Hitchcock Annual (1993) - City Boys: Cagney, Bogart, Garfield
Details
- book review: City Boys: Cagney, Bogart, Garfield
- author(s): Tom Stamp
- journal: Hitchcock Annual (1993)
- issue: page 153
- journal ISSN: 1062-5518
Links
Abstract
Review of "City Boys: Cagney, Bogart, Garfield" by Robert Sklar
Article
City Boys: Cagney, Bogart, Garfield. Robert Sklar. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992. 311 pages. $27.50.
City boys are not regular guys. They lie, they cheat, they steal, they murder. They shove grapefruits in their girlfriends' faces. They break their mothers' hearts. But they are also capable of doing the right thing, of looking beyond the main chance to the greater good. They are even, sometimes, capable of tenderness. In Hollywood films of the thirties and forties, where they were born, they created an indelible American archetype.
In the admirably laid out preface to his book City Boys: Cagney, Bogart, Garfield, Robert Sklar sets himself the task of presenting a joint portrait of his three subjects‑three of the most prominent assayers of city‑boy roles‑through an examination of the Hollywood film industry's impact on their careers; of the actors' own efforts to exercise control over their characters and performances; of the development of their screen personae; and of their public (especially, political) lives in the turbulent middle years of the twentieth century. By so doing, he hopes to demonstrate not only each actor's status as an avatar of the city boy‑the urban tough guy, in a variety of guises‑through the power of his performances, but also the continuing significance of the cityboy archetype. It's a tall order, certainly, but one that Sklar very nearly fills to perfection.
Sklar makes the point that all three of his subjects can lay claim to the sort of willful self‑definition that, in part, characterizes the city boy. Cagney and Bogart were both,...
Tom Stamp, who is not a city boy, is Director of Public Affairs at Kenyon College, where he is co‑organizer of the summer film program.
