James Cagney

James Francis Cagney Jr. was born on July 17, 1899, on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in New York City, with his birth certificate listing his address as 391 East 8th Street. His father, James Francis Cagney Sr., was of Irish descent and worked as a bartender and amateur boxer, though the birth certificate identified him as a telegraphist. His mother, Carolyn Elizabeth Nelson, was of Norwegian and Irish heritage. The second of seven children, two of whom died in infancy, Cagney was sickly as a young child, and the family relocated twice during his early years, moving first to East 79th Street and then to East 96th Street. He was confirmed at St. Francis de Sales Roman Catholic Church in Manhattan, the same church where his funeral service would later be held.

Cagney graduated from Stuyvesant High School in 1918 and briefly attended Columbia College, where he intended to study art, took German, and joined the Student Army Training Corps. He left after one semester following the death of his father during the 1918 flu pandemic. To support his family, he held a succession of jobs including junior architect, copy boy for the New York Sun, book custodian at the New York Public Library, bellhop, draughtsman, and night doorkeeper, turning over his earnings to his family. While employed at the library, he met Florence James, who helped guide him toward an acting career. As a boy he had taken up tap dancing, earning the nickname "Cellar-Door Cagney" for his habit of dancing on slanted cellar doors. He was also a capable street fighter, a runner-up for the New York state amateur lightweight boxing title, and a semi-professional baseball player who entertained ambitions of playing in the Major Leagues.

His path to the stage began in 1919 when a colleague at Wanamaker's Department Store observed him dancing and told him about a role in the production Every Sailor. Cagney auditioned for the chorus knowing only one step, the Peabody, but executed it with enough precision to convince the producers of his ability. He remained with the show for two months before leaving, partly at his mother's urging that he pursue an education. He subsequently auditioned for a chorus part in the William B. Friedlander musical Pitter Patter, earning $55 a week, a portion of which he sent home to his mother each week. While performing in that production he also worked as a dresser for one of the leads, handled the cast's luggage, and understudied for the lead role. It was among the Pitter Patter chorus that he met Frances Willard Vernon, known as Billie, whom he married in 1922.

Cagney's Broadway career spanned the decade from 1920 to 1930 and included a range of productions. Among his stage credits were the musical Pitter Patter, the plays Outside Looking In, Maggie the Magnificent, Women Go On Forever, and Penny Arcade. The latter proved to be a pivotal engagement: Al Jolson attended a performance of Penny Arcade in 1929 and was sufficiently impressed that he purchased the rights to the play, ensuring that Cagney would reprise his role in the Warner Bros. film adaptation. That transition to film marked the start of a lengthy and often contentious relationship with the studio.

Cagney spent several years in vaudeville as a dancer and comedian before securing his first major acting role in 1925. His fifth film, The Public Enemy, released in 1931, became one of the most influential gangster pictures of its era and established him as a Hollywood star. He found himself typecast in tough-guy roles throughout the early years of his film career, appearing in pictures including Taxi!, Angels with Dirty Faces, The Roaring Twenties, City for Conquest, and White Heat. His performance in Angels with Dirty Faces earned him his first Academy Award nomination for Best Actor in 1938. A third nomination followed in 1955 for Love Me or Leave Me, in which he appeared alongside Doris Day.

Despite the typecasting, Cagney negotiated opportunities to showcase his dancing in films, a skill rooted in his Broadway and vaudeville years. That persistence culminated in his portrayal of George M. Cohan in the 1942 musical Yankee Doodle Dandy, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor. In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked him eighth on its list of the greatest male stars of the Golden Age of Hollywood.

His relationship with Warner Bros. was marked by repeated conflict. He walked out on the studio twice, each time returning under improved personal and artistic terms. In 1935 he sued Warner for breach of contract and signed with Grand National Pictures, an independent company run by Edward L. Alperson. In 1942 he established his own production company, Cagney Productions, before eventually returning to Warner seven years later. Jack L. Warner referred to him as "the Professional Againster" in recognition of his refusal to be managed on the studio's terms. Beyond his film work, Cagney served as president of the Screen Actors Guild for two years and made numerous USO troop tours before and during World War II.

Cagney retired from acting and dancing in 1961. Two decades later he came out of retirement to appear in the 1981 film Ragtime, a decision motivated in part by his doctors' recommendation that the project would aid his recovery from a stroke. He died on March 30, 1986.