James Cagney

The Full Biography

James Cagney. Actor. The Yorkville kid who made a grapefruit and a gun into a new American tempo, then spent decades on a farm proving the tough guy had always been a dancer first.

This is his story.

The image most people still carry is a snarl, a cocked chin, a man who looks like he might shove a breakfast across a table. The Public Enemy (1931). What the still cannot show is James Francis Cagney Jr. of Yorkville, New York, a street kid who trained as a hoofer, a Warner contract that tried to own him, and a long life of Martha’s Vineyard, painting, and a death in 1986 that the snarl has never accepted as the whole file.

He was born on July 17, 1899, on the Lower East Side and raised in Yorkville, the eldest surviving son of James Francis Cagney Sr., a bartender, and Carolyn Nelson, who kept the house. Irish and Norwegian. Poor. A mother who treated the family as a job. He learned to dance because a boy who could dance could eat. He worked as a copy boy, a waiter, a bundle wrapper at Wanamaker’s. Vaudeville took the feet. He played women in sketches when the bill required it and never treated that as a secret. In 1920 he was in a revue called Pitter Patter. In 1922 he married Frances Willard “Willie” Vernon, a fellow performer. The marriage held until his death — sixty-four years, a Hollywood plot that refused to be a plot. Broadway noticed the coiled energy. Warner Bros. signed him in 1930. Hollywood hired the dancer and then photographed the fists.

The tempo arrived in 1931. The Public Enemy, as Tom Powers, a Chicago hood who shoves a half grapefruit into Mae Clarke’s face at breakfast. The violence is not theatrical. It is municipal. He was thirty-one and overnight a new American sentence: short, fast, a man who talks with his shoulders. Warner put him in the machine. Taxi! (1932). The Crowd Roars (1932). Footlight Parade (1933), a Busby Berkeley picture that let the feet back in — “Shanghai Lil,” a reminder that the gun was a second instrument. Lady Killer (1933). Here Comes the Navy (1934). G-Men (1935) flipped him to the federal side when the Production Code got nervous about hoods as heroes. A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1935) made him Bottom for Max Reinhardt, a Shakespeare the tough-guy stills still skip. He was already fighting the studio over money and parts, the way Olivia de Havilland would fight the calendar. He walked out. He came back. The contract was a leash. He treated it as a labor fact, not a tantrum.

Angels with Dirty Faces (1938), opposite Pat O’Brien and the Dead End Kids, brought the first Oscar nomination: Rocky Sullivan, who goes to the chair and, depending on how you read the last walk, either dies yellow to save the boys or dies yellow because he is yellow. He would not say which. The Roaring Twenties (1939) with Humphrey Bogart. The Strawberry Blonde (1941) with Olivia de Havilland, a period comedy that is all charm and a bowler. Then the statue. Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942), as George M. Cohan — tap, flag, “Over There,” a wartime civic object the tough-guy stills cannot erase. He won Best Actor. He could always dance. The gun had been the lease. The feet were the title.

He left Warner and formed a company with his brother William. Johnny Come Lately (1943) put him in a small-town newspaper picture he wanted more than the studio did. Blood on the Sun (1945) made him a reporter in Tokyo before the war, a thriller that used the fists and a judo throw the stills still clip. 13 Rue Madeleine (1947) put him in the OSS. The independent pictures did not all take. He went back because the lease, even fought, still paid for the farm he already wanted. White Heat (1949) is the late monument inside the studio run: Cody Jarrett, a mother-fixed killer, “Made it, Ma! Top of the world!” on a burning tank. He had already been the tempo. Now he was the explosion. The West Point Story (1950) let the feet back in again, a service musical with Virginia Mayo. Come Fill the Cup (1951) made him an alcoholic newspaperman, a part that used the tempo without the gun. What Price Glory (1952) for John Ford. A Lion Is in the Streets (1953), a Huey Long weather. Run for Cover (1955). Love Me or Leave Me (1955), as the crippled racketeer Marty Snyder opposite Doris Day’s Ruth Etting, is a performance of possession that is also a musical. Mister Roberts (1955) made him the tyrant captain opposite Henry Fonda and Jack Lemmon. Tribute to a Bad Man (1956). These Wilder Years (1956) with Barbara Stanwyck. Man of a Thousand Faces (1957) put him in Lon Chaney’s makeup. Never Steal Anything Small (1959). Shake Hands with the Devil (1959), as an Irish Republican commander. He was using the clout the snarl had bought to play men who were not only the snarl.

I never said, ‘You dirty rat!’ I was a song-and-dance man who got mixed up with a lot of hoodlums.James Cagney, on the line he never said and the job he did

The turn is the Oscar and the farm. A lot of Warner heavies became television. He became a man who painted and kept a marriage and did not owe another snarl. The Cagney the stills hire is a gangster. The Cagney who lived is a dancer who farmed. Both should run.

He and Frances did not have children. The house was the two of them and the acreage — Martha’s Vineyard for years, then a farm in Stanfordville, in Dutchess County, New York. Friends from Warner describe a professional who knew the mark and the union. The Cagney on the Vineyard was a man who had already been huge and was now a neighbor. Both are the life.

