James Cagney

James Cagney was part of the Legends of Hollywood USPS stamp series.

James Francis Cagney, Jr. (July 17, 1899 – March 30, 1986) was an American film actor.

In common with fellow American screen icon James Stewart, Cagney became so familiar to audiences that they usually referred to him as "Jimmy" Cagney--a billing never found on any of his films. While technically incorrect, the use of the 'nickname' was a testimony to Cagney's impact.

Cagney was born in New York City to James Cagney Sr., an Irish American bartender and amateur boxer, and Carolyn Nelson; his maternal grandfather was a Norwegian ship captain[1] while his maternal grandmother was an Irish American.[2] The red-haired, blue-eyed Cagney graduated from Stuyvesant High School in New York City in 1918 and attended Columbia University.

Both his brother William Cagney, who was also a producer, and sister Jeanne Cagney were actors.

He worked in vaudeville and on Broadway, marrying the dancer Frances Willard (aka: "Billie") Vernon (1899 - 1994) on September 28, 1922 and remained faithfully married for 64 years. They adopted a son James Cagney Jr and a daughter Cathleen "Casey" Cagney. When Warner Brothers bought the film rights to the play Penny Arcade they took Cagney and his co-star Joan Blondell from the stage to the screen in the retitled Sinner's Holiday (1930), starring Grant Withers.

The five-five, 180-pound Cagney went on to star in numerous films, making his name as a 'tough guy' in a series of crime films beginning with the smash hit classic The Public Enemy (1931), then continuing with Smart Money (1931), his only film with Edward G. Robinson (shot before The Public Enemy was released and made him an immediate sensation), Blonde Crazy (1931), and Hard to Handle (1933). He later played fictional gangster Rocky Sullivan in Angels with Dirty Faces (1938), worked as a gangster opposite Humphrey Bogart in The Roaring Twenties, won an Oscar playing George M. Cohan in Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942), returned to his gangster roots in Raoul Walsh's masterful White Heat (1949) ("Made it, Ma! Top of the world!"), and played the lunatic ship captain opposite Jack Lemmon and Henry Fonda in Mister Roberts (1955).

He was one of the founders of the Screen Actors Guild and president of the Guild from 1942-44.

Cagney's final appearance on film was in Ragtime in 1981, capping a career that covered over seventy films, although his last film prior to Ragtime had been 20 years earlier in 1961 with Billy Wilder's One, Two, Three, still regarded as the fastest-paced performance ever recorded on film. During this hiatus Cagney rebuffed all film offers, including a substantial one in My Fair Lady as well as a blank check from Charles Bluhdorn at Gulf & Western to play The Godfather, to devote time to learning how to paint (at which he became very accomplished), and tending to his beloved farm in Stanfordville, New York.

In 1974 he received the Lifetime Achievement Award of the American Film Institute and in 1984 his friend Ronald Reagan awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Cagney's health deteriorated substantially after 1979, and the role in Ragtime, as well as a later television appearance in 1984, was designed to aid in his convalescence.

The crypt of James Cagney in Gate of Heaven Cemetery

James Cagney died at his Dutchess County farm in upstate New York, aged 86, of a heart attack while ill with diabetes. He is interred in the Cemetery of the Gate of Heaven in Hawthorne, New York. As a tribute to his myriad talents and interests, his pallbearers included boxer Floyd Patterson, Mikhail Baryshnikov (who'd hoped to play Cagney on Broadway), actor Ralph Bellamy, and director Miloš Forman.

