James Cagney

James Cagney (born July 17, 1899, New York, New York, U.S.—died March 30, 1986, Stanfordville, New York) was an American actor who was noted for his versatility in musicals, comedies, and crime dramas. He was one of the top movie stars from the 1930s through the ’50s, known for his jaunty manner and explosive energy. Cagney excelled at playing tough guys but was equally adept at comedy and as a song-and-dance man.

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Cagney, the son of an Irish bartender, grew up in the rough Lower East Side of New York City. He toured in vaudeville as a song-and-dance man with his wife, Frances, in the 1920s and scored his first major success opposite Joan Blondell in the Broadway musical Penny Arcade (1929). He made his film debut in the movie adaptation of the play, entitled Sinners’ Holiday (1930), and his well-received performance resulted in a contract with Warner Bros. studios. After taking on a few supporting roles, Cagney became a star with his chilling portrayal of gangster Tom Powers in William Wellman’s The Public Enemy (1931). Thereafter he was typecast as a sneering, explosive “tough guy” in several films, including Taxi (1931) and Lady Killer (1933), but he occasionally worked in musicals—he demonstrated considerable skill as a dancer in Footlight Parade (1933)—and he even had a Shakespearean role, as Bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1935). He was on the right side of the law in the popular ‘G’ Men (1935), whereas such films as Angels with Dirty Faces (1938; Oscar nomination for best actor), Each Dawn I Die (1939), and The Roaring Twenties (1939) featured Cagney in increasingly complex studies of criminal pathology. Cagney’s repertoire during this period also included westerns (The Oklahoma Kid, 1939), comedies (The Bride Came C.O.D., 1941), and melodramas (The Strawberry Blonde, 1941).

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Cagney’s uniqueness as an actor lay in his ability to convey emotional extremes in a manner that was both broad and natural. He exuded a tremendous energy that rendered any character larger-than-life, yet his innate grasp of the subtleties of the script ensured that his performances were multidimensional and credible. Although he eschewed an internal “method” approach to acting, his perennially pugnacious screen persona was a natural extension of his real-life character, formed in part during his pugilistic youth among Irish street gangs. Cagney’s philosophy of acting, revealed in his autobiography, Cagney by Cagney (1975), was simple, direct, and sagacious: “Plant yourself, look the other fellow in the eye and tell the truth.”

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Although specializing in charismatic criminals for much of his career, Cagney’s best-known role is that of the legendary Broadway song-and-dance man George M. Cohan in Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942). Exhibiting the same brash charm in his dancing style that he brought to his portrayals of street toughs, Cagney’s tour-de-force as Cohan earned him an Academy Award for best actor. After this film, Cagney devoted his energies to entertaining troops overseas, serving as president of the Screen Actors Guild (an organization he helped found in the early 1930s), and, with his brother, establishing William Cagney Productions, a company that was moderately successful for several years, producing such noteworthy films as an adaptation of William Saroyan’s The Time of Your Life (1948). Cagney ended the 1940s with his portrayal of Cody Jarrett, perhaps the most pathologically Oedipal criminal in screen history, in the B-film classic White Heat (1949). His legendary performance climaxed with one of the cinema’s most indelible images, that of the cornered Jarrett atop an oil refinery tank, screaming “Made it, Ma! Top of the world!” as he unloads his gun into the tank and perishes in the ensuing inferno.

Cagney experienced continued success throughout the 1950s, with highlights such as his roles as a gruff ship captain in Mister Roberts (1955) and as silent-screen legend Lon Chaney in Man of a Thousand Faces (1957). His most acclaimed performance of the decade was in Love Me or Leave Me (1955) as Chicago racketeer Martin “The Gimp” Snyder, the man who obsessively controlled the career of torch singer Ruth Etting (played by Doris Day). As Snyder, Cagney created one of his most frightening screen characterizations and was nominated for an Oscar. He was also memorable as Admiral William F. “Bull” Halsey, Jr., in The Gallant Hours (1960) and as a harried Coca-Cola executive in the Billy Wilder farce One, Two, Three (1961).

After One, Two, Three, Cagney spent the next 20 years in retirement on his farms in New England and California. In 1974 he made one of his few public appearances during these years when he received a Life Achievement Award from the American Film Institute. Cagney’s health deteriorated during the late 1970s, and his doctors suggested a return to work. He performed admirably in his final two films, Ragtime (1981) and the television film Terrible Joe Moran (1984). Contrary to the popular perception created by scores of impressionists throughout the years, Cagney said neither “You dirty rat!” nor “All right, you guys!” in any film.