The later years

Home, after he chose to leave the grind, was the farm in Stanfordville — Dutchess County, a place he had bought with Warner money and then treated as the real job — and, for years before that, a place on Martha’s Vineyard. He had already, in 1961, given Billy Wilder one last burst: One, Two, Three, a Cold War farce shot in Germany and on a Hollywood lot, C.R. MacNamara barking into phones at Coca-Cola speed. Horst Buchholz is the East German boy. Arlene Francis is the wife. It is a comic last studio picture, not a fade. Then he stopped. Twenty years of not acting. He painted in oils. He farmed. He wrote verse. He rode. He sat for the AFI Life Achievement Award in 1974, with Frank Sinatra hosting, and treated the night as a courtesy, not a comeback. He published Cagney by Cagney in 1976, a memoir that is as clipped as the tempo and as stubborn about the feet. He did not owe the town another Tom Powers. He had already paid in chin.

Miloš Forman asked him back. Ragtime (1981), from E.L. Doctorow, put him on screen as New York Police Commissioner Rhinelander Waldo — a bow, a few scenes, a man who looks like he has already done the century and is now watching it from a chair. He was eighty-one. The picture is not a comeback vehicle. It is a nod. In 1984 he did a television film, Terrible Joe Moran, as an aging boxer, and President Reagan hung the Presidential Medal of Freedom on him. He accepted the medal. He did not resume a career. The farm was the career he had chosen when the lease ended.

Diabetes and sciatica slowed the body that had been the instrument. He stayed in Stanfordville. Frances was there. The Vineyard years — a place on Martha’s Vineyard he had kept as a second parish — were already a memory he preferred to a premiere. He painted landscapes. He wrote verse he did not tour. He rode when the sciatica allowed. Neighbors knew a quiet man who had once been the fastest talker at Warner and was now a farmer who happened to have shoved a grapefruit. He died on March 30, 1986, at the farm, of a heart attack. He was eighty-six. The funeral was at the farm more than at the industry. Yorkville still claims the tempo. The grapefruit claims the clip. The feet claim the file. The marriage claims the house.

The twenty years of not acting are the chapter the stills cannot photograph. He had already, in One, Two, Three, given the town a last burst at Coca-Cola speed. He had already, in the AFI night and the memoir, filed the labor story: the contract fights, the feet, the marriage, the refusal to become a late-night impersonation of himself. Ragtime and Terrible Joe Moran are bows, not a second run. The Medal of Freedom is a civic object. The acreage is the life. A lot of tough guys die in the part. He died on land he had bought with the part and then refused to live inside.

What those quiet decades actually were is the point a Wolper hour has to hold. He had been the fastest man at Warner. He became a neighbor who painted and kept a wife and came back once to bow. A lot of tough guys die in the part. He died on acreage he had bought with the part and then refused to live inside. The last public work was a television boxer and a medal. The last private work was the farm. Both are the life.

Stanfordville was not a retirement advertisement. It was chores, a brush, a wife who had been there since 1922, and a refusal to become a late-night impression of a grapefruit. He painted the county. He wrote verse he showed to friends, not to a talk show. He rode until the sciatica said no. When Forman called, he put on a commissioner’s coat for a few scenes and then went home. When Reagan hung a medal on him, he accepted it and did not resume a career. Frances was the house. The Vineyard was a memory. Yorkville was the first room. The farm was the last. The stills still hire the gangster. The man who lived there had already put the gun down and kept the feet, even when the feet only walked a fence line.

After he was gone

Every screen gangster still pays him a tax in speed. Every impersonator still says the line he did not say. Cohan still arrives in the same sentence. The sentence is the correction. The farm is the life. Frances outlived him by a few years and then the acreage passed out of the name. The pictures did not. The Public Enemy still teaches a cut. Yankee Doodle Dandy still teaches a tap. White Heat still teaches a tank.

He came out of Yorkville, danced, shoved a breakfast, tapped a flag, told Warner no, married once, and died on a farm after the snarl had already become climate. If you only remember the chin, you have the still. If you remember the feet, the Oscar, the twenty quiet years, and Frances, you have him.

The pictures still play. The Public Enemy on a revival night. Yankee Doodle Dandy on the Fourth. White Heat when someone needs a tank. One, Two, Three when someone needs speed without a gun. The AFI night is in the can. The memoir is on the shelf. The farm changed hands. The marriage is the plot that refused to be a plot. Yorkville is still the first room. Stanfordville was the last. The impersonators still say the line. He never did. Frances was the house from 1922 to 1986. The acreage was the career he chose when the lease ended. The feet were the title all along. The gun was only the lease. He painted the county. He kept the marriage. He came back once to bow and then went home to the fence line. That is the chapter the stills cannot hire. A hoofer who farmed. A marriage that held. A bow in Ragtime and then the fence line. Yorkville to Stanfordville. The tempo and the quiet. Both are him.

Portrait: Warner Bros. Studio · Public domain (PD-US-not renewed) · via Wikimedia Commons

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