Trivia

* Grant Withers headlined over supporting actor James Cagney's first film, Sinner's Holiday (1930), and his third, Other Men's Women (1931). In the 1955 western Run For Cover, the billing would be reversed.
*Michael J. Fox, who idolized Cagney, narrated a TV special called James Cagney: Top of the World, which aired on July 5, 1992. This 60-minute program is included on the Special Editon of the Yankee Doodle Dandy DVD.
*As acting techniques became increasingly studied and taught during his lifetime ("Method Acting", etc.) Cagney was asked during the filming of Mister Roberts about his approach to acting. As co-star Jack Lemmon related in the abovementioned special, Cagney said that the secret to acting is simply this: "Learn your lines... plant your feet... look the other actor in the eye... say the words... and mean them."
*The stereotypical impression of James Cagney involves wearing a trenchcoat and a hat and sneering "You dirty rat!". In his AFI speech, he evoked much laughter by saying that he never said that line; what he really said was, "Judy, Judy, Judy!" (another over-stereotyped line, attributed to Cary Grant). The actual origin of the "dirty rat" phrase is the 1932 film Taxi!, in which Cagney delivered the line "Come out and take it, you dirty, yellow-bellied rat, or I'll give it to you through the door!" often misquoted as "Come out, you dirty rat, or I'll give it to you through the door!".
*Co-founder of the Screen Actors Guild and during his career fiercely independent and immovable on contract matters, in his AFI speech, Cagney said that producer Jack Warner had dubbed him "the professional againster."
*According to his biography Cagney on Cagney the Mafia had a contract on him whereby a studio light weighing 'several hundred pounds' was to "accidentally" fall on him. This hit was called off after George Raft his co-star in Each Dawn I Die used his Mob connections to save his friend. Why the Mafia wanted him dead is unclear.
*In Ragtime he evoked memories of his tough-talking gangster-role heyday, albeit as a Police Commissioner this time, with this comment to a thug, in his one-of-a-kind voice, "They tell me you're a worthless piece of slime!"
*In the 1981 television documentary James Cagney: That Yankee Doodle Dandy[3] Cagney spoke of his well-known penchant for sarcasm, remarking in an on-screen interview with typical charismatic candor, "Sex with another man? Real good!"According to an episode of Paul Harvey's The Rest of the Story aired August 1, 2006, Cagney's "acting" career began in a New York drag show at the age of 17. According to the program, Cagney was solely interested in the $35 it payed.

Filmography

Sinners' Holiday (1930)
The Doorway to Hell (1930)
Other Men's Women (1931)
The Public Enemy (1931)
The Millionaire (1931)
Smart Money (1931)
Blonde Crazy (1931)
How I Play Golf, by Bobby Jones No. 11: 'Practice Shots' (1931) (short subject)
Taxi! (1932)
The Crowd Roars (1932)
Winner Take All (1932)
Hard to Handle (1933)
Picture Snatcher (1933)
The Mayor of Hell (1933)
Footlight Parade (1933)
Lady Killer (1933)
Jimmy the Gent (1934)
He Was Her Man (1934)
Here Comes the Navy (1934)
The Hollywood Gad-About (1934) (short subject)
The St. Louis Kid (1934)
A Dream Comes True (1935) (short subject)
A Trip Thru a Hollywood Studio (1935) (short subject)
Devil Dogs of the Air (1935)
G Men (1935)
The Irish in Us (1935)
A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935)
Mutiny on the Bounty (1935) (uncredited as extra)
Frisco Kid (1935)
Ceiling Zero (1936)
Great Guy (1936)
Something to Sing About (1937)
For Auld Lang Syne (1938) (short subject)
Boy Meets Girl (1938)
Angels with Dirty Faces (1938)
The Oklahoma Kid (1939)
Hollywood Hobbies (1939) (short subject)
Each Dawn I Die (1939)
The Roaring Twenties (1939)
The Fighting 69th (1940)
Torrid Zone (1940)
City for Conquest (1940)
The Strawberry Blonde (1941)
The Bride Came C.O.D. (1941)
Captains of the Clouds (1942)
Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942)
You, John Jones (1943) (short subject)
Johnny Come Lately (1943)
Battle Stations (1944) (short subject) (narrator)
Blood on the Sun (1945)
13 Rue Madeleine (1947)
The Time of Your Life (1948)
White Heat (1949)
Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye (1950)
The West Point Story (1950)
Come Fill the Cup (1951)
Starlift (1951) (Cameo)
What Price Glory? (1952)
A Lion Is in the Streets (1953)
Run for Cover (1955)
Love Me or Leave Me (1955)
The Seven Little Foys (1955)
Mister Roberts (1955)
Tribute to a Bad Man (1956)
These Wilder Years (1956)
Man of a Thousand Faces (1957)
Short-Cut to Hell (1957) (in pre-credits sequence) (also director)
Never Steal Anything Small (1959)
Shake Hands with the Devil (1959)
The Gallant Hours (1960) (also producer)
One, Two, Three (1961)
Arizona Bushwhackers (1968) (narrator)
Ragtime (1981)

Television

The Ballad of Smokey the Bear (1966) (voice) (narrator)
Terrible Joe Moran (1984)

References

*James Cagney's Thug Life Fan site with hundreds of photos
*Classic Movies (1939 - 1969): James Cagney
*Biography and Pictures
*The New York Times (March 31, 1986): "James Cagney Is Dead at 86; Master of Pugnacious Grace", by Peter B. Flint

Rate this Article

Was this article helpful?

Not at all Definitely                  1 2 3 4 5