As best as I could understand it, James Cagney is a geneologist (yes, a geneologist!) who earns his living by "finding" the heirs to industrialists, playboys and other assorted super-rich who've died without leaving a will. His main rival is the upright and erudite Charles Wallingham (Alan Dinehart) who also tracks down surviving relatives, but does it the honest way. His second in command is Joan Martin, played by Bette Davis, who used to work for Cagney and still has a secret crush on him although she'll slap your face and call you a liar if you're to suggest such a thing.
Now I know that genealogist is not the first occupation that comes to mind when thinking of James Cagney but the good news is that the profession has been adapted to fit his screen persona, rather than the other way around. Cagney plays the part just like he would a newspaper journalist, bookmaker, Broadway show producer, or gangster. Genealogy is just another racket and Cagney makes no concessions to the part in his acting. If anything he's more manic than usual, bellowing away at his employees, conjuring up at least a hundred different angles to every situation, and stomping around with that stiff-legged strut so beloved by impersonators every since. The whole performance is topped off by a truly bizarre haircut more at home on the head of a World War One-era Prussian officer.
Davis by contrast had yet to make the jump from Warner Bros A-list contract player to bona fide film star replete with her own collection of highly imitatable mannerisms. Here, in the third of six films she was to make for the studio in 1934, she's a heavily made-up peroxide blonde in a part that could just as easily have been played by Joan Blondell or Ginger Rogers.
JIMMY THE GENT is by no means a classic, but it is a fine example of the kind of product that rolled off the Warner Brothers production line at the rate of almost one a week during the period when Hollywood fully lived up to both words in the descriptor "dream factory."
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