James Cagney’s Legacy in Film

James Cagney was born to play the tough guy role. He was a red-haired Irish kid with a voice that was distinctive and unmistakable. He was usually cast as a mobster, a street-wise young tough. Maybe it was typecasting, but from the moment he appeared on screen you believed him. He just fit.

In most classic films you will find little moral messages mixed in with the story. It's like they couldn't help themselves-- they couldn't just tell the story of a slick, violent mobster, they still had to throw in a subliminal message that crime doesn't pay, and old fashioned values are still the best. Isn't that sweet?

Sometimes I think the moralist subtext was just to satisfy the censors and the press, so there wouldn't be a public uproar about the crime movies Hollywood was putting out. Take for instance Cagney's first crime film, The Public Enemy. Though the moralist subtext was there, the appeal of Cagney’s anti-hero was undeniable. That may be why Warner Brothers felt the need to place a disclaimer at the beginning of the film, which says, in part: "It is the ambition of the authors of 'The Public Enemy' to honestly depict an environment that exists today in a certain strata of American life, rather than glorify the hoodlum or the criminal." Yeah, right. This was the prohibition era. People loved those anti-establishment protagonists.

Even so, a few scenes were included that assured the audience that Cagney's character really was a bad guy. For instance, the scene, in which Tommy shows how to treat a lady by smashing a grapefruit in Mae Clarke’s face. No doubt such horrible table manners were shocking at the time. The producers seemed to be trying to make Tommy a less sympathetic character. I'm not sure it worked. His outrageous behavior just cemented his bad boy appeal.

What you notice about The Public Enemy is how sophisticated it is in some parts, and how incredibly unsophisticated it is in other parts. Jean Harlow is thrown in almost as an afterthought. In a modern movie, her part would have been padded. In one scene, the writing is particularly bad. Harlow describes how she feels about ol' Cagney, and it is perhaps the most unnatural dialogue you can imagine. "You are different. Very different. And I've discovered it's not only a difference in manner and outward appearances. It's a difference in basic character." WHAT?? Who talks like that? Here's what must have happened: the writer scribbled down what he wanted to convey in the scene. He couldn't think of any good dialogue to get it across, so he just put quotes around the whole thing and made Jean Harlow say it. It is ham-fisted and unnatural.

There are other subtle moral clues. Like, despite the fact that Cagney is obviously the tough kid, the wimpy older brother always gets the best of him when they fight. Respect your elders, kids. And of course, the bad guys must pay in the end. When Tommy goes after a rival gang, he discovers that he “ain’t so tough!”

Oh, but that is not the end of Tom Powers. The writers have a more shocking demise planned for him.

The Public Enemy was good, but the first Cagney movie I ever saw was City for Conquest, in which Cagney plays a much more sympathetic character. It's set in the depression, and the version I saw was so grainy that I thought it must have been one of his earliest films. It wasn't. It was made in 1940, nine years after Public Enemy.

In this film, Cagney is Danny Kenny, an amateur boxer also known as “Young Samson.” He turns down a pro career because he doesn't want to end up like the old, addle-minded former boxer that works in his gym. He also has a brother, a musician, whom he idolizes. When he finds out that his brother is considering quitting music school, Cagney decides to fight for money.

Danny becomes a big name as a boxer, and he's making out pretty well with his sweetheart, Peg. However, Peg is ambitious, and puts her career above love (another moralist message). Danny goes for a shot at the title, but his cheating opponent leaves him permanently blinded.

City for Conquest is a sad movie, in that we see Danny Kenny, a good, decent guy, rise to fame and fortune, and then lose everything. He ends up selling newspapers on the street, but he still believes in the talent of his brother. When the brother finally makes it big, and has his symphony is played by a big orchestra to a sellout crowd, a blind Danny listens on the radio from his newsstand. If the climax of the movie doesn't make you cry, you're a big jerk.

