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Summary
Summary
John McCabe's participation in the writing of James Cagney's autobiography, the many years of friendship that followed, and an intense period of interview and discussion in preparation for a musical comedy based on Cagney's life--a show that never saw the light of day--make him Cagney's ideal biographer. And, indeed, he has written a searching chronicle of this major actor's life and career, packed with history and anecdote, and profusely illustrated. Cagney came from a poor Irish-American New York family but once he found his métier as an actor, it was not long before he was recognized as a brilliantly energetic and powerful phenomenon. After the tremendous impact ofPublic Enemy--in which he notoriously pushed half a grapefruit into Mae Clarke's face--he was typecast as a gangster because of the terrifying violence that seemed to be pent up within him. Years of pitched battle with Warner Brothers finally liberated him from those roles, and he went on to star in such triumphs as the musicalsYankee Doodle Dandy(winning the 1942 Oscar for best actor) andLove Me or Leave Me.Even so, one of his greatest later roles involved a return to crime--as the psychopathic killer in the terrifying White Heat. He retired from films in 1961 after making Billy Wilder'sOne, Two, Three,only to return twenty years later forRagtime. But however much Cagney personified violence and explosive energy on the screen, in life he was a quiet, introspective, and deeply private man, a poet, painter, and environmentalist, whose marriage to his early vaudeville partner was famously loyal and happy. His story is one of the few Hollywood biographies that reflect a fulfilled life as well as a spectacular career.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
In 1974, McCabe was hired by Doubleday to ghostwrite movie legend James Cagney's autobiography, Cagney by Cagney. The hours of taped conversation and McCabe's subsequent friendship with Cagney, which lasted until the actor's death in 1984, are the heart of this affectionate biography of one of the cinema's most iconic performers. In excerpts from the biography and previously unpublished portions of the tapes, Cagney comes across as an intelligent, charming raconteur, talking in detail about his tough but joyful childhood in the streets of New York, his ferocious devotion to his family and to his wife of 62 years, his love of nature and country living. Best of all are the stories by Cagney and others of his life in show business, from the street kid to the song-and-dance man to the movies' most famous gangster in Public Enemy and White Heat. This is not really a full-scale biographyMcCabe's readings of the films are perfunctory, and there's a tad too much uncritical star-gazingbut the accounts of Cagney's battles with Jack Warner over billing and money, the stories of his lifetime friendships with Spencer Tracy and Pat O'Brien and Cagney's no-nonsense, "just do it" pronouncements on the craft of acting are worth the price of the book. Fans of Cagneyand who isn't one?will find this to be a vivid, readable portrait of one of the movie's most charismatic stars and most entertaining storytellers. The book is illustrated with more than 100 production stills, and includes an extensive listing of Cagney's stage, film and TV appearances. (Dec.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
"Made it, Ma! Top of the world!" Those were the last words of Cagney character Cody Jarrett as he stood atop an oil tank, firing bullets into it. To watch Cody Jarrett in White Heat is to never forget the actor James Cagney. What McCabe has done with his book is to bring back vividly those old, golden images; he has written a reverent and good book, if not an especially creative one. But then the material is so innately dramatic and so reflective of Cagney's filmic persona: he was born in extreme poverty but was part of a tightly knit Irish family with a mother, Carrie, who held them all together with lots of love and a healthy dose of integrity, and a dear, gentle, alcoholic father, James Francis, who could make them all laugh with his wonderful stories; he was a tough New York kid who belonged to a gang, as did the other kids in Yorkville, but was a loner as well who fought for the gang when "bullies" threatened it (Carrie taught him to box); he had friends who fell into crime because of poverty, and paid for it; and in his later years, he wrote poetry, which reminds one of the poetic aspects of each vicious Cagney character who never failed to get the viewer on his side--lawmen be damned. McCabe, once a professional actor himself, compiles the stories of Cagney's life, so that one can see the bits of "business" that Cagney worked into his acting. In writing about the early years, he discusses the fits James Francis would lapse into after the alcohol had damaged his brain, describing the "keening" sound that rose out of him as the pain swept through his head. The description can light up a reader's memory with flashbacks of the prison scene in White Heat and that sound of Cody losing it on learning of his mother's death, well before the film itself is discussed. It's a book to get caught up in and hung up on. And, yes, there's stuff about the song-and-dance Cagney. --Bonnie Smothers
Kirkus Review
McCabe is uniquely well qualified to write a Cagney biography: Not only was he the ghost on Cagney's autobiography, but he also was the authorized biographer of George M. Cohan (1973), whom Cagney famously portrayed in Yankee Doodle Dandy. McCabe draws heavily on his lengthy taped interviews with Cagney, with the result that this volume feels a bit like an extension of the actor's autobiography. Indeed, them are no major revelations hem. Rather, this is a briskly written retelling of a somewhat familiar story--albeit a richer retelling than previous ones, thanks to the added texture that comes from Cagney's voice. Cagney grew up in relative poverty in New York City, the son of an alcoholic barman and a tough, no-nonsense mother (who taught her sons how to box). Some of the best moments in the book come in recounting Cagney's happy, hardscrabble youth. A compulsively modest and private man, he seems to have been ill-suited for the public life of a movie star; he took up acting because it paid well. He seldom attends Hollywood parties, spending most of his spare time reading and, later, painting and farming (his tree ambition had always been to be a farmer). He brought a fiery intelligence to his acting, and McCabe, an ex-actor himself, has some nicely judged analyses of his subject's earlier work, concentrating on technique with an acuity that one seldom finds in star biographies. Regrettably, as the book goes on, McCabe offers fewer of these insights. One also wishes for more in-depth research on a wide range of matters, from the daily routine of the Warner Bros. film factory to the background of Cagney's family, from his legal wrangles with the studio to his political evolution from quasi-socialist to conservative Republican. The definitive Cagney biography has yet to be written, but this is a workmanlike and eminently readable effort. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
