|
| James Cagney |
July 17, 1899 - March 30, 1986
Birth Place : New York City
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.
In 1999, the American Film Institute named Cagney among the Greatest Male Stars of All Time, ranking at No. 8.
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 while his maternal grandmother was an Irish American. 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 nearly 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.
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). His career continued 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). Cagney 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 Stanford, New York.
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.
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
Enlarge
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.
* 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 film 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!"
* 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. The Notre Dame administration, which controlled all aspects of the filming, thus nixed Cagney for the role. This was a major career disappointment for the actor, who hoped that playing the football legend would help break him out of the gangster roles in which he was stereotyped.
* 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.
Articles source : WikiPedia
|
|
|
|
|
|
Most requested |
Miley Cyrus
Adolf Hitler
Yoko Ono
Joan Miro
Drake Bell
Martin Luther King Jr
Barack Obama
Paris Hilton
Christina Aguilera
Bill Gates
Isaac Newton
Benjamin Franklin
Gregor Mendel
Jane Addams
John Cabot
Thomas Edison
Thomas Jefferson
Jessica Alba
Julius Caesar
Andrew Johnson
News:
DennisMansfield.com: West Point, James Cagney imitations and me....
My recent visit to West Point with my son, Colin, a few weeks ago brought back a memory that made me laugh...once again. Here I was, seated in the same Thayer Auditorium, as I had been 35 years ago when... ...Houston's Clear Thinkers: The Yankee Doodle Boy
But well before Jackson, there was James Cagney, who was every bit as talented an entertainer and dancer as Jackson. In fact, I seem to recall reading an interview of Jackson years ago in which he admitted that he patterned many of his ... ... The Rob Kozlowski Chicago Theater and Vintage Film Medicine Show ...
Not because I'm feeling very patriotic today, but July 3rd does remind me of James Cagney's glorious performance as George M. Cohan in Yankee Doodle Dandy, the one time the diminutive firecracker was able to showcase his song-and-dance ... ... | Snap out of it Jean! There's beading to be done!|
From the movie : "Yankee Doodle Dandy", with James Cagney I made a little holiday jewelry for my fiery red headed doll, Quill. It is a necklace made from a pewter GGS (www.greengirlstudios.com) charm, with a shining star, and a mystical ... ... A Gangster's Demise: Jarrett vs. Rico vs. Dillinger ...
The first clip below is of James Cagney as Arthur 'Cody' Jarrett in White Heat (1949) as the crazy criminal goes out in a blaze of glory. The second is of Edward G. Robinson as Caesar Enrico "Rico" Bandello in Little Caesar (1931). ... ... James Cagney does Judo
James Cagney does Judo. This is from an old movie called Blood on the Sun. Pretty impressive martial arts done in this fight scene compared to some of the crap that we see nowadays. From: Feijoada1 ... ... Michael Jackson Planned to Step into Jimmy Cagney’s Shoes, says ...
Unlike his idol Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson never established himself as a movie star - namely in a musical remake of the 1938 James Cagney flick Angels with Dirty Faces - and it’sa reget he took to his grave. ... ... Mal's classic movie fest offers seldom seen treats | HamptonRoads ...
The feature will be this all-out-funny 1961 comedy starring James Cagney as a Coca-Cola manager who faces trouble in Germany when his boss' daughter (a Southern girl named Scarlett) falls in love with a Russian hippie. ... ... The Ultimate Fourth of July Movie – Pauline Kael on 'Yankee Doodle ...
Pauline Kael calls Yankee Doodle Dandy “a big, enjoyable musical biography” starring “the astonishingly versatile James Cagney as the actor-playwright-songwriter George M. Cohan.” She adds in 5001 Nights at the Movies (Holt, 1991), ... ... Academy Awards (Oscars), 1928-2007, best actor
1942 James Cagney (Yankee Doodle Dandy). 1943 Paul Lukas (Watch on the Rhine). 1944 Bing Crosby (Going My Way). 1945 Ray Milland (The Lost Weekend). 1946 Fredric March (The Best Years of Our Lives). 1947 Ronald Colman (A Double Life) ... ...
|
|
|