James Cagney

James Francis Cagney, Jr. (born July 17, 1899; died March 30, 1986) was an American film actor of Irish and Norwegian extraction.

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Born in Yonkers, New York, Cagney graduated from Stuyvesant High School in New York City in 1918.

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He worked in vaudeville and on Broadway, marrying the dancer Frances Willard (aka: "Billie") Vernon (1899 - 1994) on September 28, 1922 and remained faithfully married for 64 years. They adopted a son James Cagney Jr and a daughter Cathleen "Casey" Cagney. When Warner Brothers bought the film rights to the play Penny Arcade they took Cagney and his co-star Joan Blondell from the stage to the screen in the retitled Sinner's Holiday (1930).

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Cagney went on to star in numerous films, making his name as a 'tough guy' in a series of crime films such as The Public Enemy (1931), Blonde Crazy (1931) and Hard to Handle (1933). He went on to better things including Angels with Dirty Faces (1938), an Academy Award-winning role in Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942), White Heat (1949) ("Made it, Ma! Top of the world!"), and Mister Roberts (1955).

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He was one of the founders of the Screen Actors Guild and president of the Guild from 1942-44.

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Cagney's final appearance on film was in Ragtime in 1981, capping a career that covered over seventy films, although his last film prior to Ragtime had been 20 years earlier in 1961 with Billy Wilder's One, Two, Three. During this hiatus Cagney rebuffed all film offers, including a substantial one in My Fair Lady, to devote time to learning how to paint (at which he became very accomplished), and tending to his beloved farm in Stanfordville, New York.

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In 1974 he received the Lifetime Achievement Award of the American Film Institute and in 1984 his friend Ronald Reagan awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

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Cagney's health deteriorated substantially after 1979, and the role in Ragtime, as well as a later television appearance in 1984, was designed to aid in his convalescence.

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James Cagney died aged 86 of a heart attack while ill with diabetes in Stanfordville, New York and is interred in the Cemetery of the Gate of Heaven in Hawthorne, New York. As a tribute to his myriad talents and interests, his pallbearers included boxer Floyd Patterson, ballet dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov, actor Ralph Bellamy, and film director Milos Forman.

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July 17: July 17 is the 198th day (199th in leap years) of the year in the Gregorian calendar, with 167 days remaining....

1899: 1899 was a common year starting on Sunday (see link for calendar)....

March 30: March 30 is the 89th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (90th in Leap years). There are 276 days remaining....

James Cagney related Images and Photos (experimental)

James Cagney	James Cagney Print	James Cagney Print	James Cagney Print
James Cagney: Signature Collection (DVD)	James Cagney and Margaret Lindsay: G Men 1935	James Cagney Portrait from Torrid Zone 1940	Great Guy James Cagney 1936
Lady Killer James Cagney 1933	The Oklahoma Kid James Cagney on Window Card 1939	The Public Enemy James Cagney Jean Harlow Leslie Fenton Dorothy Gee 1931	James Cagney and Lilo Pulver in One Two Three a Film Directed by Billy Wilder