James Cagney

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James Cagney
in the trailer for the film Love Me or Leave Me (1955)
Birth name	James Francis Cagney, Jr.
Born	July 17, 1899 New York City, New York
Died	March 30, 1986, age 86 Dutchess County, New York

James Francis Cagney, Jr. (July 17, 1899 – March 30, 1986) was an American film actor most remembered for playing gangsters in crime films and who won the Oscar for Best Actor in 1942 for his role in Yankee Doodle Dandy.

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.

In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked Cagney eighth among the Greatest Male Stars of All Time.

Contents 1 Biography 1.1 Early life 1.2 Career 1.3 Honors 1.4 Death 2 Quotes 3 Trivia 4 Filmography 5 Television 6 Notes 7 External links

[edit] Biography

[edit] Early life

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.

On September 28, 1922, he married dancer Frances Willard (aka: “Billie”) Vernon (1899 – 1994) and remained faithfully married for the rest of his life.^{[citation needed]} They adopted a son, James Cagney Jr, and a daughter, Cathleen “Casey” Cagney.

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

[edit] Career

He worked in vaudeville and on Broadway. When Warner Brothers bought the film rights to the play "Penny Arcade", they took Cagney and co-star Joan Blondell from the stage to the screen in the retitled Sinner's Holiday (1930), starring Grant Withers.

Five-five, 130-pound young James 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), which made him an immediate sensation. His career continued with Smart Money (1931), his only film with Edward G. Robinson (which was actually shot before The Public Enemy, but released later), Blonde Crazy (1931), and Hard to Handle (1933). He played one Shakespearean character on film - Nick Bottom in the 1935 screen version of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Cagney later played fictional gangster Rocky Sullivan in Angels with Dirty Faces (1938) and worked opposite Humphrey Bogart in The Roaring Twenties (1939).

Although he said he was never further to the political left than "a strong FDR Democrat," Cagney lost the role of Notre Dame football coach Knute Rockne in Knute Rockne, All American to his friend Pat O'Brien because Cagney had signed a petition in support of the anti-clerical Spanish Republican government in the then-ongoing Spanish Civil War.^{[citation needed]} The Notre Dame administration, which controlled all aspects of the filming, denied Cagney the role.^{[citation needed]} This was a major career disappointment for the actor, who had hoped that playing the football legend would help break him out of the gangster roles in which he was stereotyped.

He won an Oscar playing George M. Cohan in Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942). He returned to his gangster roots in Raoul Walsh's film White Heat (1949) and played a memorably tyrannical ship captain opposite Jack Lemmon and Henry Fonda in Mister Roberts (1955).

Cagney's health deteriorated substantially after 1979. Cagney's final appearance in a feature 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. 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 Stanford, New York. His roles in Ragtime and Terrible Joe Moran, a 1984 made-for-television movie, were designed to aid in his convalescence.

He was one of the founders of the Screen Actors Guild and its president from 1942 to 1944.

[edit] Honors

In 1974, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award of the American Film Institute. He received the Kennedy Center Honors in 1980, and in 1984 his friend Ronald Reagan awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

[edit] Death

James Cagney died at his Dutchess County farm in Clinton Corners, 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.

[edit] Quotes

His lines in White Heat (“Made it, Ma! Top of the world!”) were voted the 18^th greatest movie quote by the American Film Institute.

However, he never said, "You dirty rat!" In his AFI speech, he evoked much laughter by saying that what he really said was, "Judy, Judy, Judy!", another famous, wrongly-attributed line (in this case to Cary Grant). The actual origin of the phrase was the 1932 film Taxi!, in which Cagney said, "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!".

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 a TV special called "James Cagney: Top of the World", which aired on July 5, 1992, Cagney said that the secret to acting was simply this: "Learn your lines... plant your feet... look the other actor in the eye... say the words... and "mean them"."

In the 1981 television documentary James Cagney: That Yankee Doodle Dandy[1] Cagney spoke of his well-known penchant for sarcasm, remarking in an on-screen interview, "Sex with another man? Real good!"

Co-founder of the Screen Actors Guild and fiercely independent and difficult on contract matters, in his AFI speech, Cagney said that film producer Jack Warner had dubbed him "the professional againster."

[edit] 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 Edition of the Yankee Doodle Dandy DVD.

• According to his biography Cagney by 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 allegedly wanted him dead is unclear.

• James Cagney's 1930s cabin in Lake Arrowhead, California, was recently restored by former-owner Rick Ambrose, and published in "Cottage Retreats" by Lisa Jill Schlang (Friedman/Fairfax Publishing 2002).

• James invited WWII hero Audie Murphy to Hollywood in September 1945 after seeing the young hero's photo on the cover of the July 16 edition of Life Magazine. [2]

• 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 paid.

