Grapefruit of Wrath

Steyn On-line ^ | November 23, 2019 | Mark Steyn

[Twotone]

A couple of nights ago, I was on telly riffing on Joe Biden's pledge to keep punching and punching and punching at domestic violence. I concluded by suggesting he promise to smash a grapefruit in the face of domestic violence - and I was immediately barraged by emails from viewers who had no idea what I was talking about, and thought I'd flown the coop of whatever sanity remained. Alas, my cultural references are increasingly incomprehensible to those under, say, 112 years of age, but this particular one was once universally known: Jimmy Cagney shoving half-a-grapefruit into the kisser of Mae Clarke in The Public Enemy (1931).

It occurs about halfway through the picture - if you want a more precise timing, you should have asked Miss Clarke's ex-husband, Lew Brice (brother of Fannie), who knew exactly where it came down to the second and would buy a movie ticket, enter the theater moments before, watch the scene and never fail to delight in it, then leave and have a cheeseburger and fries at the diner across the street before returning to enjoy his ex-beloved getting the grapefruit all over again at the very next screening.

The Public Enemy belongs to that brief period between the introduction of talking pictures in 1927 and the enforcement of the new Motion Picture Production Code in 1934. Within three years, almost all the most memorable features of the film would have been forbidden, including not only the fruity tailor measuring Cagney's inside leg, and his seduction by the wife of his boss, but the grapefruit scene itself in all its essentials. The year before James Cagney had been on Broadway, opposite Joan Blondell in a play called Penny Arcade.

[aquila48]

LOL!