Taxi!

Taxi! is a 1932 American pre-Code film directed by Roy Del Ruth and starring James Cagney and Loretta Young.

This article is about the 1932 film. For the 1963–64 British TV series with Sid James, see Taxi! (British TV series). For other uses, see Taxi (disambiguation).

Taxi!
lobby card
Directed byRoy Del Ruth
Written byAdaptation & dialogue:
Kubec Glasmon
John Bright
Based onThe Blind Spot
unproduced play
by Kenyon Nicholson[1]
Produced byRobert Lord
StarringJames Cagney
Loretta Young
CinematographyJames Van Trees
Edited byJames Gibbon
Production
company
Distributed byWarner Bros.
Release date
January 23, 1932
Running time
69 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Loretta Young and James Cagney

The film includes a famous, and often misquoted, line with Cagney speaking to his brother's killer through a locked closet door: "Come out and take it, you dirty yellow-bellied rat, or I'll give it to you through the door!" This line has often been misquoted as "You dirty rat, you killed my brother".

To play his competitor in a ballroom dance contest, Cagney recommended his pal, fellow tough-guy-dancer George Raft, who was uncredited in the film.[2] In a lengthy and memorable sequence, the scene culminates with Raft and his partner winning the dance contest against Cagney and Young, after which Cagney slugs Raft and knocks him down.[3][4] As in The Public Enemy (1931), several scenes in Taxi! involved the use of live machine gun bullets. After a few of the bullets narrowly missed Cagney's head, he outlawed the practice in his future films.[4]

In the film they see a fictitious Warner Bros. film at the cinema called Her Hour of Love in which Cagney cracks a joke about the film's leading man's appearance (an unbilled cameo by Warners contract player Donald Cook, who had played Cagney's brother in The Public Enemy) saying, "his ears are too big". Also advertised in the cinema lobby in the film is The Mad Genius, an actual film starring John Barrymore which was released the previous year by Warners.[5]

Plot

When a veteran cab driver, Pop Riley (Guy Kibbee), refuses to be pressured into surrendering his prime soliciting location outside a cafe, where his daughter works, the old man's cab is intentionally wrecked by a ruthless mob seeking to dominate the cab industry. Upon learning of the "accidental" destruction of his cab (and along with it his livelihood), the old man retrieves his handgun and shoots the bullying man known to be responsible, which lands him in prison, where he dies of poor health in fairly short order.

Pop's waitressing daughter, Sue (Loretta Young), is asked by a scrappy young cab driver, Matt (James Cagney), to lend moral support to a resistance movement populated by other drivers, who are also experiencing similar strong-arm tactics by the same aggressive group of thugs. However, after enduring the crushing loss of her father, Sue undergoes a complete ethical reversal about the notion of fighting back, feels thoroughly sickened by the violence and bloodshed, and she angrily tells the drivers as much.

Her unpredictably wilful but passionate rant instantly lands her on Matt's bad side, although he eventually has a redemptive change of heart, then seeks to charm Sue into becoming his girlfriend. They start dating and compete in a foxtrot dance contest.

Matt and Sue get married. On their wedding night they go to a nightclub with Matt's brother Dan. They are all taunted by Buck Gerard, the man responsible for the attacks on cab drivers. Sue stops Matt from attacking Buck, but Buck stabs and kills Dan.

Matt doesn't tell the police who killed Dan so he can get revenge himself. Sue warns Buck's girlfriend, Marie, that Matt is after him. Matt tracks down Buck but Sue and Marie keep him away from Buck long enough for the police to arrive. Matt fires a gun at the closet Buck is hiding in but Buck has fallen to his death out the closet window while trying to escape.

Sue decides to leave Matt but changes her mind.

Cast

Home media

Taxi! was released in February 2012 on DVD by Warner Bros through their print on demand Warner Archive label.

References
  1. Aaker, Everett (April 19, 2013). George Raft: The Films. McFarland. ISBN 9780786493135.
  2. Vagg, Stephen (February 9, 2020). "Why Stars Stop Being Stars: George Raft". Filmink.
  3. Everett Aaker, The Films of George Raft, McFarland & Company, 2013, p. 20
  4. Fristoe, Roger. "TCM's article on Taxi!". Turner Classic Movies. Archived from the original on September 28, 2015. Retrieved September 27, 2015.
  5. Nollen, Scott Allen (2008). Warners Wiseguys: All 112 Films That Robinson, Cagney and Bogart Made for the Studio. McFarland & Company Incorporated Pub. p. 43. ISBN 978-0-7864-3262-2.
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