• "Jimmy Cagney" was mentioned in Bob Dylan's song "Joey" from album Desire (1976).

• Cagney is referenced in the Tom Waits song "Romeo Is Bleeding" off the album Blue Valentine (1978), the last effective line of the song reading: "..Went out without a whimper/ Like every heroes dream/ Like an angel with a bullet/ And Cagney on the screen"

• "Jimmy Cagney" was also mentioned in Bon Jovi's song "Right Side of Wrong" from album Bounce. (2002).

• Public Enemy's "A Letter To The New York Post" from Apocalypse '91...The Enemy Strikes Black contains the lines: "It only brings agony, ask James Cagney, he beat up on a guy when he found he was a fagney. Cagney is a favourite, he is my boy, 'cause he don't jive around, he's a real McCoy."

• Cagney gets a mention in the episode of Fawlty Towers entitled "The Germans". A concussed Basil Fawlty is annoying German hotel guests with his with bombastic talk of the War (WW2) and begins an impression of Adolf Hitler. To distract him the waitress, Polly tells him to "do Jimmy Cagney" and when he ignores her she does it herself with an impression and the line "You Dirty Rat" in her best Cagney voice.

[edit] Filmography

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1981	Ragtime
1968	Arizona Bushwhackers	(narrator)
1961	One, Two, Three
1960	The Gallant Hours	(also producer)
1959	Shake Hands with the Devil
	Never Steal Anything Small
1958	Shake Hands with the Devil
	Never Steal Anything Small
1957	Short-Cut to Hell	(in pre-credits sequence) (also director)
	Man of a Thousand Faces
1956	These Wilder Years
	Tribute to a Bad Man
1955	Mister Roberts
	The Seven Little Foys
	Love Me or Leave Me
	Run for Cover
1953	A Lion Is in the Streets
1952	What Price Glory?
1951	Starlift	(Cameo)
	Come Fill the Cup
1950	The West Point Story
	Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye
1949	White Heat
1948	The Time of Your Life
1947	13 Rue Madeleine
1945	Blood on the Sun
1944	Battle Stations	(short subject) (narrator)
1943	Johnny Come Lately
	You, John Jones	(short subject)
1942	Yankee Doodle Dandy
	Captains of the Clouds
1941	The Bride Came C.O.D.
	The Strawberry Blonde
1940	City for Conquest
	Torrid Zone
	The Fighting 69th
1939	The Roaring Twenties
	Each Dawn I Die
	Hollywood Hobbies	(short subject)
	The Oklahoma Kid
1938	Angels with Dirty Faces
	Boy Meets Girl
	For Auld Lang Syne	(short subject)
1937	Something to Sing About
1936	Great Guy
	Ceiling Zero
1935	Frisco Kid
	Mutiny on the Bounty	(uncredited as extra)
	A Midsummer Night's Dream
	The Irish in Us
	G Men
	Devil Dogs of the Air
	Trip Thru a Hollywood Studio	(short subject)
	A Dream Comes True	(short subject)
1934	The St. Louis Kid
	The Hollywood Gad-About	(short subject)
	Here Comes the Navy
	He Was Her Man
	Jimmy the Gent
1933	Lady Killer
	Footlight Parade
	The Mayor of Hell
	Picture Snatcher
	Hard to Handle
1932	Winner Take All
	The Crowd Roars
	Taxi!
1931	How I Play Golf	(short subject)
	Blonde Crazy
	Smart Money
	The Millionaire
	The Public Enemy
	Other Men's Women
1930	The Doorway to Hell
	Sinners' Holiday

Preceded by Gary Cooper for Sergeant York	Academy Award for Best Actor 1942 for Yankee Doodle Dandy	Succeeded by Paul Lukas for Watch on the Rhine
Preceded by Edward Arnold	President of Screen Actors Guild 1942 – 1944	Succeeded by George Murphy

[edit] Television

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

[edit] Notes

1. ^ http://www.worldandi.com/public/1986/june/ar12.cfm
2. ^ http://72.14.207.104/search?q=cache:ylsIo07rz2kJ:www.nytimes.com/books/first/m/mccabe-cagney.html+%22James+Cagney%22+Norwegian&hl=en&gl=ca&ct=clnk&cd=30]

[edit] External links

• James Cagney at the Internet Movie Database
• James Cagney at the TCM Movie Database
• James Cagney at the Internet Broadway Database
• James Cagney's Thug Life Fan site with hundreds of photos
• The New York Times (March 31, 1986): "James Cagney Is Dead at 86; Master of Pugnacious Grace", by Peter B. Flint

Persondata
NAME	Cagney, James
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION	Actor
DATE OF BIRTH	July 17, 1899
PLACE OF BIRTH	New York City, New York
DATE OF DEATH	March 30, 1986
PLACE OF DEATH	Dutchess County, New York