Well, the things you learn at the movies…
I never knew—never heard of—never would have suspected—that such an entity existed named The Department of Weights and Measures.
Until I saw it in a movie.
Yes, there really is a movie about The Department of Weights and Measures. That’s what amazes me about Cinema—if something’s Out There, sooner or later it’ll end up on celluloid. Hence this 1936 low-budgeter, Great Guy, with James Cagney as the Departmental head, and produced by the outlier studio Grand National during one of Cagney’s spats with Warner Bros. over tough-guy typecasting. I do wonder about that typecasting tiff. Cagney may play a bureaucrat in this film, but he’s as plausible a bureaucrat as Gypsy Rose Lee would be a nun. “Keep your head on your shoulders and your fists in your pockets,” is the advice offered—which Cagney doesn’t follow in the slightest. This pencil pusher prefers to punch his way through the red tape. Refined he ain’t, but what the hell. “What’s the use of trying to be subtle,” says our pugilistically inclined apparatchik; he “may as well be myself.”
Fortunately for us, he is. Let’s thank the Gods of Typecasting for that.
Per the film, the DWM is the office responsible for regulating public weights and measures, making sure the process is kept legal and honest. That’s important if you’re checking labels for ounces and pounds and inches and yards on products you buy. See, when making a purchase that says this can or this box or this bag or this bottle or this plucked chicken or stack of pig knuckles weighs such an amount or measures such a length, you should get the whole of what you’re shelling out your hard-earned cash for. It’s how you ensure honesty and protection in commerce and the free market. You probably never thought about it before, but now…you probably will.
But to make a movie about it?
Great Guy is the movie that Dares To Do It.
No, it’s not a documentary, on How The DWM Makes Life Better For the American Citizen. It’s about the thrilling adventures! of our hard-hitting (literally), two-fisted Great Guy, who uses finesse, fortitude, and fisticuffs to Keep It Clean at the Counter. You wanna buy a real and true pound of potatoes? Great Guy (GG for short) makes sure you’ll get the full pound. Because the Honest Citizen and his Honest Dough deserve an Honest Potatoed Pound, and no shaving slivers off the spuds. So when all these chiselers are out to stiff Joe and Josephine Citizen on the weekly groceries, GG is the one making sure everything’s weighed to the last real milligram and measured to the last real millimeter. ‘Cause when times are tough and you’re counting the pennies and ya gotta make every last copper count…it’s nice to know someone’s out there watching the scales and eyeing the tape.
(You know, once you see this movie, you’ll never take a 16-ounce can of beans for granted again.)
But—why make a film about Weights and Measures? Maybe it’s won’t be tops on your “1001 Movies You Gotta See Before You Kick The Bucket” List, but look—this movie is educational. You learn what this bureau does, why it’s necessary, how its activities establish a fundamental trust between consumer and vendor, and, to get down to the raw, how such functions guarantee the smooth running of a civilized society. So, yeah—why not make it into a movie? And a pretty entertaining one, too.
Plus, throughout there’s Cagney. Who’s simply—Cagney—and who’s gonna complain about that? Even if he’s just there in a shot, doing nothing but waiting for Something to Bust Out, his whole aura is that of a real, weighty, measured, honest-to-God, heavens-to-murgatroyd Movie Star—as pure and true and bona-fide as that guaranteed 10-pound ham you’ve bought and paid for. You can’t get more on the up-and-up than that.
Yeah, maybe it’s a bit over the top that GG spends more time slugging shady weighers and measurers than doing actual office work. But the filmmakers knew their star, knew his audience, and knew no one was gonna part from their precious bucks to watch Cagney swivel in a chair for 70 minutes while dictating memos. Because when Cagney’s onscreen, we want him to be Cagney. We wanna see him put the hurt (and hard) on all those crooks and cons and fakers and frauds and robbers and rogues and scoundrels and swindlers and bilkers and bamboozlers—all those Real Mean Guys who would cheat Grandma of her full (to the brim) pint of milk she buys for her morning cereal and afternoon tea, with a little left for the cat’s evening snack. We wanna see the fists fly and the punches pop and the bruises break, because we want Action, and plenty of it, and we want it fast and furious, and even a bit funny. And we want it all to Come Out Right in the End, with malefactors jailed, morality restored, and an honest bowl of soup ladled out to the honest working man and woman in exchange for an honest nickel. We want it all weighed and measured, fair and accurately, because…that’s How Things Oughta Be.
So, yeah, put this movie on your Must-See Bucket List.
It’s one pail that’ll get the weights and measures just right.
Here’s the somewhat incoherent trailer for Great Guy, with a bit of everything tossed in (nothing weighed or measured about it). The Department of Weights and Measures is mentioned only once—it really is ALL about Cagney:
Check out a not-bad print of Great Guy here on YouTube. Very public domain…
Grand Old Movies 