James Cagney was one of the most important and influential screen actors of the twentieth century. During the 1930s Cagney helped create the popular image of the gangster in a series of critically acclaimed movies. After World War II, Cagney redefined the image in the film White Heat, playing a violent and demented killer beset with psychological problems. Off the screen, Cagney's support of left-wing causes in the 1930s and 1940s raised the ire of Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) director J. Edgar Hoover, who had his agents closely monitor the actor for many years.
Cagney, the son of an bartender, was born on July 17, 1899, in New York City. Growing up on the Lower East Side, Cagney was a street smart young man who yearned to go on stage as a song-and-dance man. He toured the United States on the vaudeville circuit in the 1920s with his wife Frances, before returning to New York to appear on the Broadway stage. In 1930, he went to Hollywood to reprise his stage role in the musical Sinners Holiday.
Cagney's career and life changed in 1931 when Warner Brothers cast him as a brash, violent criminal in Public Enemy. As the end of Prohibition approached and public interest in gangsters grew, Cagney's aggressive stance foreshadowed the antihero of modern film. The popularity of Public Enemy led Warner Brothers to cast him in a series of criminal roles during the 1930s. The filmsAngels with Dirty Faces (1938),Each Dawn I Die(1939), and The Roaring Twenties (1939) cemented Cagney's tough guy image.
Though Cagney could have played the same role over and over, he yearned to show audiences different aspects of his personality. In 1942, he won the Academy Award for best actor in the film Yankee Doodle Dandy. In the film, he portrayed George M. Cohan, a famous songwriter and performer of the early twentieth century who Cagney had admired as a young man. His dancing and singing surprised many fans who were not aware of how Cagney had started out in show business.
In 1949, Cagney returned to the crime genre in the film White Heat. Cagney's role reflected how much darker and complex the world had become after World War II and the explosion of the atom bomb. His character, Cody Jarrett, was beset with splitting headaches that would lead to violent explosions. His maniacal displays of temper were a departure from the typical Hollywood depiction of violence.
Cagney spent the remainder of his career playing a variety of roles. He played the cantankerous ship's captain in Mr. Roberts (1956) and the frenetic American businessman in West Berlin in One, Two, Three. In 1981, he returned from a twenty year retirement to play the police commissioner in Ragtime. During his later years he earned many honors, including the U.S. Medal of Freedom. He died on March 30, 1986, at his home near Millbrook, New York.
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