James Cagney

Lore & Background

Cagney was born in 1899 on the Lower East Side of Manhattan; biographers disagree as to the exact location. He was the second of seven children, two of whom died in infancy. He graduated from Stuyvesant High School in 1918 and attended Columbia College, intending to major in Art, but dropped out after one semester upon his father's death during the 1918 flu pandemic. He held various jobs including junior architect, copy boy, book custodian, bellhop, and night doorkeeper. He started tap dance as a boy and was nicknamed 'Cellar-Door Cagney' for dancing on slanted cellar doors. He engaged in amateur boxing and played semi-professional baseball.

Reader's Guide

Cagney's career began in vaudeville and Broadway after his debut in 1919. His fifth film, The Public Enemy (1931), became one of the most influential gangster movies of the period and made him a leading Hollywood star. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his role as George M. Cohan in Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942). He was nominated twice more: for Angels with Dirty Faces (1938) and Love Me or Leave Me (1955). Cagney walked out on Warner Bros. twice, each time returning on improved terms; he sued them for breach of contract in 1935 and established his own production company in 1942. He retired in 1961 but returned 20 years later for a part in Ragtime (1981), mainly to aid his recovery from a stroke. Orson Welles described him as 'maybe the greatest actor who ever appeared in front of a camera.'

Did You Know?

• Cagney was nicknamed 'Cellar-Door Cagney' for his habit of dancing on slanted cellar doors.
• He was a runner-up for the New York state lightweight title in amateur boxing.
• His first major acting role came in 1925; Al Jolson bought the rights to his 1929 play Penny Arcade, securing Cagney's part in the Warner Bros. adaptation.
• Cagney served as president of the Screen Actors Guild for two years.

Notable Quotes (Wikiquote)

"James Francis Cagney, Jr. (July 17, 1899 – March 30, 1986) was an 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." — James Cagney "I never actually said "Ooh, you dirty rat." — James Cagney "When receiving his AFI Lifetime Achievement Award in 1974; misattribution noted in Paul F. Boller, Jr., and John George, They Never Said It: A Book of Fake Quotes, Misquotes, & Misleading Attributions (1989), p. 11." — James Cagney "You don't psych yourself up for these things, you do them... I'm acting for the audience, not for myself, and I do it as directly as I can." — James Cagney