Comments on: Top 5: Cagney

By: Murph

Murph — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 00:11:13 +0000

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.

By: Mr Sideous

Mr Sideous — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 20:04:01 +0000

Balthazar, that doesn’t make YDD a bad movie.

By: Balthazar Flotard

Balthazar Flotard — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 19:35:02 +0000

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!

By: Kris

Kris — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 00:40:13 +0000

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.

By: ssoldie

ssoldie — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 00:32:39 +0000

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.

By: Lloyd

Lloyd — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 23:08:18 +0000

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.”

By: Richard

Richard — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 16:29:55 +0000

I love actors who can sing, dance and do dialogue and Cagney is their epitome and zenith. Yankee Doodle is his best.

By: Cag Fan

Cag Fan — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 16:24:13 +0000

‘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.

By: dustrider

dustrider — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 16:22:11 +0000

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”).

By: Norman

Norman — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 16:13:25 +0000

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.