TMS Spotlight: The Surprising Versatility of James Cagney

(Everett Collection)

Years ago I remember seeing a comment on social media appropriately comparing legendary film actor James Cagney as ‘Joe Pesci for the 1930s.’ This would be completely spot-on at face value, if you only knew Jimmy Cagney through his many hit crime/gangster movies, like William Wellman’s The Public Enemy (1931) or Raoul Walsh’s White Heat (1949). The blonde New Yorker had the same on-screen intimidation and aggression as Joe does in more modern crime classics like Martin Scorsese’s GoodFellas (1990) or Casino (1995). But the average movie viewer probably doesn’t know when Cagney wasn’t playing gangsters, he was actually a trained song-and-dance man. I’ve always wondered how audiences in the 1930s-40s reacted to seeing the natural fast-talker go from whacking traitors, to performing elaborate Busby Berkeley musical numbers on a regular basis.

This isn’t to say Pesci was typecast his whole career before he retired, but even in family friendly films like Chris Columbus’ Home Alone (1990), he was usually cast as the villain. And of course, one of his biggest hits was as the lead and title character in Jonathan Lynn’s comedy My Cousin Vinny (1992). But generally, he was a tough guy on film through and through. James Cagney on the other hand, really did have the talent, range and luck of appearing in multiple genres in his career. My favorite film of his is Raoul Walsh’s The Strawberry Blonde (1941), which is a charming romantic comedy set in 1890s New York, and co-stars Olivia de Havilland and Rita Hayworth. Jimmy’s famous wiseguy persona is gone and replaced with a more charismatic and endearing quality. This is also the case with his characters in popular movie musicals such as Lloyd Bacon’s Footlight Parade (1933) and Michael Curtiz’s Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942)—where he won an Academy Award for Best Actor with his portrayal of Broadway entertainer and producer George M. Cohan. Cagney even got the chance to play Bottom in Max Reinhardt & William Dieterle’s screen adaptation of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1935).

And during all this were the intensity of William Keighley’s G-Men (1935), Michael Curtiz’s Angels with Dirty Faces (1938) and Raoul Walsh’s The Roaring Twenties (1939). Surely the real James Cagney must be closer to one personality than the other. Surprisingly [or maybe not to people who actually knew him], his preferences seemed to lean more toward his light-hearted roles. His tough guy act in movies, wasn’t completely put on though. He had a black belt in Judo and came from an Irish Catholic family, even becoming fluent in Yiddish while growing up in a heavily Jewish populated NYC neighborhood. Despite playing womanizers in some of those crime flicks, James was a committed, married family man his whole adult life. He was known to be pretty modest and easy going off camera, which was probably one of the reasons he was a favorite collaborator of directors like Walsh and Curtiz; and co-stars like de Havilland, Joan Blondell and George Raft. Future actors Clint Eastwood and Malcolm McDowell credit the screen legend as an influence on their careers.

I’ve often heard it said that actors like James Cagney don’t exist anymore, but Cagney definitely lives on with his screen presence.