Born on this day in 1899, one of the great leading men of the movies, New York Irishman James Cagney. He did dramas... gangster movies... comedies.... even a couple of costumers like A Midsummer Nights Dream ... but of course in his heart he was always a song-and-dance man, first and foremost. He learned the trade as a dancer on Broadway in his youth, and took Hollywood by storm at the very dawn of the talkies with films like The Public Enemy and Blonde Crazy. Several of his gangster movies are classics for their individuality.. The Roaring Twenties, White Heat, and Angels with Dirty Faces are all brilliant. He made America laugh, generation after generation, with films like Mister Roberts and One, Two, Three (the best political comedy ever made). Wish hed been allowed to do more of these; he was great at comedy... He did some brilliant war movies... my favorite is the one about the intelligence service: 13 Rue Madeleine. Brilliant work. He did a couple of great biopics... Love Me or Leave Me... The Gallant Hours... and Man of a Thousand Faces. (Nobody does a death scene like him; the moment where Lon Chaney, on his deathbed, turns over his makeup kit to his son will make the toughest soul weep). But best of all were the musicals. Something to Sing About. Never Steal Anything Small. The West Point Story. And best of all, the show that forever linked him with the man who owned Broadway, his biography of George M. Cohan, Yankee Doodle Dandy. What an amazing talent. Sad that he so disliked making his last film, the Billy Wilder comedy One, Two, Three, that he retired from the business. But he was happy in retirement, painting and sailing and resting at his little farm in Marthas Vinyard .... with the same wife hed married way back in New York before he famous, with whom he raised two adopted kids.... He died at 86, after a long and happy life, and he lived to see an old pal become president of the United States. A great American story. imdb/name/nm0000010/?ref_=nv_sr_1
Posted on: Thu, 17 Jul 2014 11:38:41 +0000
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