| Taxi! | |
|---|---|
 lobby card | |
| Directed by | Roy Del Ruth |
| Written by | Adaptation & dialogue: Kubec Glasmon John Bright |
| Based on | The Blind Spot unproduced play by Kenyon Nicholson[1] |
| Produced by | Robert Lord |
| Starring | James Cagney Loretta Young |
| Cinematography | James Van Trees |
| Edited by | James Gibbon |
Production company | |
| Distributed by | Warner Bros. |
Release date |
|
Running time | 69 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
Taxi! is a 1932 American pre-Code film directed by Roy Del Ruth and starring James Cagney and Loretta Young.
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]
- ^ Aaker, Everett (April 19, 2013). George Raft: The Films. McFarland. ISBN 9780786493135.
- ^ Vagg, Stephen (February 9, 2020). "Why Stars Stop Being Stars: George Raft". Filmink.
- ^ Everett Aaker, The Films of George Raft, McFarland & Company, 2013, p. 20
- ^ a b Fristoe, Roger. "TCM's article on Taxi!". Turner Classic Movies. Archived from the original on September 28, 2015. Retrieved September 27, 2015.
- ^ 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.