Jeanne Cagney

Jeanne Carolyn Cagney, born on March 25, 1919, in New York City, was an American actress whose career spanned film, stage, and television. She died on December 7, 1984, in Newport Beach, California, at the age of 65, from lung cancer, and is buried at Pacific View Memorial Park in Corona del Mar, California.

Cagney grew up in New York City alongside four older brothers, raised by their mother, Carolyn Elizabeth Cagney (née Nelson), following the death of their father, James Francis Cagney Sr. Among her brothers were actor James Cagney, production manager Edward Cagney, and producer William Cagney. She attended Hunter College High School before going on to Hunter College, now part of the City University of New York, where she graduated cum laude with a major in French and German and was inducted into the Phi Beta Kappa Society. During her college years she performed in productions staged by the school's dramatic society. After graduating, she pursued formal acting training at the Pasadena Playhouse.

Her Broadway career ran from 1943 to 1946 and included four productions: The Streets Are Guarded, A Place of Our Own, The High Road, and The Iceman Cometh. The Iceman Cometh, written by Eugene O'Neill, premiered on Broadway on October 9, 1946, and O'Neill himself cast Cagney in the role of Margie, one of the characters identified as street walkers in the play.

Cagney appeared in 19 films between 1939 and 1965. A radio scout discovered her while she was performing on Bing Crosby's radio program, which led to a film test with RKO Pictures, though she ultimately signed a long-term contract with Paramount Pictures. Four of her film appearances were alongside her brother James: Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942), The Time of Your Life (1948), A Lion Is in the Streets (1953), and Man of a Thousand Faces (1957). She also delivered a notable performance opposite Mickey Rooney in the film noir Quicksand (1950).

On radio, Cagney briefly played the title role in the soap opera The Romance of Helen Trent and appeared as a guest on various dramatic programs. Her television work included a 1954 pilot for a mystery series called Satan's Waiting, which was not picked up. From 1956 to 1963 she served as fashion commentator on the NBC and ABC daytime program Queen for a Day, hosted by Jack Bailey, where she provided viewers with style guidance and presented current fashions.

Cagney married actor Ross Latimer, also known as Kim Spalding, in 1944; the marriage ended in divorce on March 9, 1951, and the couple had no children. On June 6, 1953, she married Jack Morrison, a theater arts faculty member at UCLA. They had two daughters, Mary and Terry.