'By the Kissing Rock' was a delightful tap number performed in a rehearsal sequence, and the climactic number, 'Brooklyn', was a favourite of Cagney's:īeautiful Virginia Mayo and I did a number that I thought was some of the best dancing we ever did. She was reteamed with Cagney ('He asked for me') in The West Point Story (1950), with songs by Jule Styne and Sammy Cahn, in which they had two engaging dance duets. Mayo later praised the actor's inventiveness: Materialistic, shallow, and having an affair with one of his henchmen (Steve Cochran), Mayo was superbly sluttish and worked excellently with Cagney. Raoul Walsh, who had liked her work in Colorado Territory, then cast in one of her best-remembered roles, the moll of the psychotic gangster Cody Jarrett (James Cagney) in the crime classic White Heat (1949).

This was followed by Colorado Territory (1949), a western reworking of the Bogart thriller High Sierra (1941), with Mayo in the role originally played by Ida Lupino, and another gangster yarn, Flaxy Martin (1949), with Mayo as a moll who corrupts a lawyer (Zachary Scott). Her first film for the studio was a routine crime yarn, Smart Girls Don't Talk (1948), in which she played a society woman who becomes involved with gangsters. Mayo then signed a contract with Warners, where she would remain for 10 years. A Song is Born (1948) was the least successful of the Kaye-Mayo teamings, a remake of the Billy Wilder comedy Ball of Fire (1941) which featured several noted jazz musicians, but played down Kaye's eccentric comedy, and exposed Mayo to comparisons with Barbara Stanwyck in the earlier film. She was back with Danny Kaye for The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947), in which she played the girl of the meek hero's dreams in several fantasy sequences, as well as the film's heroine, who involves Kaye in a real-life adventure. She later joked that she had been responsible for Wyler's winning one of the film's nine Oscars, 'because everyone said, 'My God! If he can do that with Virginia Mayo. As the shallow floozy who is faithless when her husband of two weeks (Dana Andrews) goes off to war, and who derides his post-war efforts to re-adjust, Mayo was totally convincing. The same year Mayo was given her most challenging role to date, in William Wyler's superb story of returning servicemen The Best Years of Our Lives. Asked about rumours of friction with Kaye, Mayo replied, Mayo then played leading lady to Danny Kaye for the first of four times, in Wonder Man (1945), a zany tale in which she played a librarian in love with a scholarly young man (Kaye) whose body is intermittently inhabited by the ghost of his murdered brother, a night-club entertainer. Hope quips, 'I work my brains out for nine reels and some bit player from Paramount comes over and steals my girl!'

Looking gorgeous in Technicolor, Mayo sparred well with Hope, and sang (dubbed by Louanne Hogan) and danced to the song 'How Would You Like to Kiss Me in the Moonlight?' The critic of Newsweek reported, 'Miss Mayo is lovely in Technicolor and more than adequate to the film's negligible acting demands.' At the film's conclusion Hope is preparing to embrace Mayo when she walks past him to hug a sailor (Bing Crosby).

With Mayo's apprenticeship complete, Goldwyn then gave her the female lead in the Bob Hope comedy The Princess and the Pirate (1945).

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