Top 5: Cagney
by John Nolte
1. White Heat (1949) – The last of the classic gangster pictures is also one of the best. Virginia Mayo gives the performance of her career, Edmond O’ Brien is sturdy as ever, and the script is a masterpiece of character, plotting, and story twists – but you never notice because Cagney’s towering performance as a mother-obsessed sociopath is so overpowering it sucks up all the greatness going on around him.
Which do you find more disturbing? Cagney’s Cody Jarrett eating a piece of chicken and shooting “air holes” in the trunk for the poor slob locked in there, the fifty year old sitting on his mother’s lap, or the prison scene when he’s told of dear old mom’s death?
What a movie.
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2. Love Me or Leave Me (1955) – Hopefully we’ll all live long enough to see this under-appreciated biopic of jazz singer Ruth Etting’s life receive the critical acknowledgement it deserves. Doris Day is terrific, the songs timeless, but once again the show is all Cagney as the thumb-shaped, sadistic gangster who manages Etting to fame but leaves a trail of wreckage in his jealous, manipulative wake.
After at least a half-dozen screenings, I still can’t figure out how Cagney manages to make us pity the S.O.B.
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3. The Public Enemy (1931) – The Mighty William Wellman had Cagney cast as the best friend but quickly recognized the young man’s raw screen power and placed him in the lead. Good call. Almost eighty years on you can still can feel a star being born as Cagney tears up the screen for 83 beautifully paced minutes playing Tom Powers, a low-level street thug who claws, kills, and smashes grapefruits all the way to the top.
And that final scene. Unforgettable.
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4. Each Dawn I Die (1939) – Cagney plays crusading reporter Frank Ross, who’s framed for murder and sent to prison. With the help of George Raft he plots his escape, and with the help of a melodramatic (in a good way) script, watching Cagney rage at the injustice and turn to ice inside makes for one pleasant afternoon at the movies.
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5. Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942) – Cagney started out as a song and dance man, and here, at the age of 43, he returns to his roots blazing with the confidence of a star who’s been at the top for a dozen years. This patriotic, warm, and often exhilarating biography of songwriter George M. Cohan won Cagney a well-deserved Oscar. A joy from beginning to end.
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51 Comments
So true about his acting in White Heat. The writing is just as amazing.
1. Yankee Doodle Dandy – This is unlikely to ever be remade – where are they going to find someone that can act like Cagney and hoof it like this? Another example of a time when Hollywood was not ashamed to show their patriotism. Not exactly solid on the facts of Cohan’s life but who cares.
2. The Public Enemy – Can’t ever eat a grapefruit without thinking of Cagney. And that last scene is a top ten in endings. Plus those were real bullets from the machine gun fired at Cagney and Ed Woods.
3. Angels With Dirty Faces – Did Rocky chicken out a the end or did his old friend convince him to put on an act for the kids?
4. The Twentieth Century – Bogart and Cagney in their best joint effort. Who would be crazy enough to mess with even one of them?
5. The Strawberry Blonde – Cagney and Rita Hayworth, Olivia De Havilland and two of the best supporting actors in Hollywood, Jack Carsona and Alan Hale all directed by Raoul Walsh. What’s not to like? Another example of how Cagney could excel in lighter fare than gangster movies.
Whaddaya heah, whaddaya say?
Are you kidding me? No Rocky Sullivan?
“Angels with Dirty Faces” belongs on this list!
It featured the best ever pick-up line to use when meeting a girl from the old neighborhood: “Say, you turned out to be a pretty snappy lookin’ dish.”
Did Rocky pretend to be a coward for Father Jerry, so the kids wouldn’t idolize him? Or did he really die like a yellow rat?
Great minds continue to ponder this question…
1) “One, Two, Three” – agree with Pat that it has to be there. One of the great anti Communist film by an actor who had to deal with Red tarring
2) “Footlight Parade” – Let’s say you wanted to remake this film. So where exactly are you going to find an equivilant of Cagney AND Busby Berkley?
3) “White Heat” – If any film is a better gangster film than “Godfather” it’s this one
4) “The Public Enemy” – yeah, because of the grapefruit scene
5) “13 Rue Madeleine” – it’s a strange little spy film, but I like it
I’d have “One, Two, Three” up there too – it’s a hell of a comic performance. I keep telling people they’ll learn all they need to know about management from that. He was also great in “Angels With Dirty Faces”. You can’t really tell which direction he took that final scene in, which made it just perfect.
Call me crazy, but I liked THE BRIDE CAME C.O.D. Included a great, typical William Frawley performance.
Absolutely, “One, Two, Three”. One of the best comedies of the ’60s.
The part in ‘Angels’ where he goes to the church to check in with Fr. Jerry after getting out of prison again and sings along, wistfully, under his breath with the choir just kills me.
I think he did if for the boys, btw.
Couldn’t find room on my list for “Mr. Roberts” which made my Jack Lemmon list.
Top of the World, Ma. good stuff, good stuff…
Always liked City for Conquest, too, as the blinded boxer with Ann Sheridan and Anthony Quinn as the heavy.
Seeing ‘The Strawberry Blonde mentioned had to look it up. Looks like a great movie, is there a Cagney / Rita dance number? what a cast and director, its got all the ingredients, but it hasn’t been released to DVD. A entry for the Top 5 No Can See list?
Ditto on “The Bride Came C.O.D.” with Bette Davis. Never get tired of it!
Agree with you, Mr. Nolte, on White Heat. Cagney was one helluva actor.
