Nickname:	The Professional Againster Jimmy
Known for:	Yankee Doodle Dandy, Ragtime, White Heat
Birth name:	James Francis Cagney
Birthday:	17 July 1899, New York, New York, USA
Height:	5' 7" (1.70 m)

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Free Image Hosting - Upload your favorite celebrity pictures. Cagney's first job as an entertainer was as a female dancer in a chorus line. Ranked #45 in Empire (UK) magazine's "The Top 100 Movie Stars of All Time" list. [October 1997] Films co-starring James Cagney and Pat O'Brien were these nine: Here Comes the Navy (1934), Devil Dogs of the Air (1935), The Irish in Us (1935), Boy Meets Girl (1938), Angels with Dirty Faces (1938), Torrid Zone (1940), The Fighting 69th (1940), Ceiling Zero (1936), as well as their finale together, four decades later, Ragtime (1981). Interred at Gate of Heaven Cemetery, Hawthorne, New York, USA. Convinced decorated war hero Audie Murphy to go into acting. Father of actor James Cagney Jr. Had two adopted children, Cathleen "Cassie" and James Jr. Earned a Black Belt in Judo. Extraordinarily (for Hollywood), he never cheated on his wife Frances, resulting in a marriage that lasted 64 years (ending with his death). The closest he came was nearly giving into a seduction attempt by Merle Oberon while the two stars were on tour to entertain WWII GIs. Was of Irish-Norwegian origin. Lived in a Gramercy Park building in New York City that was also occupied by Margaret Hamilton and now boasts Jimmy Fallon as one of its tenants. According to James Cagney's autobiography Cagney By Cagney, (Published by Doubleday and Company Inc 1976, and ghost written by show biz biographer Jack McCabe), a Mafia plan to murder Cagney by dropping a several hundred pound klieg light on top of him was stopped at the insistence of George Raft. Cagney at that time was president of the Screen Actors Guild, and was determined not to let the mob infiltrate the industry. Raft used his many mob connections to cancel the hit. Named the #8 greatest Actor on The 50 Greatest Screen Legends List by The American Film Institute Lost the role of Knute Rockne to his friend Pat O'Brien when the administration of Notre Dame - which had approval over all aspects of the filming - nixed Cagney because of his support of the far-left (and anti-Catholic) Spanish Republic in the then-ongoing Spanish Civil War. His performance as George M. Cohan in Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942) is ranked #6 on Premiere Magazine's 100 Greatest Performances of All Time (2006). Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942) is ranked #88 on the American Film Institute's 100 Most Inspiring Movies of All Time. Biography in: "The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives". Volume Two, 1986- 1990, pages 149-152. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1999. Encouraged by his mother to take up boxing as a hobby. She thought it was a necessary skill to have, especially in the rough Eastside section of New York City where he grew up. She would often show up and watch him take on neighborhood kids in a street fight. However when he wanted to become a professional boxer, she disapproved. She started to put on a pair of boxing gloves and told him "If you want to become a professional fighter, then your first fight will have to be against me". He abandoned the idea of doing boxing professionally from that moment on. Turned down Stanley Holloway's role as Eliza's father in My Fair Lady (1964). At the time of filming of White Heat (1949), Special Effects were not yet using squibs (tiny explosives that simulate the effects of bullets). The producers employed skilled marksmen who used low velocity bullets to break windows or show bullets hitting near the characters. In the factory scene, Cagney was missed by mere inches. He once claimed that problems with Horst Buchholz had convinced him to retire from acting. Along with Rita Hayworth, is mentioned by name in the Tom Waits song "Invitation To The Blues". Often left the set early claiming he was too ill to continue filming in order to ensure an extra day of filming so that the extras and the film crew, whom he thought woefully underpaid, could get an additional day's salary. Two grandchildren, from daughter Kathleen, Verniey Lee and Christina May Thomas. Grandfather of actor James Cagney IV. Great-great uncle of Brian Harrison Mack. "Cagney! The Musical," an original biographical stage work written by Peter Colley and directed by Bill Castellino, had its world premiere in March 2009 at the Florida Stage theatre in Manalapan, Florida. Robert Creighton starred as Cagney, both he and the show received good to excellent reviews and the run soon sold out, setting a record for the theatre.

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