James Cagney: The Pugnacious Movie Star

Woodcut of actor James Cagney. (Artwork by author)

James Cagney was a force of nature. He was quiet and introspective off screen, but once the camera rolled he exploded like an untethered pit bull. He spoke in a rat-a-tat machine-gun cadence with deadpan comic timing and ruthless wit. Orson Welles called him “the greatest actor to ever appear in front of a camera.”

He was born in 1899 on New York’s Lower East Side. His father was an Irish bartender, his mother a Norwegian ship captain’s daughter. He was a sickly child attracted to painting and writing. After his father died in the 1918 flu pandemic, Cagney helped his family survive by earning money in bare-fisted boxing matches. He came in second place for the New York lightweight boxing title.

Cagney loved tap-dancing as a child. He gained the nickname “Cellar-Door Cagney” for dancing on slanted cellar doors. His talents led to a role in the play Every Sailor (1919) as a serviceman dressed as a woman. He was paid was $35 (“a mountain of money for me in those worrisome days”). In 1922, he met a chorus line girl named Frances “Billie” Vernon. They married and moved to Hollywood.

Cagney’s film career began in 1930 when he was cast opposite Joan Blondell in Sinners’ Holiday. Warner Brothers gave him a three-week contract for $500 a week. His breakout movie performance came a year later when he played vicious killer Tom Powers in Public Enemy. The film featured the famous grapefruit scene where Cagney smashes a grapefruit into co-star Mae Clark’s face. The scene was a practical joke Cagney and Clark played on the crew. Director William Wellman loved it so much he left it in the film. Cagney said he was offered free grapefruits in restaurants for the next twenty years.

In those days, movie gunfire involved live ammunition. Producers hired skilled marksmen to shoot low velocity bullets through windows and into walls. In the 1932 film Taxi, Cagney was nearly shot. He refused to work with live bullets again.

In his autobiography Cagney By Cagney, he wrote he was attracted to “that little bit of gutter in all of us.” He told Frank Sinatra his secret to creating likable gangsters. “Be as tough as you want but sprinkle the goodies for laughs. Anything they can laugh at they can’t hate.” He was a founding member of the Screen Actors Guild. In 1935, he sued Warner Brothers for breach of contract, becoming the first actor to win a lawsuit against a Hollywood Studio. Jack Warner promptly dubbed him “The Professional Againster.”

Cagney had a tense relationship with Warner Brothers. While meeting with studio executives about a contract dispute, the Warners spoke in Yiddish about how to change a clause in Cagney’s contract. Cagney, who knew Yiddish from growing up with Jewish kids New York, surprised his bosses by cursing at them in their native tongue.

In 1938, Cagney starred with Pat O’Brien in Angels With Dirty Faces. Cagney played a gangster, O’Brien a priest. The film had a gritty realism with supporting roles played by Humphrey Bogart and the Dead End Kids. The final scene where Cagney is dragged screaming to the electric chair is an iconic moment in film history.

Cagney gained a reputation as a left-wing radical due to his his battles with the studios and support of Franklin Roosevelt. Hoping to change his image, he pursued the role of song and dance man George M. Cohan in the ultra-patriotic film Yankee Doodle Dandy. The part won him a Best Actor Oscar. From 1942–44, Cagney served as president of the Screen Actors Guild. He was determined to prevent the mafia from infiltrating Hollywood. According to Cagney’s autobiography, the mob planned to murder him by dropping a 200-pound klieg light on his head. The plan was stopped at the insistence of actor George Raft, who used his mob connections to cancel the hit.

In 1949, Cagney appeared in White Heat, arguably the greatest gangster film ever made. His character, psychotic killer Cody Jarrett, suffers from an unresolved Oedipal Complex leaving him prone to headaches and violent outbursts. The prison scene where Cagney goes berserk and fights an army of guards shows him at the peak of his powers. The film ends with Cagney atop a gas storage tank yelling his most famous line, “Made it ma! Top of the world.” A moment later the tank explodes in an apocalyptic mushroom cloud.

Cagney never actually uttered the famous film line, “You dirty rat!” The closest he came was the film Taxi where he said, “Come out and take it you yellow-bellied rat.” Several Hollywood stars, including Marlon Brando and Clint Eastwood, said Cagney was their inspiration to become an actor. Cagney’s eccentricities were copied by Jack Nicholson in The Shining, Malcolm McDowell in A Clockwork Orange and Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight. Eastwood said the scene in Dirty Harry where he eats a hot dog during a shootout was a direct copy of Cagney eating a chicken leg and shooting a guy in the trunk of a car from White Heat.

Cagney retired from acting in 1961 after appearing in Billy Wilder’s One, Two, Three. He turned down the role of Hyman Roth in The Godfather, Part II. In 1981, he played a small part in Ragtime despite ongoing battles with diabetes and sciatica. He spent his final years on a farm in Dutchess County, New York, raising horses, sailing, and writing poetry. His political views became more conservative and he helped his friend Ronald Reagan run for president. Cagney remained married to wife Frances for 64 years until his death from a heart attack in 1986. Ronald Reagan delivered the eulogy at his funeral.