Just five? If anyone deserves 10, it’s Cagney. I might get to 10 and realize I need 12. Gangster, hoofer, patriot, tough guy, good guy, everything. And the BEST at every one.
One Two Three, aside from being an example of satire that would be unwelcome in today’s Hollywood (Che, Castro fanclub, etc.), is also just a fine example of pure comedic wit, timing, and pacing by one of the masters of the comedy of errors (and in this case manners too), Billy Wilder.
My all time favorite line:
“They have assigned us a magnificent apartment. Just a short walk from the bathroom.”
Of my favorite Cagney moments is he and Bob Hope in “The 7 Little Floys”, Cagney reprising his role of George S. Cohan. Great stuff.
Let’s save time…list a performance in which Cagney wasn’t fantastic…..yeah, me neither.
Remember Travolta talking about meeting Cagney…remember thinking, how clever of him to use his newfound (at the time) fame to meet an idol. Think Travolta met with a few of the great song & dance guys before they passed.
Wonder what Cagney would have thought of Hairspray…didn’t he dress in drag once, too?
Though it doesn’t deserve to be in the top five for a variety of reasons, I like “The Man of a Thousand Faces” for introducing me to another screen legend, Lon Chaney.
I still remember when I saw Footlight Parade for the first time. I’d seen Cagney, but only as a tough guy and here he was dancing better than Ruby Keeler could ever hope to dance.
Then I saw Yankee Doodle Dandy, and that last scene where Cagney dances down the stairs…simple but so perfect.
I agree, Angels With Dirty Faces belongs on the list for sure, and I do have a sneaking fondness for The Twentieth Century. I heard a story that Raoul Walsh told about that movie. Remember the last scene where Cagney is shot and runs around for what seems about half a mile? Someone asked him if that was realistic and he said; “Did you ever try to kill a actor”?
I saw an interview with Cagney once, and he was asked about “White Heat”. He said initially he and the director had some trouble with his character and the story line. He said, in the end, they just decided to make Cody Jarrett nuts. Seems to have worked out pretty well.
Oh, and I think, as others have said, his turn in “One, Two, Three” deserves a mention, too.
John Notle — If only you knew how much I appreciate all of your “Top 5″ posts (and the input from others). Thank you.
Greatest actor ever, bar none. He could and did play every character possible from gangster to comedian to dancer and everything in between. He even did westerns and boxing movies. The two greatest gangster pictures, White Heat and Angels With Dirty Faces. Rocky did it for the boys and Jerry , no doubt. In Mr Roberts who can forget “who stole it”. In One Two Three there was a great line by Cagney to Horst Bucholtz about “Put your pants on Sparticus”. Great line, given the cold war at the time. There are so many lines and actions from Cagney’s films people could recite and do them forever.
I can’t imagine there will ever be another actor of his quality and completeness. He was the bes.
Cagney was at the top of that incredible Warner Bros. repertory company of contract players in the 1930s and 40s that made even the ‘B’ releases fun to watch (even if the terms of the contracts created major battles between Jimmy and J.L.). And especially given Cagney’s closeness with Ronald Reagan, “One, Two, Three” was a perfect coda to the main body of his film career (I’d rather think of that as his final big-screen performance than “Ragtime”).
‘Shake Hands With The Devil’ — Set during the Irish War of Independence, Cagney plays a kindly old doctor, until the end when you see his true colors.
I love actors who can sing, dance and do dialogue and Cagney is their epitome and zenith. Yankee Doodle is his best.
Being a product of the second half of the 20th Century, all of Cagney’s career to me was on TV or– eventually– video/DVD.
So had seen a lot of Cagney, but always in bad guy roles. I didn’t know his career as it came along to the public, and they could see him in different characters.
So when I saw that he did song-and-dance as George M. Cohan, I laughed out loud thinking how he had to be all wrong for the role. And later I laughed again when I saw him in the cast of A Midsummer’s Night Dream– Shakespeare, of all things.
Well I was all wrong. Cagney could do any role– I bet even Tarzan– and make it work. I certainly have never seen him perform poorly.
Wait a minute– let me check imdb.com again about that Tarzan ….
“They had faces– and voices.”
He is one of the greats, and I agree he should be one of the top 5 as every thing he ever was in was tops.
For those who like Cagney in ‘tough guy’ comedy like “One, Two, Three” (the 2nd funniest movie the brilliant Billy Wilder made after “Some Like It Hot”) try to find “Torrid Zone” from 1940 with Ann Sheridan. Cagney plays the reluctant manager of a banana plantation in Central America and the snappy sexy verbal duelling between him and Sheridan still crackles almost 70yrs later. Andy Devine and other 1930s Hollywood great supporting actors round out the cast. A real treat but may be hard to find.
Yeah, Cagney looked like a Yankee Doodle DANDY, all right. Sorry to be a dissenting voice, but I hated that movie. I grew up on Public Enemy, Angels With Dirty Faces, White Heat, etc. When I turned on Yankee Doodle Dandy, was it ever a turn-off. I much prefer Cagney in his darker, sociopathic roles. So for me, Yankee Doodle Dandy was nothing more than a Yanky Doodle DUD. I wanted to see James Cagney kicking butt, not gavoting across the stage with a cane and straw hat!
Balthazar, that doesn’t make YDD a bad movie.
Being a US Navy Veteran, I would have to add “The Gallant Hours”. This movie was a bio-pic of Fleet Admiral Wm. Halsey. The movie has a hauntingly beautiful score and is almost documentary. It has a definite pro-Halsey lean to it but one of my favorites.
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