James Cagney 10x8 signed photograph
Product Reference: C24
10x8 Smiling signed & inscribed portrait
signed in fountain pen ink
Date of Birth
17 July 1899, New York City, New York, USA
Date of Death
30 March 1986, Stanfordville, New York, USA
One of Hollywood's pre-eminent male stars of all time (eclipsed, perhaps, only by "King" Clark Gable and arguably by Gary Cooper or Spencer Tracy), and the cinema's quintessential "tough guy", James Cagney was also an accomplished--if rather stiff--hoofer and easily played light comedy. Ending three decades on the screen, he retired to his farm in Stanfordville, New York (some 77 miles/124 km. north of his New York City birthplace), after starring in Billy Wilder's One, Two, Three (1961). He emerged from retirement to star in the 1981 screen adaptation of E.L. Doctorow's novel "Ragtime" (Ragtime (1981)), in which he was reunited with his frequent co-star of the 1930s, Pat O'Brien, and which was his last theatrical film and O'Brien's as well).b Cagney's final performance came in the title role of the made-for-TV movie Terrible Joe Moran (1984) (TV), in which he played opposite Art Carney. To protest the quality of scripts he was given at Warner Brothers, instead of violating his contract by refusing to appear in a picture he reputedly used his appearance to get even. In Jimmy the Gent (1934) he got an ugly crew-cut to make himself look like the hoodlum Warners wanted him to play. In movies like He Was Her Man (1934) he grew a thin mustache to upset thin-mustachioed studio boss Jack L. Warner.Encouraged by his mother to take up boxing as a hobby. She thought it was a necessary skill to have, especially in the rough Eastside section of New York City where he grew up. She would often show up and watch him take on neighborhood kids in a street fight. However when he wanted to become a professional boxer, she disapproved. She started to put on a pair of boxing gloves and told him "If you want to become a professional fighter, then your first fight will have to be against me". He abandoned the idea of doing boxing professionally from that moment on.
