Everything about James Cagney totally explained
James Francis Cagney Jr. (
July 17,
1899 –
March 30,
1986) was an
Academy Award-winning
American film actor who won acclaim for a wide variety of roles, including the career-launching
The Public Enemy,
Like
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.
Biography
Early life
Cagney was born on the
Lower East Side,
New York above his father's saloon on the corner of
Avenue D and
8th Street while his maternal grandmother was an
Irish American. The family moved twice when Cagney was still young, first to East Seventy-Ninth Street, and then to East Ninety-Sixth Street.
Cagney was the second of seven children, two of whom died within months of birth; Cagney himself had been very sick as a young child, so much so that his mother feared he'd die before being
christened, all of which was a product of the level of poverty that they grew up in. All the children were raised Catholic, all receiving
Holy Communion and all being Confirmed., where he took German and intended to major in Art He dropped out and returned home on the death of his father in a
flu epidemic. He also played semi-professional baseball for a local side, After that he joined as a performer, he performed in a variety of roles for a number of companies. One of the troops that Cagney would join was
Parker, Rand and Leach when Leach left. Leach was Archie Leach, who went on to fame as
Cary Grant. They didn't have a lot of success; Cagney's dance studio had few clients and folded, he and Vernon toured the studios but could get no interest. Eventually they borrowed some money and headed back to New York and vaudeville (via Chicago and
Milwaukee and repeated failures to make money on the stage }}
Fortunately for the Cagneys (Billie was in the chorus line of the show), they'd run-of-the-play contracts, and with help from the Actors Equity Association, Cagney took up the understudy role to Tracy on the Broadway show, providing them with a desperately needed steady income. Cagney also set-up a dance school for professionals to expand their skills. He then picked up another role in the play
Women Go On Forever, directed by
John Cromwell that ran for four months. By the end of the run, Cagney was exhausted after both acting and running the dance school.
However, he'd built up a reputation as an innovative teacher, and so when he was cast as the lead in
Grand Street Follies of 1928 he also was appointed the
choreographer, and the show got rave reviews. they gave Cagney a three week extension and then a full seven year contract at $400 a week., and Cagney's strong reviews in gangster movies in his short film career came together in the 1931 film
The Public Enemy. Cagney was cast to play the nice-guy Matt Doyle, opposite Eddie Woods' Tom Powers. However, after the initial rushes, the two were swapped.. The film was low budget, costing only $151,000 to make, but went on to gross over $1million, one of the first low budget films to do so.
If the quality of the film itself wasn't realized until much later, Cagney's performance certainly was. The
New York Herald Tribune described Cagney's performance as "the most ruthless, unsentimental appraisal of the meanness of a petty killer the cinema has yet devised." Cagney received top billing for the film
His first film on his return from New York as the 1932 film
Taxi!, a significant film for two reasons: it was the first time that Cagney danced on screen and secondly it was the last time he'd allow himself to be shot at with live ammunition, which was a common occurrence at the time, before blank cartridges and squibs had been perfected. He had experienced it in
The Public Enemy, but this time almost got hit. Cagney's insistence on no more than four films a year was based on his experience of the Hollywood acting trade where actors would regularly work 100 hours a week turning out films, even teenagers. This experience would also be an integral part of his involvement in the formation of the
Screen Actors Guild, which came into existence in 1933.
Cagney returned to the studio and made
Hard to Handle, followed by a steady stream of films, including the highly regarded
Footlight Parade It was thought of as one of Cagney's best early films, featuring particular show-stopping scenes in the
Busby Berkeley choreographed routines. The dispute dragged on for several months. Cagney received calls from
David Selznick and
Sam Goldwyn, but neither felt in a position to offer him work while the dispute went on.
While the legal dispute rumbled on, with Cagney's brother Bill representing James in court, James and Billie went back to New York and looked for a country property where he could indulge in his passion for farming. .
Cagney had established the power of the walkout as keeping the studios to their word:
"I walked out because I depended on the studio heads to keep their word on this, that or other promise, and when the promise wasn't kept, my only recourse was to deprive them of my services." The film is regarded by many as one of Cagney's finest ), but winning the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actor.
Cagney's earlier insistence on not filming with live ammunition came to good during the filming of Angels with Dirty Faces. Having been told he'd film a scene with real machine gun bullets, Cagney refused, and insisted the shots be superimposed afterwards. As it turned out, he was right, a ricocheting bullet passing through exactly where his head would have been.
His next notable career role was playing George M. Cohan in Yankee Doodle Dandy, a film Cagney himself "took great pride in" and considered his best film.
- According to his autobiography Cagney by Cagney, the Mafia had a contract on him whereby a studio light weighing 'several hundred pounds' was to "accidentally" fall on him. The hit was cancelled after George Raft, his co-star in Each Dawn I Die, used his Mob connections to save his friend.
Cagney invited World War II hero Audie Murphy to Hollywood in September 1945 after seeing Murphy's photo on the cover of the July 16 edition of Life Magazine.
Cagney took such a liking to actor Don Dubbins that he cast him in two of his 1956 films, Those Wilder Years and Tribute to a Bad Man.
Cagney spoke fluent Yiddish, a language he picked up during his boyhood in New York City. His fluency in the language helped him start in vaudeville.
Cagney's grandson, James Cagney IV, is an amateur actor appearing in several indie films, and works at Portland, Maine video store VideoPort.
Filmography
Television
The Ballad of Smokey the Bear (1966) (voice) (narrator)
Terrible Joe Moran (1984)Further Information
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