James Cagney
FameRank: 6

"James Francis Cagney, Jr." was an American actor and dancer, both on stage and in film, though he had his greatest impact in film. Known for his consistently energetic performances, distinctive vocal style, and deadpan comic timing, he won acclaim and major awards for a wide variety of performances. He is best remembered for playing multi-faceted tough guys in movies like The Public Enemy (1931), Taxi! (1932), Angels with Dirty Faces (1938) and White Heat (1949) and was even typecasting (acting)/typecast or limited by this view earlier in his career. In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked him eighth among its AFI's 100 Years...100 Stars/50 Greatest American Screen Legends. Orson Welles said of Cagney that he was "maybe the greatest actor who ever appeared in front of a camera."

In his first professional acting performance, Cagney danced costumed as a woman in the chorus line of the 1919 revue Every Sailor. He spent several years in vaudeville as a dancer and comedian, until he got his first major acting part in 1925. He secured several other roles, receiving good notices, before landing the lead in the 1929 play Penny Arcade. After rave reviews, Warner Bros. signed him for an initial $500-a-week, three-week contract to reprise his role; this was quickly extended to a seven-year contract.

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Perhaps people, and kids especially, are spoiled today, because all the kids today have cars, it seems. When I was young you were lucky to have a bike.

Though I soon became typecast in Hollywood as a gangster and hoodlum, I was originally a dancer, an Irish hoofer, trained in vaudeville tap dance. I always leapt at the opportunity to dance in films later on.

One thing that troubles me is that they say that my portrayals of gangsters and hoodlums led to a tolerance of the criminal element by society. Well, I certainly hope they didn't, because I'm firmly opposed to crime.

You know, the period of World War I and the Roaring Twenties were really just about the same as today. You worked, and you made a living if you could, and you tired to make the best of things. For an actor or a dancer, it was no different then than today. It was a struggle.

It was just everyday living. With me, it was fighting, more fighting, and more fighting. Life then was simply the way it was: ordinary, not bad, not good, just regular. No stress, no strain. Of course, no one had much of anything, but we didn't know that we were poor.

I got a part as a chorus girl in a show called Every Sailor and I had fun doing it. Mother didn't really approve of it, through.

If the American family has seemed in danger of disintegration, I believe and hope it will survive, and I think America will return to old values.

The 1920s were essentially the time when I learned the business of performing. It was my initiation into the world of show business.