Mr. Noir of The Day: James Cagney - Cinemas quintessential tough guy. Octorber 14, 2014 James Francis Cagney, Jr. (July 17, 1899 – March 30, 1986) is a an accomplished dancer, both on stage and in film. Cagney is 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 multi-faceted tough guys in movies like The Public Enemy (1931), Taxi! (1932), Angels with Dirty Faces (1938) and White Heat (1949), all great noir films, which type cast him, but he did brfeak out of that persona and made some great movies such as the musical based upon the life of George M. Cohan Yankee Doodle Dandy. In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked him eighth among its 50 Greatest American Screen Legends. No less a student of drama than Orson Welles said of Cagney that he was maybe the greatest actor who ever appeared in front of a camera. In his first professional acting performance, Cagney danced costumed as a woman in the chorus line of the 1919 revue Every Sailor. He spent several years in vaudeville as a dancer and comedian, until he got his first major acting part in 1925. He secured several other roles, receiving good notices, before landing the lead in the 1929 play Penny Arcade. . After rave reviews, Warner Bros. signed him for an initial $500-a-week, three-week contract to reprise his role; this was quickly extended to a seven-year contract. Cagney’s film debut was in Sinners Holiday in 1930. His seventh film, The Public Enemy (1931), became one of the most influential gangster movies of the period. Notable for a famous scene in which Cagney pushes a grapefruit against his co-stars face, the film thrust him into the spotlight. However, according to Turner Classic Movies (TCM), the grapefruit scene was a practical joke that Cagney and costar Mae Clarke decided to play on the crew while the cameras were rolling. In 1932 he appeared in three films, Winner Take All, The Crowd Roars, and Taxi! Among five film she made in 1933, the best performance was in and movie was Footlight Parade. He became one of Hollywoods biggest stars and one of Warner Brothers biggest contracts. In 1938, he received his first Academy Award for Best Actor nomination, for Angels with Dirty Faces for his subtle portrayal of the tough guy/man-child Rocky Sullivan. In 1942, Cagney won the Oscar for his energetic portrayal of George M. Cohan in Yankee Doodle Dandy. He was nominated a third time in 1955 for Love Me or Leave Me. Cagney retired from acting and dancing in 1961 to spend time on his farm with his family. He exited retirement, twenty years later, for a part in the 1981 movie Ragtime, mainly to aid his recovery from a stroke. Yankee Doodle Dandy is a 1942 American biographical musical film about George M. Cohan, known as The Man Who Owned Broadway. It stars James Cagney, Joan Leslie, Walter Huston, and Richard Whorf, and features Irene Manning, George Tobias, Rosemary DeCamp, Jeanne Cagney, and Vera Lewis. Joan Leslies singing voice partially dubbed by Sally Sweetland. The movie wone the Academy Award for Best Actor and the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actor. In 1955 he appeared in Love Me or Leave Me, a biographical romantic musical drama film which tells the life story of Ruth Etting, a singer who rose from dancer to movie star. It stars Doris Day as Etting, He was Nominated for Academy Award for Best Actor. In 1966 he was in One, Two, Three, playing the Coco Cola Executive, C.R. MacNamara. It was directed by Billy Wilder and written by Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond. It is based on the 1929 Hungarian one-act play Egy, kettő, három by Ferenc Molnár, with a plot borrowed partly from Ninotchka, a 1939 film co-written by Wilder. The comedy features James Cagney, Horst Buchholz, Pamela Tiffin, Arlene Francis, Leon Askin, Howard St. John, and others. It would be Cagneys last film appearance until Ragtime, 20 years later. One, Two, Three was nominated for the Laurel Award for Top Male Comedy Performance and New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actor. Cagney died at his Dutchess County farm in Stanfordville, New York, on Easter Sunday 1986, of a heart attack. He was 86 years old. A funeral Mass was held at Manhattans St. Frances de Sales Roman Catholic Church. Honors and Legacy He was accepted into Columbia University but soon had to drop out because of lack of money. In desperation, he turned to show business hoping to make a living. Perhaps fortuitous he did drop out, had he had the funds to attend college, we would have been deprived of the many and varied roles he played so well in films. Aside from his gangster efforts, Cagney is perhaps best remembered and most loved for his few musicals. He first showed his peculiar stiff-legged dancing style in Footlight Parade (1933). He eventually appeared in four more musicals, two of minor consequence (Something to Sing About, 1937, and Never Steal Anything Small, 1959), the Bob Hope vehicle The Seven Little Foys (1955), and the masterpiece Yankee Doodle Dandy (1947), directed by Michael Curtiz. The movie earned Cagney a Best Actor Oscar and it made a fortune in film rentals. He made a spy noir in 1947, 13 Rue Madeleine, also staring Annabelle & Richard Conte. The plot is when spy chief Bob Sharkey finds out one of his agents-in-training is actually a Nazi double agent, his strategic decision not to arrest him results in tragedy. In 1974, Cagney received the American Film Institutes Life Achievement Award. Charlton Heston, in announcing that Cagney was to be honored, called him ...one of the most significant figures of a generation when American film was dominant, Cagney, that most American of actors, somehow communicated eloquently to audiences all over the world ...and to actors as well. He received the Kennedy Center Honors in 1980. In 1984, Ronald Reagan awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In 1999, the U.S. Postal Service issued a 33 cent stamp honoring Cagney. Cagney was among the most favored actors for the director Stanley Kubrick and the actor Marlon Brando,[194] and was considered by Orson Welles to be ...maybe the greatest actor to ever appear in front of a camera. Warner Bros. would arrange private screenings of Cagney films for Winston Churchill. .
Posted on: Tue, 14 Oct 2014 14:07:56 +0000
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