The West Point Story (1950) - film review

Elwin Bixby is an out-of-work Broadway director who desperately needs cash to finance his gambling habit and keep his fiancée Eve Dillon from running out on him.  Producer Harry Eberhart throws Elwin a lifeline, inviting him to take charge of an end of term show put on by the cadets at West Point military academy.  Elwin is not surprised when he learns that Eberhart’s nephew, Tom Fletcher, is the star of the show.  Realising that Tom has a great future as a professional singer, Eberhart is determined to get him out of the army and onto a Broadway stage.  It is up to Elwin to persuade Tom to make this dramatic career change, with a little help from film star Jan Wilson...

No doubt hoping to repeat the success of their earlier smash hit musical Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942), Warner Brothers pulled out all the stops and drafted their two biggest stars, James Cagney and Doris Day, into another musical extravaganza.  Cagney was keen to make another song-and-dance musical after appearing in a series of hardboiled dramas and was delighted to be reunited with Virginia Mayo, who starred opposite him in White Heat (1949).  The West Point Story is a film of which Cagney was particularly proud and the actor has stated that, of the all the films he made, this was his personal favourite.

Certainly, there is no shortage of talent in this film.  Cagney is, as ever, the consummate showman, skilfully combining the tougher and gentler sides of his persona, one minute lashing out with a mean right hook, the next charming the pants off everyone with a dance routine that even the great Fred Astaire could only gaze upon in admiration.  And, as if that was not enough to lure the masses into the cinema stalls, Warner Brothers also offer us another dream ticket, in the form of Doris Day and Gordon MacRae in one of their many memorable screen couplings. 

Never mind that the fact that the plot is the most egregiously contrived hokum imaginable.  Forget the obvious penny pinching, such as the ridiculous over-use of back-projection to save on sets.  Just sit back and soak up the glitz and charm that this good-natured film has to offer.  The West Point Story is a quaint but well-intentioned tribute to America’s leading military school, but don’t let that put you off.

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