Following in Cagney's chain of mobster movies was Angels with Dirty Faces. It was made in 1938, a couple years before City for Conquest. This is a depression-era film, and it reflects a different attitude from the late 20s/early 30s. A new kind of hero was emerging in film, which culminated in Humphrey Bogart's hard-boiled characters. Values changed. Now, people favored heroes that were tough, unsentimental, streetwise, clever, maybe a little underhanded, but with a heart of gold. You might say they liked their heroes crusty on the outside, and soft on the inside.

In Angels with Dirty Faces, Cagney plays Rocky Sullivan, a young hoodlum who spends 15 years in prison. When he gets out, he re-connects with his old chums. One of his friends, played by Humphrey Bogart, works for a mobster at a nightclub. Rocky is expecting to be cut in on the action, but Bogart has other ideas. Another of Rocky's friends (Jerry, played by Pat O’Brien) has become a priest in charge of a facility for wayward boys. Rocky takes a gang of boys under his wing and instructs them in the ways of petty thievery.

There are a ton of great scenes in the movie, but the most important scene is one that was cut out of the original version. Rocky is on death row. He isn't scared. He's been fighting the system his whole life, and he's not going to give The Man the satisfaction of seeing fear on his face. But Jerry visits Rocky just before his execution, hoping to convince him to do something that will show the boys that crime doesn't pay. The boys idolize Rocky, and they're getting the idea that it's OK to end up in the electric chair. Jerry believes that if Rocky is truly fearful and remorseful, the boys will be shocked into conformity.

This scene is amazingly powerful. It cuts through Rocky Sullivan’s crusty exterior and gets right to the heart of gold.

Morally, it comes from a belief that fear of punishment is what keeps people from doing bad things. Rocky Sullivan's life disproves that—he been punished since he was a boy, but he never turned away from a life of crime. Even so, the film still wants to use the same logic to save the hoodlum boys. If only they can be made to fear punishment, they will mend their ways.

Jumping ahead a few years, we still find Cagney playing streetwise gangsters in White Heat. This is probably his most famous film. Here, Cagney takes his mobster (Cody Jarrett) a step further, giving him a psychosis that makes him irrational and unpredictable, with an unnatural attachment to his mother. A degree of suspense is added when an undercover cop is thrown into the mix. We know what Cody would do to if he finds out there is a cop in his gang. We’re on the edge of our seats as the cop barely evades detection, and gains Cody’s confidence.

Some things didn't change much between 1931 and 1949. The bad guy still loses in the end. People feel better when the lose ends are tied up. Cody Jarrett get’s his final, defiant scene, where he reaches the “top ‘o the world,” and destroys himself.

The last Cagney movie I will include in this survey is a later one, and it is completely different from the earlier films. It has nothing to do with the mob, crime, or streetwise tough guys. In Billy Wilder's fast-paced comedy One, Two, Three, Cagney plays my father-in-law.

*Ahem*, sorry.

He plays a Coca Cola executive in West Germany during the Cold War. He represents everything that is red, white and blue. His boss orders him to keep track of his ditzy southern daughter during her visit to Germany. The girl is too slick for him, though. She gets free and manages to marry a communist from East Germany. Panic and hilarity ensue when Cagney’s boss flies out to Germany to see his sweet, innocent little girl. Cagney has only a few hours to turn an unwilling communist boy into a son-in-law that his boss will be proud of.

The final scene was my favorite. Coca Cola is a major feature of the movie. It is the symbol of America. Cagney's family is sick of Germany, though, so they mutiny. They decide to return to the states without him. Just before they depart, Cagney learns that he is being promoted to the head of bottle caps in Atlanta, so he can return home with his family. When he delivers this good news to them, he offers to buy them a Coke from the nearby machine. After he plugs his money in he discovers... gasp! It's a Pepsi!

I love that scene! The look on his face is worth sitting through the entire movie. Pepsi's revenge!!!

I haven't seen one of Cagney's most famous films, Yankee Doodle Dandy. I'm not sure if I can picture him as a song-and-dance man. It's not really fair, of course. He didn't only do tough guy roles. He had talent. I'll have to give his musicals a chance. All the same, the image of James Cagney that I'll carry with me is from City for Conquest.

© 2008 Bryan Lower

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