Vintage

Every month we throw the spotlight on an actor or actress who exemplifies what it means to be a class act. As always, we welcome your emails if you have a suggestion for a future Star of the Month. The Midnight Palace is pleased to present the Star of the Month for September 2008: James Cagney.

Date of Birth
July 17, 1899, New York, New York

Date of Death
March 30, 1986, Stanfordville, New York

Birth Name
James Francis Cagney, Jr.

Nickname(s)
The Professional Againster
The Far-Away Fella

Height
5' 6 1/2"

Overview:

One day when he was seventeen, James Cagney’s mother, Carrie, pulled him aside for a talk. She noticed that he’d lost a little weight, and was getting up earlier in the morning. Concerned, she asked him if he was doing this for school. “Not school, Mom,” he told her. A man he knew had arranged for him to fight in a boxing match. He would be making ten dollars, money the family desperately needed. His mother looked at him and said, “Do you think you can lick me?”

“Whadda ya mean, Mom?”

“I mean you’ll have to lick me first.” This was the end of James Cagney’s boxing career.

James Francis Cagney, Jr. was born July 17, 1899 on the lower East Side of New York City, the third of seven children born to James Francis Cagney, Sr. and Carolyn Nelson. The family would eventually settle in what was then known as Yorkville (the same neighborhood where the Marx brothers grew up). During this time, his father’s presence diminished. James remembered his father as a gentle, caring man who was too fond of the bottle. The task of earning money for the family would fall on the Cagney boys. There were family vacations to the country, which would fuel a lifelong love of farming and conservation in James.

It was on the mean streets of Yorkville that James developed his tough manner. Joining the neighborhood gang was a matter of survival; and even though James was small, he was very strong. Though the gang depended on him to beat up the bullies, he was never an “official” gang member. With a strong sense of fair play, he would stand up for the little guy (something he would continue throughout his career in Hollywood). One particular incident stood out in James’ childhood which involved his younger brother, Ed. A bully named Willie took a golf ball that belonged to young Ed, and then proceeded to beat him up when Ed protested. When he got home, James took one look at him and went looking for Willie. The two boys fought for a few minutes before it was broken up by the cops, but James made it clear that they would meet again. The next day, round two lasted a bit longer, but was again broken up by the cops. Round three took place the next day: Willie had one eye swollen shut by this time, while James had a few cuts and bruises. A neighbor leaned out a window, yelling for someone to call the boys’ mothers and stop the fight. At the front of the crowd, cheering him on, was James’ mother. The fight was stopped after James broke his hand. But the message was clear: he was small, but he was mighty.

By this time, Carrie had four sons: Harry, James (or Jim, as he preferred to be called), Ed and Bill (two other babies, a boy and a girl, died before they were two years old). The boys worked odd jobs to earn money for the family. Carrie made sure that they all got an education. James Sr. was in and out of their lives, but he was there enough to leave a lasting impression on the boys: where James Sr. lacked a good work ethic, the four boys worked hard all their lives. In 1918, Carrie was pregnant with her seventh child when her husband suddenly died during the influenza outbreak. He never met his youngest child, Jeanne, who was born in 1919.

James was a nineteen year old freshman at Columbia when his father passed away. He dropped out of school and began working at a department store. This was disappointing to Carrie because she felt James had great artistic and creative abilities. She wanted to see him develop these talents, but he felt his duty was taking care of her and his baby sister. However, the department store job was a dead end. One day, a friend mentioned that they were looking for a new chorus line member in a show called Every Sailor. It was the money he could earn ($35) that sent James to the theatre for an audition. There was one catch: he would have to wear a dress. Despite this, James did the show for five weeks.

He went to work for a brokerage firm, but soon found it boring. He auditioned for a play called Pitter Patter at $50 a week. He met a young chorus girl from Iowa, Frances Willard Vernon (she was called Bill or Willie), fell in love and eventually married her. They would perform in vaudeville shows for the next few years. It was a show called Penny Arcade with Joan Blondell that would take James and Bill to Hollywood. Renamed Sinner’s Holiday by Warner Brothers, it wasn’t a movie that got a lot of notice, but the studio saw something in Cagney and kept him around. His next movie was a gangster picture titled Doorway to Hell, followed by small parts in two other movies, Other Men’s Women and The Millionaire. But it was The Public Enemy that made James a star. When filming first started, he was cast as the sidekick, Matt Doyle; Edward Woods was cast as Tom Powers. But when director William Wellman got a look at the rushes, he realized that the roles should be reversed. One of the most famous scenes in cinema history comes from this movie: James smashing a grapefruit into the face of actress Mae Clarke. There are two stories to how the scene came about: the script called for James to throw the grapefruit at her face. But according to John McCabe’s biography Cagney, Wellman and Cagney talked about the scene and felt it would be better to rub the grapefruit in her face. Clarke agreed but wanted them to do the shot in one take. The day they were going to film the scene, Clarke had a cold and asked James to make it look like he was rubbing it in her face. Wellman pulled Cagney aside, told him that it wouldn’t work and instructed him to hit her right in the face with the grapefruit. When shooting was complete, Clarke cursed at Cagney and the writer before storming off. Years later, Clarke verified most of this version, but denies that she cursed them out. Whichever version is true, it is still one of the best scenes in the movie.

There was a close call on the set. Back in those days, the studios used real bullets for the shooting scenes. The studio hired a man who had been a machine gunner in World War I. During the scene where Matt (Woods) is shot, James ran down the sidewalk and around the corner. The machine gunner opened fired on the corner of the wall James had just gone around. If he had been two seconds slower, he would have been shot in the head (he would have a near-miss like this years later on another movie). The Public Enemy was a hit, but James realized that he was not receiving enough money for his work. He made two more movies while his agent negotiated with the studio. After he finished the last movie, he realized he had a choice to make: stay with Warner Brothers, making less money than he deserved, or go back to New York. After six months in New York, Warner caved in to his demands, and James returned to Hollywood.

