Johnny Come Lately

  • Drama
9/3/1943
97
NR

A Story of a Wanderer Who Stops His Travels Long Enough to Help A Kindly Old Woman in Distress

Cagney is a human dynamo as a drifter who helps save ailing Grace George from losing her newspaper. The pace is fast, and audiences of all ages will be pleased. The supporting cast, have all the small-town characterizations down pat -- with Margaret Hamilton a standout. Cagney himself, had genuine affection for this film, and listed it among his top five movie-making experiences at a retrospective the year before he died. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive, in partnership with the UCLA Film & Television Archive, in 2013.

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      Reviews

      • Geronimo1967

        Vinnie (Grace George) has been running the Banner & Shield newspaper for a very long time, but its no longer what it was and she has had to mortgage everything to the hilt to keep the thing, and its quirky collection of staff, from the scrap heap. She is a woman of integrity, though, and so when she attends the local court she encounters Tom (James Cagney) who is being accused of vagrancy. He claims to have been a newspaper man, so to save him jail she offers him a job. He accepts as an expedient to spare him incarceration, but she insists that he come and live with her and her formidable maid Aida (Hattie McDaniel) and actually write something. Meantime, the town is being run by the unscrupulous Dougherty (Edward McNamara) whose son Pete (...

        August 21, 2025

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