HAPPY BIRTHDAY JAMES FRANCIS CAGNEY (July 17, 1899 – March 30, 1986)

In his last interview, conducted by journalist Gregory Speck only a few months before he passed away, Cagney pondered his lasting tough guy image. “I don’t understand why the public never tired of those awful hoodlums,” he said. In reality, it wasn’t the hoodlum they relished. It was the image, the looks, the pugnacity, the dynamism, the bond, the honesty – sometimes brutally intense, sometimes dramatically tragic – always felt from the nearest orchestra seat to the farthest standing-room-only back wall in the movie house. It was the revelation of a man who was more than the sum of his parts on the screen; was the sincere, inherent goodness of a human being who lived his life willingly accountable for the benefit of others.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY JAMES FRANCIS CAGNEY (July 17, 1899 – March 30, 1986)

A friend wrote this to me a bit ago about the far away fella business: “Yes, I’d say Pat gave you the right designation. You’re a far away fella in any number of ways. As a kid you used to look at other people and say to yourself, ‘I wonder what it would be to be like them?,’ and so you grew up to be a man with the gift of wonder, which allows you to observe people and places analytically. You became a man out of the common run of activity who loves the solitude and the elements—a non city man from the city. You’re a man with the reputation of being a semi-recluse when actually—and here’s the drama of the thing—you’re more involved with living than the vast majority of the churning bowels of the city. In these ways and more, you were born and you will die a far away fella.” If the foregoing is true, and I’d like to think it is, it has come about through things I had very little to do with. My parents were a gift, and so was my family; I was lucky enough to marry the girl I did, and have the children I did; my good friends came to me unbidden; my job was one I enjoyed; and I’ve lived my life trying to be true to all these.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY JAMES FRANCIS CAGNEY (July 17, 1899 – March 30, 1986)

Cagney’s physicality was also enticing. Like the river, he was always in motion. His face, his hands – his whole body took on the part he was playing, like a man possessed by the muse; and when he danced, it was to a cadence born as much of “…the beauty of the rhythm within him” (as Blondell described it), as it was of the music that accompanied his steps.