so they can also stay on the straight and narrow, none of whom had let him down.
Newspaper owner John Ives (Raymond Massey), impressed by Marsh's ability to, as he sees it, 'cure drunks' asks him to help out his nephew Boyd Copeland (Gig Young), the same nephew that has married Marsh's ex girlfriend all those years before who has also now become an alcoholic. Marsh protests, stating that he hadn't really cured anybody, and that he had only hired people who had already quit drinking in order to keep them busy and sober. Ives, shrugs this off as false modesty and effectively emotionally blackmails him into helping Boyd, by pointing that he had helped him six years ago by giving him a second chance.
Marsh flies to the Ives' palatial estate with Paula and Boyd is not there having gone out on yet another binge. The whole house is awoken in the early hours of the morning when Boyd comes home and starts playing his 'unfinished and will probably remain unfinished' piano concerto totally fortissimo.
It is revealed that Boyd has asked for a divorce from Paula so he can marry a Mexican dancer named Maria that he acquainted in Mexico, a revelation that not only breaks Paula's heart, but also has the potential to turn deadly as Maria is also the girlfriend of gangster Lenny Garr (Sheldon Leonard), who has already warned Boyd to stay away and left him with a souvenir of a minor knife wound to the back.
Through his contacts at the paper, Marsh finds out who exactly this Maria is and where she is now working and goes to see her to talk her out of her relationship with Boyd but without success and in the process comes face to face with Garr and warns him that if anything happens to Boyd, then he will use all his influence to put him behind bars for good.
Boyd moved in with Marsh and Charlie in the hopes that their influence will stop his drinking, but to no avail, after only a few days, Boyd escapes and goes straight to Maria's. Charlie knowing full well where to find him, goes there too and attempts to bring Boyd back. On the ride home, an inebriated Boyd, (who for some bizarre reason is allowed to drive), crashes the car and Charlie is killed. Marsh, who believing that Boyd's drunk driving has killed his best friend is devastated at Charlie's death and loses his cool and gives Boyd a beating at the crash site.
However, the experience of the crash and Charlie's death has also had a severe impact on Boyd and has been the catalyst needed for Boyd to want to give up the booze for good. Sadly losing his friend is also the catalyst that could see Marsh take his first drink in over six years. In fact, he is in a bar, drink in hand about to take a sip, when one of his workers rushes in to tell him that it wasn't Boyd's drunken driving that had caused the crash, but the break lines of the car had been cut and Boyd couldn't have stopped that car irrespective of his blood alcohol level. Realising that this was murder and under no illusion who was responsible, Marsh leaves the bar, drink untouched determined times nail Lenny Garr to the wall.
Meanwhile, Boyd is at Marsh's apartment going through cold Turkey and the accompanying DT's, haunted by Charlie's death. In desperation he rummages around the place until he finds a bottle of whiskey that Charlie kept as his 'quart of conscience', he also finds a gun and instead of taking a drink, decides that the gun would offer a more permanent solution to his addiction. Marsh arrives just in time to prevent Boyd's suicide and decides that despite John Ive's wishes, a hospital would be the best place for Boyd to get well.
After a period in the hospital Boyd is released clean and sober and is determined to stay that way as well as salvage his failing marriage. In the interim, Marsh has been putting the screws on Lenny Garr, but Maria is a loose end that needs to be tied up. Maria begs Boyd to help her with money to leave the country convinced that Garr is trying to kill her and so Marsh concocts a plan to not only reunite Boyd with his wife, but to get Maria to turn on Garr and testify against him.
On Marsh's instructions, he gets Boyd to bring Maria to his place and so he can convince her to testify and when he is gone, he also summons Paula so she can see the efforts that Boyd has been making to stay sober by placing photos of her around his apartment and in particular on the bar in front of all the liquor bottles. However Garr has followed Boyd and after he has returned to the apartment with Maria, he holds them all at gunpoint and explains how he is going to tie up these loose ends by staging a murder/suicide incident where Boyd and Marsh kill Maria when they were drunk and attempts to get them to take a drink. Garr is overpowered and is killed by Marsh when they struggle over the gun and not only does Marsh get his front page story, but Boyd and Paula are reunited and an appreciative Ives thanks Marsh for his efforts.
Come Fill the Cup is a great noir style melodrama and shows Cagney as more than just a tough guy who dances occasionally. Here we see him play a character that does not start strong, but finds strength within his greatest weakness. Gleason is brilliant as Charlie and you do share Cagney's emotion when he dies. Gig Young is brilliant as Boyd Copeland and his cold Turkey scene shows us that he could play more than the comic characters that we usually associated him with.
A great hidden Cagney movie and one worth watching.
Enjoy!