James Cagney: “Most American of actors” with an Irish-Catholic heart

James Cagney was “that most American of actors (who) somehow communicated eloquently to audiences all over the world,” said Charlton Heston, in conferring on him the AFI Life Achievement Award, the second legend, after John Ford, to be so honored. Cagney’s 65 films, as of March 13, 1974, were all housed in the Library of Congress’ AFI Collection.

None of it was inevitable or easy.

James Francis Cagney, born on July 17, 1899, barely survived past the crib, then grew up on the tough streets of New York City alongside his three brothers. Their father, James F. Cagney, Sr., athletic and warm-hearted, always ready with a story, was an unsteady breadwinner, who became an alcoholic. So, the boys needed to work odd jobs to fill up the “kitty” jar to supplement their father’s income, which he often siphoned off to bet on horses.

Known as a two-for-one bartender because he drank two shots of whiskey for each shot served, by day’s end Cagney’s father had usually consumed some 60 shots, each one mixed with a gill of beer. His overindulgence was triggered, Cagney wrote, to buffer the pain he suffered after an unruly customer knocked out 21 of his teeth. After imbibing so much, he would sometimes let out a gradually rising keening sound. Then his beautiful wife Carrie would begin massaging his neck and forehead as young Cagney watched “Dad’s fits” with a mixture of compassion and fear.

Cagney, with his father’s talent for the great American pastime, dreamed of playing professional baseball or becoming a boxer, since he knew how to wallop street ruffians. But Carrie, a devout Catholic who believed in the power of education, would hear none of it.

Jimmy also showed a penchant for the arts — as a kid, dancing on slanted cellar doors, earning him the nickname “Cellar Door Cagney,” and sketching on the sidewalks. He also fell in love with the country and farming at his aunt and uncle’s rural estate. Taking a page from the patron saint he revered, he loved horses.

Yet Carrie kept him on the educational path and in the fall of 1918, after graduating from Stuyvesant High School, he matriculated at Columbia College. 

The budding artist was drawn to The Student Army Training Corps and its camouflage unit and, in one fell swoop, became an art-student, serviceman and collegian – plus a drummer in the band. Oral reading was his one non-art class. Naturally, he read at a furious pace, which prompted his teacher, like his directors later on, to urge him to slow down. But James Cagney was in a hurry. And, though he could not have known it, his days at Columbia were numbered.

Earlier that year — on March 11, 1918 — a mysterious illness began infecting soldiers at Fort Riley. Of 500 infected, 45 died. The deadly epidemic, H1N1 influenza, was soon ripping through America, killing some 600,000. The cruel peak was reached in October when roughly 195,000 Americans, some 15,000 New Yorkers alone, died.

On October 10, 1918, James Cagney Sr. succumbed, too. As he lay dying over two days, the priest failed to show up to administer the last rites. Nor did he show up at the funeral home to conduct the prayer service for which Jimmy had given the priest “several precious dollars.”

Corpses were stacked up one on top of another in makeshift morgues during this deadliest month in American history. Given this context, the priest’s failure to show up is perhaps understandable. But excuses were of little consolation. It was Jimmy’s father.

The pathos was overwhelming.  He could forgive his father’s inadequacies and, as the dutiful son, stepped in to handle all the funeral arrangements for his pregnant mother.  He could not, however, forgive the priest’s “no-show.” And, in what seems a clear case of “invincible ignorance,” he stopped going to church from that day forward except for christenings, weddings and funerals.

In the wake of his father’s swift and tragic death, Jimmy left Columbia and took a job at Wanamaker’s Department Store while looking for other more lucrative work in the theater.  With his brother in medical school, and his grief-stricken mother about to give birth, Jimmy realized he was the prime breadwinner. He soon landed work, but it was tough going.

In 1921, Variety panned Cagney’s new act, in which he replaced the performer Archie Leach (later known as Cary Grant). “Two boys and a girl with a skit idea that gets nowhere,” they sniffed. Though conceding Cagney could dance, they urged him to stick to the “small time.” He did not blink. It was not the first time that the red-haired “hoofer” with piercingly smart blue eyes (signaling both kindliness and mischief) would be underestimated.

Of course, in the end James Cagney was fabulously successful, with not a few bumps in the road, the story of which is told in Oasis of Faith: The Souls Behind the Billboard, excerpted herein, and just published in honor of the 125th anniversary of Cagney’s birth.

Toward the end of his life, in the fall of 1983, he asked his limousine driver to detour up to 135 East 96th Street. His wife “Billie,” a Protestant from Iowa, could not imagine where he was taking them. When they arrived, he said, “That’s St. Francis de Sales, where I made my first communion.” (The episode is recounted in the book Cagney, by John McCabe.)

James Cagney died on Easter Sunday 1986. After the hour-long service at St. Francis de Sales, John Cardinal William O’Connor leaned over and offered his apology to Cagney’s widow for the priest who had not shown up for his father so many years earlier. She was surprised he even knew about the incident. “It wounded him very deeply. That wound has been there through the years,” O’Connor said. Now that wound was being salved by the Divine doctor, eternally.

Mary Claire Kendall’s latest book, Oasis of Faith: The Souls Behind the Billboard, has just been published.