This would become a recurring pattern whenever James had problems with Jack Warner. He would make two or three movies, demand more money and retreat to New York until he got what he wanted. James knew what his performances were worth to the studio, and he wanted to be fairly compensated for his work. He never saw acting as anything but a job, a means by which to keep food on the table. He was constantly cast as a gangster, though he hated playing one. “I’m a song and dance man,” he would tell people. Considering his background in vaudeville and Broadway, this is certainly true. But he had the look and the personality of a gangster because of his upbringing. Despite the fact that he played gangsters, he would give his characters humorous touches, either by a look or an action. He called his films “factory work” and his remarks about Jack Warner were not kind. Warner gave him the nickname “The Professional Againster”. Despite his problems with the studio, James never forgot the people behind the scenes who worked harder than he did. On many of his sets, James would abruptly stop filming, claiming he needed to go home or he was ill. What he was really doing was making sure that these people got an extra day’s pay.

His family – mother, brothers and sister – eventually moved to Hollywood and began working in different parts of the movie industry. His lifelong friend, Pat O’Brien (who gave James the nickname of “the far-away fella” because James always seemed to want to be somewhere else) had also moved west. They would make nine movies together, starting in 1934 with Here Comes the Navy and ending with 1981’s Ragtime. Their most famous movie together came in 1938: Angels with Dirty Faces, about two boys who grow up in Hell’s Kitchen together. After they are both sent to reform school, they go in different directions, yet remain friends. Rocky (Cagney) becomes the envy of the neighborhood kids, while Jerry (O’Brien) becomes a priest and works to save the kids. After Rocky kills someone and is sentenced to the chair, Jerry goes to the prison and asks Rocky to act yellow on his execution walk. He hopes that if the neighborhood kids realize that Rocky is just as scared as the next guy, it will persuade them to go straight. As he is being led to the chair, Rocky whimpers and begs to be spared. It’s unclear whether he did this for Jerry or because he was really scared.

Ironically, it was not a gangster role that won James his only Oscar, but as song and dance man George M. Cohan in 1942’s Yankee Doodle Dandy. James actually met Cohan once early in his career. He had gone to audition for one of Cohan’s shows, but when Cohan saw him, he made it clear to the agent he didn’t want James. He felt James looked too much like himself, and he didn’t want to compete with that. After Yankee Doodle Dandy came out, Cohan was asked what he thought of James’ performance. His response: “My God, what an act to follow.” (Cohan died five months after the movie’s premiere.). Take a look at this short clip from the film:

For James, portraying Cohan was a great honor: a song and dance man portraying the greatest song and dance man of all time. The first day of filming coincided with one of the most shocking days in the nation’s history: December 8, 1941, the day President Roosevelt declared war on Japan and Germany. That announcement set the mood for the entire filming schedule. It was a patriotic movie to help people through a difficult time. And it delivered, nominated for eight Academy Awards and earning three, including best actor for James.

After the success of the film, James and his brother Bill formed Cagney Productions, but their three movies – Johnny Come Lately, Blood on the Sun, and The Time of Your Life – were not successful. James was forced to go back to “the factory”, back to a gangster movie, 1949’s White Heat, which was a huge hit. His movies over the next twelve years did not live up to his previous work, except for 1955’s Mister Roberts as Captain Morton (please see our film review); 1955’s Love Me or Leave Me as the gangster Martin Snyder who is obsessed with singer Ruth Etting; and 1960’s The Gallant Hours as Admiral Halsey. James and Bill moved back to their farm in New York, where James was content to raise livestock as well as spending hours in his studio painting. By 1980, his health was declining: his eyesight was failing, which hampered his ability to paint, and several slight strokes had impaired his memory. Bill encouraged him to take a role in 1981’s Ragtime, believing this would give him back some of his spirit. It revived him enough that he filmed Terrible Joe Moran in 1984, but he knew that this was his last movie. He was physically unable to handle the demands of filming anymore and once again retired to his beloved farm.

Made It Ma, Top of the World...

James always carried a notebook with him whenever he was filming, and he would often write poems or little sayings. As his health failed, one little saying he had written in his teens took on more poignant meaning:

Each man starts with his very first breath
To devise shrewd means for outwitting death.

James’ time for outwitting death came to a close on March 30, 1986. He had a serious heart attack earlier that month, and the doctors told Bill that he did not have long to live. Their caretaker, Marge Zimmerman, drove them home so James could die in peace. On March 30, as he was sitting at the breakfast table, he looked at the home care nurse, winked, smiled and died of cardiac arrest.

James Cagney died as he had lived, with humor and grace. He left behind an impressive library of films; the characters he portrayed, from Tom Powers in The Public Enemy and Cohan in Yankee Doodle Dandy to Cody Jarrett in White Heat, all have a piece of the Cagney spirit. As he once said, “Acting is just a job”, but what a wonderful job he did.

Our James Cagney Film Reviews:
Mister Roberts (1955)
The James Cagney Signature Collection

Special Links of Interest:
James Cagney on IMDB
The Mave's Tribute to James Cagney
James Cagney at Hollywood's Irish Mafia

Downloads:
James Cagney SOTM Wallpaper (1024x768)
James Cagney SOTM Wallpaper (800x600)

The author would like to cite Cagney by John McCabe and James Cagney: A Celebration by Richard Schickel for some of the information on this page.