“Made It Ma. Top of the World”

-James Cagney as Cody Jarrett in White Heat

One of the classic gangster films of the late 1940’s White Heat features James Cagney in the role of criminally insane Cody Jarrett who, after a prison break and a heist, steers his payroll-looting gang to a chemical plant for the final shoot out.

I always wondered if the film Director, Raoul Walsh, had in mind to portray Cagney’s character as crazy or just plain stupid.

After all, wounded, surrounded by ‘coppers’, lit up by search lights and standing atop a gasoline storage tank with guns blazing is not exactly where you want to be.

I was reminded of that scene watching Donald Trump standing on the balcony of the White House, shortly after alighting from his helicopter after his return flight and breakout from Walter Reed Hospital.

In the home stretch of a presidential re-election campaign, obviously still ill from his battle with Covid-19, waving to the cameras and millions of viewers while bathed in white-hot lights, the White House balcony is not exactly where you want to be either.

Cagney, as Cody Jarrett, had his chances but, then again, not really. He was compulsive and pathological. He just couldn’t help himself.

When his betrayer Roy Parker pleaded with him: “You wouldn’t kill me in cold blood, would ya?” Cagney (as Cody) replied: “No, I’ll let ya warm up a little. “

Jarrett used his feigned headaches when younger to manipulate and gain the attention of his mother. The same headaches got real when older and, in the end, they crippled him.

Trump as Trump in his Reality TV like tenure in the White House had his chances, as well.

For all his self proclaimed accomplishments and more so for his missteps and misdeeds, his compulsive and pathological lying ruined any chance he had at governing particularly when we needed him most.

When confronted with the coronavirus pandemic and his responsibility for America in what should have been a desperate and coordinated effort to save hundreds of thousands if not millions of lives as well as life, as we knew it, he failed.

Rooted in the need to please his father, according to his niece Mary Trump in her tell-all book Too Much and Never Enough, his lies and self-absorbed behavior crippled him in the end.

I always thought observing and watching Trump would be better than going to the movies. I’ve since changed my mind. Life has become too serious and the drama is not entertaining, at all.

In the final scenes of this presidential campaign, Donald Trump now stands astride a rally podium and in a bizarre, disconnected way mockingly bemoans and shouts for all to see and hear: “Covid, Covid, Covid.”

In the final scene of White Heat, Cody Jarrett stood atop a gasoline storage tank and famously proclaimed for all to see and hear: “Made it, Ma. Top of the World.”

Something you’d expect to hear from someone when things are looking up. Ironically, in a way they were. The scene erupts in a huge ball of flames.

The undercover ‘copper’ in White Heat (Edmond O’Brien as Hank Fallon) has the final say: “He finally got to the top of the world…and it blew right up in his face.”