Poster for the film Footlight Parade

Dates: 1899-1986
Birth Date: Jul 17, 1899
Death Date: Mar 30, 1986

Place of Birth: New York City
Place of Death: Stanford, NY

James Cagney, actor, soft shoe and tap dancer who ensured that the song-and-dance styles of vaudeville and the popular stage would help sustain an Irish-American presence in the entertainment industry, was born James Francis Cagney, Jr. His father, a dark-haired Irish American, was a bartender and amateur boxer; his mother, Carolyn Nelson, was the red-headed daughter of a Norwegian boat captain. He was raised in Manhattan's Upper East side, where he had the reputation as a street fighter. After graduating from Stuyvesant High School for academically-gifted boys in 1917, he attended Columbia University for six months but dropped out to go to work after his father died. His first role in the theatre was that of a chorus girl, in the all-male Every Sailor, at Keith's Eighty-First Street Theatre. For the part he had to learn to tap dance, and from that time on he considered himself a song-and-dance man. His next part was in the Broadway show Pitter Patter (1920), where he met chorus girl Willard (Billie) Vernon; they married and in their early years toured the vaudeville circuit.

His first break into motion pictures came when Al Jolson recommended him for a role in the talkie Sinner's Holiday (Warner Brothers, 1930), which Cagney had acted on the Broadway stage. He signed with Warner Brothers, where he remained under contract until the early 1940s. His first successful role was that of Tom Powers in The Public Enemy (1931), after which he continued to make a series of gangster films. Playing a rough and tumble sailor in Here Comes the Navy (1934), and a bad guy sent to the electric chair for murdering a man, in Angels with Dirty Faces (1938), he built a screen image of the menacing urban Irishman. While that stereotype had frightened and repulsed America for nearly a century, Cagney played it while exuding magnetism and charm. He also made films that portrayed the Irish experience in America, such as The Irish in Us (1935), a comedic tribute to the Irish in New York City, which centered around members of the O'Hara family -- Frank the cop (played by Pat O'Brien), Mike the fireman (Frank McHugh), Danny the boxing promoter (Cagney), and Ma (Mary Gordon).

Cagney found his soul-mate while playing George M. Cohan in Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942), the musical film tribute to the Broadway song-and-dance man whose career spanned fifty-five years on the stage, the writing of more than 35 plays and 500 songs. The film, which premiered in 1942, became a wartime salute to patriotism. Breaking out of his Irish tough-guy image to display an astonishing versatility, Cagney captured Cohan's inimitable flair and strutting style, especially in "Harrigan," "Grand Old Flag," and "Yankee Doodle Dandy." Cagney's dance routines were taught to him by the Irish-American vaudevillian Johnny Boyle-- respected among his peers and regarded as one of the greatest of Irish-American tap dancers.

Cagney's performance eventually claimed victory for all the Irish in America, as it won him won an Academy Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role. Fusing elements of the Irish ruffian with the American patriot, it was Cagney who solidified the image of George M. Cohan in the popular imagination, placing him in the pantheon of American folk heroes. "Cohan set the style for the American song-and-dance man-- a tough, cheeky, Irish style," the tap dancer Gene Kelly reflected. "He influenced a whole breed of Irish-American actors, including James Cagney, Spencer Tracy, and Pat O'Brien-- and when Cagney did George M. Cohan in Yankee Doodle Dandy he was an improvement on the original." Tap dancer Gene Nelson, who worked with Cagney in West Point Story (1950), said of him: "He loved dancing . . . By nature he was an eccentric dancer, that is, he was a hoofer who invented funny little bits of business for himself. All of it was an extension of his stance and his walk and his body mannerisms. There was nobody else like him-- and we loved him."

In 1955, Cagney reprised the role of George M. Cohan in The Seven Little Foys, a musical film biography of renowned Irish-American vaudevillian Eddie Foy and his seven dancing children (Foy had headlined the Palace Theatre in 1918 with his act, the "Seven Younger Foys.") The film, choreographed by Nick Castle, starred Bob Hope as Eddie Foy and Cagney as George M. Cohan. They appeared in one scene in which the vaudeville hoofer (Foy) challenged the Broadway hoofer (Cohan) to a quintessential battle of Irish wit and feet at the annual Friar's Club dinner. Though Cagney would continue to focus on serious acting roles, his role as George M. Cohan remains a classic portrayal of an Irish-American hoofer.

[Sources: Constance Valis Hill, Tap Dancing America, A Cultural History (2010)]