* New York 17.7.1899 – † Stanfordville, New York 30.3.1986,

Door zijn snelle spraak en kort postuur een onstuitbare energie uitstraalde. Hij is vooral bekend geworden door zijn gangsterrollen in de jaren dertig, maar hij was een volleerd danser en zanger en ontving zijn enige Oscar voor de rol van Broadwayproducent George M. Cohan in Yankee doodle dandy (1942). Hij trok zich in 1961, toen hij nog aan de top stond, terug, maar verscheen in 1981 nog eenmaal in Ragtime op het witte doek.

Education:     Columbia (German)

The American gangster film, and the output of Warner Bros. in its most influential decade, would be unimaginable without the contributions of James Cagney. One of talking pictures' first generation of actors, Cagney forever romanticized the figures of the criminal and the con artist with his jittery physical dynamism and breakneck staccato vocal patterns.

Raised in New York City's tough Yorkville neighborhood, Cagney was a veteran of settlement house revues, vaudeville and five years of Broadway when he came to Warner Bros. in 1930. Cagney, Bette Davis and Edward G. Robinson, all signed to longterm contracts during this period, became the core of the studio's stock company, which also included character and supporting players such as Alan Jenkins and Frank McHugh. After playing several featured roles Cagney attained instant and lasting fame with his role as vicious gunman Tom Powers in William Wellman's THE PUBLIC ENEMY (1931).

THE PUBLIC ENEMY'S story of a wisecracking hood who seemed to delight in violence indelibly stamped the gangster genre. Along with LITTLE CAESAR (1930) and I AM A FUGITIVE FROM A CHAIN GANG (1932), the picture cemented Warner Bros.' position as a major studio. Between 1930 and 1941, Cagney made 38 films at Warner Bros.

While most were crime and action dramas or comedies, quickly produced on modest budgets and featuring few other box-office "names," many have become genre classics. Several, including ANGELS WITH DIRTY FACES (1938) and THE ROARING TWENTIES (1939), remain seminal works in American film history. Cagney reached a creative peak with YANKEE DOODLE DANDY (1942), a biopic based on the life of composer George M. Cohan. A sentimental masterpiece, the film drew on Cagney's prodigious singing and dancing talents, previously unexploited at Warner Bros., and brought him the Academy Award for best actor.

A series of well-publicized salary disputes at Warner Bros. led to Cagney's forming an independent production company, Cagney Productions. Headed by James and his brother William, a former actor, the firm was based on terms developed in James's last Warner Bros. contract and gave him unprecedented leeway in choosing vehicles and participating in profits. It proved a failure, releasing only three films through United Artists, but was nevertheless a path-breaking model which many others in the industry would soon follow.

In 1949 Cagney made an explosive return to Warner Bros. in the Raoul Walsh-directed WHITE HEAT, playing Cody Jarrett, a violent, Freudianized update of the Tom Powers character in THE PUBLIC ENEMY. Like the earlier film, WHITE HEAT was both profitable and enormously influential. 

Throughout the 1950s Cagney played sardonic and often villainous characters for several studios, in films occasionally produced by Cagney Productions. The decade also saw his only directing assignment, SHORT CUT TO HELL (1957), and his last musical, the delightful NEVER STEAL ANYTHING SMALL (1959). 

After a bravura performance in Billy Wilder's ironic farce ONE, TWO, THREE (1961), Cagney retired. The following years saw him receive many honors, including the 1974 Life Achievement Award of the American Film Institute—the second such award ever given. His good friend and neighbor, director Miloš Forman, lured him from retirement for RAGTIME (1981), but Cagney's own desires to perform again were hampered by increasing ill health. He made only one more appearance before his death, the made-for-TV movie TERRIBLE JOE MORAN (1984).

Filmography James Cagney

1930   DOORWAY TO HELL  

1930   SINNER'S HOLIDAY   

1931   BLONDE CRAZY/LARCENY LANE     

1931   THE MILLIONAIRE    

1931   OTHER MEN'S WOMEN        

1931   THE PUBLIC ENEMY  

Klassieke misdaadfilm. Misschien wel de beste rol die James Cagney in zijn 60- jarige loopbaan speelde,

was die van Tom Powers, een simpel kruimeldiefje, die zich weet op te knokken, tot een machtige crimineel. Als op een dag zijn beste vriend wordt vermoord, zoekt hij genoegdoening, ten koste van alles, zelfs, zijn eigen leven. De film werd vooral een kult vanwege de beroemde scène, waarin Cagney een grapefruit uitperst in het gezicht van actrice Mae Clarke zonder dat ze dat van te voren hadden afgesproken.

