James Cagney
| James Cagney | |
 in the trailer for the film Love Me or Leave Me (1955) | |
| Birth name: | James Francis Cagney, Jr. |
|---|---|
| Date of birth: | July 17 1899 |
| Birth location: | New York, New York |
| Date of death: | March 30 1986 (aged 86) |
| Death location: | Stanfordville, New York |
| Academy Awards: | Best Actor 1942 Yankee Doodle Dandy |
| Spouse: | Frances Cagney (1922-1986) |
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 and won the Oscar for Best Actor in 1942 for his role in Yankee Doodle Dandy.
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.
In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked Cagney eighth among the Greatest Male Stars of All Time.
Biography
Early life
Cagney was born on the Lower East Side 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] He moved to Yorkville when he was about two years old. The red-haired, blue-eyed Cagney graduated from Stuyvesant High School in New York City in 1918 and attended Columbia University.[3]
On September 28, 1922, he married dancer Frances Willard (aka: “Billie”) Vernon (1899 – 1994) with whom he remained for the rest of his life. They adopted a son, James Cagney Jr, and a daughter, Cathleen “Casey” Cagney.
Both his brother William, who was also a producer, and sister Jeanne were actors.
Career
Cagney began his acting career in vaudeville and on Broadway. When Warner Brothers acquired 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), featuring Grant Withers.
Cagney went on to star in many films, making his name as a 'tough guy' in a series of crime films beginning with 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 starred opposite Humphrey Bogart in Angels with Dirty Faces (1938) and The Roaring Twenties (1939).
Although he claimed to be 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. The Notre Dame administration, which controlled all aspects of the filming, denied Cagney the role[4]. This was a major career disappointment for Cagney, who had hoped that playing the football legend would help break him out of gangster roles.
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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 tyrannical ship captain opposite Jack Lemmon and Henry Fonda in Mister Roberts (1955).
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Cagney's health deteriorated substantially after 1979. Cagney's final appearance in a feature film was in Ragtime (1981), capping a career that covered over 70 films, although his last film prior to Ragtime had occurred 20 years earlier with Billy Wilder's One, Two, Three (1961). During the long hiatus, Cagney rebuffed all film offers, including a substantial role in My Fair Lady as well as a blank check from Charles Bluhdorn at Gulf & Western to play Vito Corleone in 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.
James Cagney was 5' 5" tall.
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.
Death
James Cagney died at his Dutchess County farm in Stanfordville, New York, aged 86, of a heart attack. He is interred in the Cemetery of the Gate of Heaven in Hawthorne, New York. His pallbearers included boxer Floyd Patterson, Mikhail Baryshnikov (who had hoped to play Cagney on Broadway), actor Ralph Bellamy and director Miloš Forman.
Quotes
Cagney's lines in White Heat (“Made it, Ma! Top of the world!”) were voted the 18th greatest movie quote by the American Film Institute.
It should be noted, however, that he never actually said, "You dirty rat!", a popular phrase associated with him. In his AFI speech, he evoked considerable laughter by remarking that what he really said was, "Judy, Judy, Judy!", another famous, wrongly-attributed line (in this case to Cary Grant). The phrase actually originated in 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 systematic (as in the case of "Method Acting"), Cagney was asked during the filming of Mister Roberts about his approach to acting. As Jack Lemmon related in the television special, "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... mean them".
In the 1981 television documentary James Cagney: That Yankee Doodle Dandy [5], Cagney spoke of his well-known penchant for sarcasm, remarking in an onscreen interview, "Sex with another man? Real good!"
In his AFI speech, Cagney said that film producer Jack Warner had dubbed him "the professional againster."
Stanley Kubrick often stated that Cagney was among his favorite actors. [6]
Trivia
- 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.[4]
- 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. [7]
- According to an episode of Paul Harvey's The Rest of the Story, first airing August 1, 2006, Cagney's "acting" career began in a New York drag show at the age of 17. According to Harvey's program, Cagney was only interested in the $35 the job paid.
- 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.[8]
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 | |||
| 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 |
| Awards | ||
|---|---|---|
| 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: Paul Muni for The Life of Emile Zola |
NYFCC Award for Best Actor 1938 for Angels with Dirty Faces |
Succeeded by: James Stewart for Mr. Smith Goes to Washington |
| Preceded by: Gary Cooper for Sergeant York |
NYFCC 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 |
Television
- The Ballad of Smokey the Bear (1966) (voice) (narrator)
- Terrible Joe Moran (1984)
ReferencesISBN links support NWE through referral fees
- ↑ From Tough Guy to Dandy: James Cagney (June 1986). Retrieved 2007-11-01.
- ↑ McCabe, John. Cagney. New York Times. Retrieved 2007-11-01.
- ↑ Flint, Peter, "James Cagney Is Dead at 86; Master of Pugnacious Grace", New York Times, 1986-03-31. Retrieved 2007-11-01.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Biography for James Cagney. Internet Movie Database. Retrieved 2007-11-01.
- ↑ James Cagney: That Yankee Doodle Dandy. Internet Movie Database. Retrieved 2007-11-01.
- ↑ Lobrutto, Vincent (April 1999). Stanley Kubrick: A Biography. Retrieved 2007-11-01.
- ↑ cover image. Life Magazine (1945-07-16). Retrieved 2007-11-01.
- ↑ http://www.medaloffreedom.com/JamesCagney.htm
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 |
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