May 7, 2022
4 min read
James Cagney: The Pugnacious Movie Star
James Cagney was a force of nature. Quiet and introspective, once the camera rolled he exploded like an untethered pit bull. He spoke in a rat-a-tat machine-gun cadence with deadpan comic timing and ruthless wit. Orson Welles called him “the greatest actor to ever appear in front of a camera.”
He was born in 1899 on New York’s Lower East Side. His father was an Irish bartender, his mother a…
