James Cagney

Energetic, wise-cracking James Cagney (1899-1986) was an American film actor, famous for his gangster roles in the 1930s and 1940s. One of the brightest stars of the Golden Age of Hollywood, Cagney was not only a multifaceted tough guy but also an accomplished dancer and he easily played light comedy.


French postcard, no. 609. Photo: Warner Bros.


British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, London. no. 655.


British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, London. no. 655b. Photo: Warner Bros.


French postcard by Editions et Publications cinématographiques, no. 78. Photo: Warner Bros. James Cagney in Here Comes the Navy (Lloyd Bacon, 1934).


British postcard in the A Real Photogravure Portrait series. Photo: James Cagney in Ceiling Zero (Howard Hawks, 1936). Caption: James Cagney managed to support his family as a dancer and singer. This very keen athlete and boxer was discovered on the New York stage by a film scout and sent to Hollywood. His latest pictures are Frisco Kid and Ceiling Zero.

The sympathetic 'bad' guy

James Francis 'Jimmy' Cagney was born in 1899 on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in New York City. His parents were Carolyn (Nelson) and James Francis Cagney, Sr., who was a bartender and amateur boxer. Jimmy had one sister, the actress Jeanne Cagney, and three brothers, including the actor and film producer William Cagney who was also his manager.

In his first professional acting performance in 1919, Cagney was costumed as a woman when he danced in the chorus line of the revue 'Every Sailor'. In 1920, Cagney was a member of the chorus for the show 'Pitter Patter,' where he met Frances Willard 'Billie' Vernon. They married the following year.

Cagney spent several years in vaudeville as a dancer and comedian, until he got his first major acting part in 1925. He played a young tough guy in the three-act play 'Outside Looking In' by Maxwell Anderson. He secured several other roles, receiving good notices, before landing the lead in the 1929 play 'Penny Arcade'.

When Warner Bros. Pictures bought the film rights to the play, they took Cagney and his colleague Joan Blondell from the theatre to the big-screen version, retitled Sinner's Holiday (John G. Adolfi, 1930). Cagney received a full seven-year contract at $400 a week. His role as the sympathetic 'bad' guy was to become a recurring character type for Cagney throughout his career.

Cagney's fifth film, The Public Enemy (William A. Wellman, 1931) with Jean Harlow, became one of the most influential gangster movies of the period. Notable for a famous scene in which Cagney pushes a grapefruit against Mae Clarke's face, the film thrust him into the spotlight. Cagney starred in many films after that and was nicknamed the tough guy by a series of crime films such as Blonde Crazy (Roy Del Ruth, 1931) with Joan Blondell, and Hard to Handle (Mervyn LeRoy, 1933) with Mary Brian.

Sandra Brennan at AllMovie: "Cagney was a small, rather plain-looking man, and had few of the external qualities usually associated with the traditional Hollywood leading man during the '30s. Yet, inside, he was a dynamo, able to project contentious and arrogant confidence that made him the ideal Hollywood tough guy." However, Cagney was not content to simply play one type of role.


French postcard by Editions Chantal, Paris, no. 4. Photo: Warner Bros.


British postcard in the Film Kurier Series, London. no. 70. Photo: Warner Bros.


British Real Photograph postcard, no. 75A. Photo: Warner Bros. & Vitaphone Pictures.


British Real Photograph postcard, no. 75. Photo: Warner Bros & Vitaphone Pictures.


German postcard by Edition Cicero Art Postcard, Hamburg, no. 15008. Photo: Elmer Fryer / Kobal Collection / New Eyes. Caption: James Cagney in 1933.

Made it, Ma! Top of the world!

From 1935 on, James Cagney was cast more frequently in non-gangster roles. He played a lawyer who joins the FBI in G-Men (William Keighley, 1935) with Ann Dvorak. That year, he also took on his first, and only, Shakespearean role, as top-billed Nick Bottom in A Midsummer Night's Dream (Max Reinhardt, 1935) alongside Joe E. Brown as Flute and Mickey Rooney as Puck.

In 1938 he received his first Academy Award nomination for Best Actor for his subtle portrayal of the tough guy/man-child Rocky Sullivan in Angels with Dirty Faces (Michael Curtiz, 1938) with Pat O'Brien. In 1942 Cagney won the Oscar for his energetic portrayal of George M. Cohan in Yankee Doodle Dandy (Michael Curtiz, 1942).

Later memorable films were White Heat (Raoul Walsh, 1949) with the quote "Made it, Ma! Top of the world!", and Mister Roberts (John Ford, Mervyn LeRoy, 1955) opposite Henry Fonda. He was one of the founders of the Screen Actors Guild and was its president from 1942-1944. The satire One, Two, Three (Billy Wilder, 1961) was the end of a career that spanned more than 70 films.

During the next decades, Cagney turned down all roles in order to spend time learning to paint, at which he became very good, and maintaining his farm in Stanfordville, New York. In 1974, he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Film Institute. After 1979, his health declined rapidly and he suffered from diabetes.

Then he returned to the cinema for a small but crucial role in Ragtime (Milos Forman, 1981), the screen adaptation of E.L. Doctorow's novel. In this film, he was reunited with his frequent co-star of the 1930s, Pat O'Brien. In 1984 he also received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from his friend Ronald Reagan.

Cagney's final performance came in the title role of the made-for-TV movie Terrible Joe Moran (Joseph Sargent, 1984), in which he played as a grumpy ex-prizefighter opposite Art Carney. In 1986, he died of a heart attack in Stanfordville (New York), at the age of 86. He is buried in Hawthorne in New York. Cagney and his wife, Frances Wilhard 'Billie' Vernon (1899-1994), were together for 64 years.

They adopted a son, James Cagney Jr., and a daughter, Cathleen 'Casey' Cagney. James Cagney's electric acting style was a huge influence on future generations of actors. According to IMDb, actors as diverse as Clint Eastwood and Malcolm McDowell point to him as their number one influence to become actors.


British postcard in The People Series by Show Parade Picture Service, London, no. P 1106. Photo: Warner Bros.


Belgian collectors card by Chocolaterie Clovis, Pepinster, no. 40. Photo: Warner Bros. Collection: Amit Benyovits.


British Real Photograph postcard. Photo: E.N.A.


French postcard by Editions P.I., Paris, no. 284. Photo: Warner Bros.


French postcard in the Entr'acte series by Éditions Asphodèle. Mâcon, no. 001/30. James Cagney, Bud Westmore, and Jack Kevan on the set of Man of a Thousand Faces (Joseph Pevney, 1957). Caption: Development of the mask to be worn by James Cagney in the film about Lon Chaney senior's career with chief make-up artist Bud Westmore and his assistant Jack Kevan.

Sources: Sandra Brennan (AllMovie), Bill Takacs (IMDb), Wikipedia (Dutch and English), and IMDb.