The Strawberry Blonde

The Strawberry Blonde is a 1941 Warner Bros. feature film directed by Raoul Walsh, starring James Cagney and Olivia de Havilland, and featuring Rita Hayworth, Alan Hale, Jack Carson and George Tobias. The picture was nominated for an Academy Award in 1941 for Best Scoring of a Musical Picture and features songs such as The Band Played On, Bill Bailey, Meet Me in St. Louis, Louie, Wait Till The Sun Shines Nellie, and Love Me and the World Is Mine. The title is most often listed with the The, but the films posters and promotional materials call it simply Strawberry Blonde. Director Walsh remade the film in 1948 as One Sunday Afternoon.

Both the director of Strawberry Blonde, Raoul Walsh, and its star James Cagney came to the project looking for a change of pace. Walsh had just completed the dark Humphrey BogartIda Lupino vehicle High Sierra, shot largely on location, and the good notices the film received had Walsh as fired up as Jack Warner to keep the ball rolling on projects in development and production. The transition between the outdoorsy film noir and the light and sentimental studiocentered Strawberry Blonde proved no problem for Walsh.Cagney had earned his stripes with Warner Bros. in the early 1930s playing tough guys, but he also had shown his talents at lighter, musical material in films like 1933s Footlight Parade He left the studio in middecade, then returned in 1938 with a contract that gave him more control in choosing roles and brought his younger brother William Cagney onboard as assistant producer and informal buffer between himself and studio top brass. But Cagney soon found himself getting slotted right back into tough guy parts and by 1940, he wanted a nostalgic partany partto take him away from the gangsters he was now loathe sic to play. ........

Source: Wikipedia