1931   SMART MONEY        

1932   THE CROWD ROARS 

1932   TAXI! 

1932   WINNER TAKE ALL   

1933   FOOTLIGHT PARADE 

1933   HARD TO HANDLE    

1933   LADY KILLER 

1933   THE MAYOR OF HELL

1933   PICTURE SNATCHER 

1934   HE WAS HER MAN    

1934   HERE COMES THE NAVY     

1934   JIMMY THE GENT     

1934   ST. LOUIS KID        

1935   CEILING ZERO

1935   DEVIL DOGS OF THE AIR    

1935   FRISCO KID   

1935   G MEN

1935   THE IRISH IN US     

1935   A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM     

1935   MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY   

1936   GREAT GUY   

1937   SOMETHING TO SING ABOUT/BATTLING HOOFER 

1938   ANGELS WITH DIRTY FACES

1938   BOY MEETS GIRL     

1939   EACH DAWN I DIE    

1939   THE OKLAHOMA KID 

Echt voor de freaks, met maar liefs twee legendes: de film van regisseur Lloyd Bacon bracht James Cagney en Humphrey Bogart samen op het witte doek. Cagney was toen de ster en Bogey de ‘coming man’

1939   THE ROARING TWENTIES    

Summing up their Prohibition gangster movies, this Warner Brothers super productjon follows bootlegger Eddie Bartlett (James

Cagr1ey) from World War I through the bathtub gin-fuelled 20s to the stock market crash and the end of his gangland empire in the early 30s. Initially a naïve doughboy, Cagney drifts into crime when he can not get a job and a speak easy siren (Gladys George) hires him as a bootlegger. But his dark side is represented by his old war buddy partner George (Humphrey Bogart), first seen shooting teenage Germans fjve minutes before the Armistice is declared. In one of his early bad-guy performances, the sharklike Bogart turns to crime not through social necessity like most, but for the simple sadistic love of it, memorably taking the opportunity to gun down his old sergeant during a heist when he finds the unfortunate man now working as a security guard.

Using a stentorian narrator and extraordinarily symbolic montage newsreels, director Raoul Walsh effortlessly weaves together social history; romantic comedy, gang warfare, rat-tat-tat tough-guy dialogue, spaghetti house shoot-outs, speakeasy singalongs, nostalgia, wonderful Warners character players and a great Cagney star performance.

1940   CITY FOR CONQUEST        

1940   THE FIGHTING 69TH 

1940   TORRID ZONE

1941   THE BRIDE CAME C.O.D.     

1941   THE STRAWBERRY BLONDE 

1942   CAPTAINS OF THE CLOUDS 

1942   YANKEE DOODLE DANDY     

1943   JOHNNY COME LATELY       

1945   BLOOD ON THE SUN 

1946   13 RUE MADELEINE  

1948   ONE TOUCH OF VENUS       

1948   THE TIME OF YOUR LIFE    

1949   WHITE HEAT 

1950   KISS TOMORROW GOODBYE

1950   WEST POINT STORY

1951   COME FILL THE CUP 

1951   STARLIFT     

1952   WHAT PRICE GLORY?

1953   A LION IS IN THE STREETS 

1955   LOVE ME OR LEAVE ME      

Boven: Doris Day lijkt niet echt gecharmeerd van James Cagney .

James Cagney is ongetwijfeld een van de meest veelzijdige acteurs die Hollywood ooit gekend heeft. In 1930 werd hij alom geprezen van wegen  zijn prachtige boevenrol in 'The Public Enemy'. Het leek alsof Cagney de rest van zijn leven criminelen moest spelen, totdat de studio's ontdekten dat de artiest meer in zijn mars had, Hij kon goed zingen, was een prima danser, bleek bovendien humor te hebben en zette moeiteloos zijn typetjes neer. Voor de prachtige Shakespeare-rol in 'Een Midzomernachtsdroom’ kreeg hij zelfs de handen van het verwende Londense publiek op elkaar, Nu staat hij tegenover Doris Day die als zangeresje bevriend is met de boef.

1955   MISTER ROBERTS    

1955   RUN FOR COVER      

1955   THE SEVEN LITTLE FOYS    

1956   THESE WILDER YEARS       

1956   TRIBUTE TO A BAD MAN     

1957   MAN OF A THOUSAND FACES        

1957   SHORT CUT TO HELL                    director, performer

1959   NEVER STEAL ANYTHING SMALL     song, performer

1959   SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL    

1960   THE GALLANT HOURS         

1961   ONE, TWO, THREE   

In deze melige komedie draait het om de verschillen tussen West- en Oost- Europa en dan met name

die op het gebied van zaken doen. Een Amerikaanse Coca-Cola zakenman; (James Cagney) reist, voor zaken af naar West Berlijn, met in zijn kielzog de dochter van de directeur. Laat die dochter nou verliefd worden op een communist. De grappen zijn niet altijd leuk (zo sturen de Russen een partij Zwitserse kaas terug omdat er gaten in zitten) maar worden in hoog tempo op de kijker afgevuurd. Na deze film duurde het twintig jaar voordat James Cagney weer een rol accepteerde.

1968   ARIZONA BUSHWHACKERS  

1976   IT'S SHOWTIME      

1981   RAGTIME      

1984   TERRIBLE JOE MORAN        

1988   GOING HOLLYWOOD: THE WAR YEARS     

1989   ENTERTAINING THE TROOPS