James Cagney
James Cagney
James Francis Cagney, Jr. was an American actor and dancer, both on stage and in film, though he had his greatest impact in film. Known for his consistently energetic performances, distinctive vocal style, and deadpan comic timing, he won acclaim and major awards for a wide variety of performances. He is best remembered for playing multifaceted tough guys in movies such as The Public Enemy, Taxi!, Angels with Dirty Faces, and White Heatand was even typecast or limited by this...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionMovie Actor
Date of Birth17 July 1899
CityNew York City, NY
CountryUnited States of America
The 1920s were essentially the time when I learned the business of performing. It was my initiation into the world of show business.
One thing that troubles me is that they say that my portrayals of gangsters and hoodlums led to a tolerance of the criminal element by society. Well, I certainly hope they didn't, because I'm firmly opposed to crime.
There were many tough guys to play in the scripts that Warner kept assigning me. Each of my subsequent roles in the hoodlum genre offered the opportunity to inject something new, which I always tired to do. One could be funny, and the next one flat. Some roles were mean, and others were meaner.
If the American family has seemed in danger of disintegration, I believe and hope it will survive, and I think America will return to old values.
It was just everyday living. With me, it was fighting, more fighting, and more fighting. Life then was simply the way it was: ordinary, not bad, not good, just regular. No stress, no strain. Of course, no one had much of anything, but we didn't know that we were poor.
I never said, 'MMMmmm, you dirty rat!
I`m sick of carrying guns and beating up women.
My father was totally Irish, and so I went to Ireland once. I found it to be very much like New York, for it was a beautiful country, and both the women and men were good-looking.
Though I soon became typecast in Hollywood as a gangster and hoodlum, I was originally a dancer, an Irish hoofer, trained in vaudeville tap dance. I always leapt at the opportunity to dance in films later on.
Outside of my family, the prime concern of my life has been nature and its order, and how we have been savagely altering that order.
I never had the slightest difficulty with a fellow actor. Not until One, Two, Three. In that picture, Horst Buchholz tried all sorts of scene-stealing didoes. I came close to knocking him on his ass.
I got a part as a chorus girl in a show called Every Sailor and I had fun doing it. Mother didn't really approve of it, through.
You know, the period of World War I and the Roaring Twenties were really just about the same as today. You worked, and you made a living if you could, and you tired to make the best of things. For an actor or a dancer, it was no different then than today. It was a struggle.
The Postman Always RingsTwice.