McCabe certainly has the qualifications to write this biography of the film star: as the ghostwriter of Jimmy Cagney's autobiography Cagney by Cagney (1974. o.p.), he became a close personal friend, which led him to do extensive research for an unproduced musical life of Cagney. McCabe sees his friend as an extraordinarily talented man who is also basically a decent human being, not only a gifted actor but also a poet, painter, and environmentalist. The author traces Cagney's life from his poor beginnings with an alcoholic father but fiercely determined mother through his unexpected drift into vaudeville and the theater to his slow but inevitable rise to film stardom. He discusses Cagney's endless fights with Jack Warner and repeated attempts to break free of his film image as a gangster. Readers tired of the "warts and all" school of biography will enjoy this admiring portrayal. For public libraries. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 8/97.]Marianne Cawley, Charleston Cty. Lib., S.C. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Excerpts
Excerpts
Excerpt from Chapter 1: We were poor, but didn't know it, I guess, because everybody else around us was poor. Out on the street we soon discovered there was a power hierarchy, however, and that was kind of like being rich--when and if you were handy with your dukes, and could hold your own in a fight. I saw that right away, and I used to watch the tough kids, the leaders, the ones who knew how to fight. I didn't admire them because mostly they were bullies, but I did admire the way they handled themselves, facing guys way bigger than themselves. Later I could figure out just how they did it. It was in that simple word made out of two other simple words, "foot" and "work." Footwork. Benny Leonard, Lou Buto, Packy McFarland--fighters I saw and admired, and all the epitome of grace. That is what got me into dancing. I learned how to dance from learning how to fight. It was feint, duck, quick dance around your opponent on your toes mostly, then shoot out the arm like a bullet. One of the neighborhood tough guys, Moishe, indirectly stimulated Jim to fight--and dance. Moishe had a rhythm to his punches. He never flailed, as so many of the street scrappers did. He held up his fists in defensive arc and rushed in only when he saw an opening. He was adept at seeing the instant when his opponents dropped their guard, and when this occurred, he darted his fist in quickly to the target, then out again just as quickly, standing on tiptoe most of the time. As a seven-year-old Jim began to sense the benefits of standing on his toes either to reach up or to reach in. Darting became second nature to him, and it was to become a key characteristic of his acting. The dance steps of his maturity grow directly from these habits. As bonus, Jim and the other Cagney boys rejoiced in the greatest fight instructor in their neighborhood: Carrie. This very wise woman, painfully aware that two of her four sons, Harry and Edward, were timid, was determined to give little Jim, the runt of the family, the advantage his small size would not allow. She taught him and the others, despite reluctance on the part of Harry and Edward, the fundamentals of boxing. As a girl she had gone to amateur prizefights with a male cousin keen on the game, and she quickly learned that sluggers always got the bad end of the stick, whereas boxers at least knew how to escape punishment. More, she saw that boxers, those skilled in use of their feet and quick arm thrust, always won. Carrie got her boys together two afternoons a week and instructed them. She saw that Jim, who had learned the basics of fighting well from Moishe, was her prize pupil. She scheduled regular bouts between her boys in their living room. When they occasionally erupted into anger, she separated them and held the opponents firmly against her sides, a process she called "leaning on yuh." The boys learned to avoid this because the leaning was uncomfortable, Carrie being big of heft and strong of arm. James Senior loved these sessions and acted as a one-man audience, cheering both fighters and booing whenever he saw unfair advantage taken. He roughhoused lovingly with all his boys and was fond of pretending anger by holding a lad by the neck with one hand, curling the other into a fist, snarling exaggeratedly, "If I thought you meant that--," grazing the chin with the fist. "Simple little thing," said Jim. "Yet so goddamned funny, the way he did it. You'd think--there we were, poor as church mice--you'd think there'd be gloom all over the place. We had our bad moments, sure, when Pop got his fits. But all I mainly remember about the Cagneys in those days was laughter. Songs and laughter." Despite their mother's expert instruction, Eddie, five years younger than Jim, and Harry, the oldest boy, were gentle souls and soon grew to depend on their brother for protection from neighborhood gangs. Generally one had little to fear from tough guys if one learned to walk quickly from home to destination and back. But Jim, deeply partaking of his mother's indomitable nature, refused that kind of protection. He never sought conflict but never avoided it. Fighting was simply the neighborhood occupation. Every kid on the block was identified by a nickname. Jim was distinguished in that he had three: Red, his hair color, and two pejoratives that always enraged him when he heard them, Runt and Short Shit. The latter particularly angered him, and the block bullies learned this soon and used it as their prime taunt. There were two other neighborhood preoccupations, baseball and swimming. The latter was a chancy business, but it became habitual. When they lived on Seventy-ninth Street, Cagney said: We were only a short distance from the East River--which incidentally is not a river at all but a tidal estuary--and in good weather we went there to swim. It was, quite simply, a cesspool, and I suspect it's not much better today. I say cesspool because a large sewer close to our street poured its contents right into the river. And we swam cheerfully right in the midst of all that sewage. Merry turds bobbing by. You just ignored them and kept your mouth shut. We must have been pretty tough because we survived those daily immersions. Except one kid. Phil Dooley. The foulness of the river got to him, and he died of typhoid. Where we used to dive in is now a little park with benches, close to the FDR Drive, built right over where we used to do our daily diving. That little park plus some huge apartment buildings are there today where we used to cavort about so happily. Excerpted from Cagney by John McCabe All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
