Happy Fourth of July!
[NOTE: This is a slightly-edited repeat of a previous post.]
I saw that film on TV maybe 30 times when I was a child. Loved it, and in particular loved the idea that James Cagney—whom I already knew as a tough old gangster—could dance. His dancing fascinated me because it was so non-balletic and idiosyncratic—the strutting, graceful/ungraceful, artful/artless uniqueness of his movement. In particular I recall the wall-climbing part at the end, which delighted me then and still does now.
Cagney wasn’t just an actor and hoofer, although he certainly was both. He was also a political conservative and changer. Excerpts from his Wiki page:
He was sickly as a young child—so much so that his mother feared he would die before he could be baptized. He later attributed his sickness to the poverty his family had to endure…The red-haired, blue-eyed Cagney graduated from Stuyvesant High School in New York City in 1918, and attended Columbia College of Columbia University where he intended to major in art…
Cagney believed in hard work, later stating, “It was good for me. I feel sorry for the kid who has too cushy a time of it. Suddenly he has to come face-to-face with the realities of life without any mama or papa to do his thinking for him.”
He started tap dancing as a boy (a skill that eventually contributed to his Academy Award) and was nicknamed “Cellar-Door Cagney” after his habit of dancing on slanted cellar doors. He was a good street fighter, defending his older brother Harry, a medical student, when necessary. He engaged in amateur boxing, and was a runner-up for the New York State lightweight title. His coaches encouraged him to turn professional, but his mother would not allow it…
In his autobiography, Cagney said that as a young man, he had no political views, since he was more concerned with where the next meal was coming from. However the emerging labor movement of the twenties and thirties soon forced him to take sides…He supported political activist and labor leader Thomas Mooney’s defense fund, but was repelled by the behavior of some of Mooney’s supporters at a rally. Around the same time, he gave money for a Spanish Republican Army ambulance during the Spanish Civil War, which he put down to being “a soft touch.”…He also became involved in a “liberal group…with a leftist slant,” along with Ronald Reagan. However, when he and Reagan saw the direction the group was heading in, they resigned on the same night…
Cagney was accused of being a communist sympathizer in 1934, and again in 1940. The accusation in 1934 stemmed from a letter police found from a local Communist official that alleged that Cagney would bring other Hollywood stars to meetings. Cagney denied this, and Lincoln Steffens, husband of the letter’s writer, backed up this denial, asserting that the accusation stemmed solely from Cagney’s donation to striking cotton workers in the San Joaquin Valley. William Cagney claimed this donation was the root of the charges in 1940. Cagney was cleared…
After [WWII], Cagney’s politics started to change. He had worked on Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt’s presidential campaigns…However, by the time of the 1948 election, he had become disillusioned with Harry S. Truman, and voted for Thomas E. Dewey, his first non-Democratic vote. By 1980, Cagney was contributing financially to the Republican Party, supporting his friend Ronald Reagan’s bid for the presidency…As he got older, he became more and more conservative, referring to himself in his autobiography as “arch-conservative.” He regarded his move away from liberal politics as “…a totally natural reaction once I began to see undisciplined elements in our country stimulating a breakdown of our system… Those functionless creatures, the hippies … just didn’t appear out of a vacuum.”
Cagney: hoofer, political changer. An original all the way.
Happy Fourth to you all!
Happy Independence day everyone
“His coaches encouraged him to turn professional, but his mother would not allow it…”
Never underestimate the power of an Irish mother.
Fascinating bio material on Cagney.
The last film I saw him in was “Love Me or Leave Me” (1955) with Doris Day. She’s the lead in a semi-true story about Ruth Etting. Cagney got a Best Actor nomination out it, and both actors claim the film as one of their best performances. It was Cagney’s last role as a gangster.
More interesting trivia, for those who are interested.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0048317/trivia/?ref_=tt_trv_trv
Spoiler at the very bottom.
Everyone have a happy, safe and wonderful Independence Day!
Cagney danced that way in Yankee Doodle Dandy (and in Seven Little Foys) because that’s the way George M Cohan danced.
“Everyone have a happy, safe and wonderful Independence Day!”
It’s already ruined: mass shooting at a parade in Highland Park, IL outside of Chicago. Add to that all the people saying they hate the US, and no one should celebrate (looking at you Orlando), the most depressing 4th I’ve ever experienced. We are going down a dark hole, and I don’t see any way out.
Happy Independence Day, if we can regain it!
Oh, good Lord. Why on earth would anyone shoot up a parade in a lakeshore suburb?
It turns out the shooter at the mall in Copenhagen is schizophrenic, and complained his medication doesn’t work.
Try this on for size:
“After 30+ Years, NPR Cancels Declaration of Independence Reading”
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/spencerbrown/2022/07/04/npr-cancels-annual-declaration-of-independence-reading-to-discussequality-n2609721
Cagney was a/the developer of Emerald Bay, a very high class community in southern California just south of NewPort Beach. His brother was a dentist for several people I knew. Office in Culver City.
Happy Independence Day to all Americans! And Liberty lovers throughout the world.
Q: Do they have a July 4th in Canada?
A: …
Cagney also spoke Yiddish fluently, which is a little strange for an Irish boy. But, hey, his Irish neighborhood bordered on Jewish one and he had lots of Yiddish speaking friends in his boyhood.
An example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynpOEcPdjdk
Cagney was the embodiment of the American Dream, hardship being answered with grit and determination, applied to natural ability. For all those feeling despair because of the mass shooting in Chicago – by early accounts a deranged young man with Antifa associations – or because leftists with access to the microphone are broadcasting their hateful Fourth of July messages, well… all I can say is, the country and its freedoms are yours to lose, passively – or keep, as an American.
Happy Fourth everybody!
Tom Grey:
Yes, Canada has a 4th of July; it falls between July 3 and July 5.
Update to physicsguy’s reference to the Highland Park shooting: the Chicago PD arrested the perp about an hour ago. He’s described as an “aspiring rapper”– go figure:
https://nypost.com/2022/07/04/robert-crimo-highland-park-parade-shooting-suspect-in-custody/
The kid has a decidedly unhealthy druggie look about him.
I watch this every month or two. Jimmy Cagney at about 1:54, I believe from Yankee Doodle Dandy. I like how easy he makes it look.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ab9i0s4WEY0
}}} attended Columbia College of Columbia University where he intended to major in art…
He attended College in an era when very few attended college. Not so sure he was all that impoverished, by that light, unless there was something else involved, such as a benefactor or scholarship…
}}} Harry S. Truman
Harry S Truman
No period after the “S”. That’s his actual middle name, “S”. It’s not a contraction.
😀
I recall what was, I believe, his last picture for 20 years**, “One, Two, Three” (1961), in which he plays a Coca Cola executive on a “family trip”, looking to expand company operations in Germany. This gets complicated by his daughter’s involvement with a West German communist-beatnik type.
Light fun, as I recall, particularly enhanced by Cagney’s performance. Family played by Arlene Francis (the wife), daughter played by a very young Pamela Tiffin, and the boyfriend by an exceedingly young looking Horst Bucholz.
Later this month would have been his 122nd birthday.
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He did a couple bits of voicework, then came out of retirement in 1981 for Ragtime, a movie about high society in the 19-00s centered around the Stanford White scandal/murder. That was his last movie except for a TV movie in 1984
Harry S Truman:
then shouldn’t his parents have spelled it “Ess” on his birth certificate?? 🙂