page_title: James Cagney
section_title: 1930–1935: Warner Bros.
hierarchical_section_title: James Cagney / Career / 1930–1935: Warner Bros.
caption_attribution_description: screenshot of James Cagney from the film G Men
context_page_description: James Francis Cagney Jr. was an American actor and dancer on stage and in film. Known for his consistently energetic performances, distinctive vocal style, and deadpan comic timing, he won acclaim and major awards for a wide variety of performances. He is remembered for playing multifaceted tough guys in films such as The Public Enemy, Taxi!, Angels with Dirty Faces, The Roaring Twenties and White Heat, finding himself typecast or limited by this reputation earlier in his career. He was able to negotiate dancing opportunities in his films and ended up winning the Academy Award for his role in the musical Yankee Doodle Dandy. In 1999 the American Film Institute ranked him eighth among its list of greatest male stars of the Golden Age of Hollywood. Orson Welles described Cagney as "maybe the greatest actor who ever appeared in front of a camera".
  In his first professional acting performance in 1919, Cagney was costumed as a woman when he danced in the chorus line of the revue Every Sailor. He spent several years in vaudeville as a dancer and comedian, until he got his first major acting part in 1925.
context_section_description: Playing opposite Cagney in Maggie the Magnificent was Joan Blondell, who starred again with him a few months later in Marie Baumer's new play, Penny Arcade. While the critics panned Penny Arcade, they praised Cagney and Blondell. Al Jolson, sensing film potential, bought the rights for $20,000. He then sold the play to Warner Bros., with the stipulation that they cast Cagney and Blondell in the film version. Retitled Sinners' Holiday, the film was released in 1930. It starred Grant Withers and Evalyn Knapp. Joan Blondell recalled that when they were casting the film studio head Jack Warner believed that she and Cagney had no future and that Withers and Knapp were destined for stardom.  Cagney was given a $500-a-week, three-week contract with Warner Bros.
  In the film, he portrayed Harry Delano, a tough guy who becomes a killer but generates sympathy because of his unfortunate upbringing. This role of the sympathetic "bad" guy was to become a recurring character type for Cagney throughout his career. During filming of Sinners' Holiday, he also demonstrated the stubbornness that characterized his attitude toward the work. He later recalled an argument he had with director John Adolfi about a line: "There was a line in the show where I was supposed to be crying on my mother's breast... [The line] was 'I'm your baby, ain't I?' I refused to say it. Adolfi said 'I'm going to tell Zanuck.' I said 'I don't give a shit what you tell him, I'm not going to say that line.'" They took the line out.
  Despite this outburst, the studio liked him, and before his three-week contract was up—while the film was still shooting—they gave Cagney a three-week extension, which was followed by a full seven-year contract at $400 a week. However, the contract allowed Warners to drop him at the end of any 40-week period, effectively guaranteeing him only 40 weeks’ income at a time. As he did when he was growing up, Cagney shared his income with his family. Cagney received good reviews and immediately starred in another gangster role in The Doorway to Hell. The film was a financial hit and helped to cement Cagney's growing reputation. He made four more movies before his breakthrough role.
  Warner Brothers' succession of gangster movie hits, in particular Little Caesar with Edward G. Robinson, culminated in the 1931 film The Public Enemy. Due to the strong reviews he had received in his short film career, Cagney was cast as nice-guy Matt Doyle, opposite Edward Woods as Tom Powers. However, after the initial rushes, the actors switched roles. Years later, Joan Blondell recalled that a few days into the filming, Director William Wellman turned to Cagney and said “Now you’re the lead, kid!” “Jimmy’s charisma was so outstanding,” she added.    The film cost only $151,000 to make, but it became one of the first low-budget films to gross $1 million.
  Cagney received widespread praise for his performance. The New York Herald Tribune described his interpretation as "...the most ruthless, unsentimental appraisal of the meanness of a petty killer the cinema has yet devised." He received top billing after the film, but while he acknowledged the importance of the role to his career, he always disputed the suggestion that it changed the way heroes and leading men were portrayed: He cited Clark Gable's slapping of Barbara Stanwyck six months earlier (in Night Nurse) as more important. Night Nurse was actually released three months after The Public Enemy. Gable punched Stanwyck’s character in the film, knocking the nurse unconscious.
  Many critics view the scene in which Cagney pushes half a grapefruit into Mae Clarke's face as one of the most famous moments in movie history. The scene itself was a late addition, and the origin of the idea is a matter of debate. Producer Darryl Zanuck claimed he thought of it in a script conference; Wellman said the idea came to him when he saw the grapefruit on the table during the shoot; and writers Glasmon and Bright claimed it was based on the real life of gangster Hymie Weiss, who threw an omelette into his girlfriend's face. Joan Bl
caption: Along with George Raft, Edward G. Robinson, and Humphrey Bogart, all of whom were Warner Bros. actors, Cagney defined what a movie gangster was. In G Men (1935), however, he played a lawyer who joins the FBI.
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