Here are 10 things you should know about James Cagney, born 121 years ago today. He was a silver-screen tough guy whom actress Gloria Stuart once described as “an intellectual…very reserved….He wasn’t the gangster type or anything like that.”
Tag: Yiddish
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Cagney Speaks Yiddish!
In this scene from Taxi (1932), birthday boy James Cagney helps a confused cop (Robert Emmett O’Connor) deal with an agitated Jewish man speaking Yiddish.
Jimmy from the Block
After a hectic day, we’re under the wire by less than two hours in wishing James Cagney a happy birthday.
Had he managed to stick it out a little longer, Cagney, perhaps the quintessential New Yorker, would have been 113 years old today.
Cagney was a delight from the start of his career to the finish, but we especially love his performances in the snappy Warner Brothers programmers of the early 1930s.
Below are three clips, the first two of which are taken from his early days in Hollywood. In the first, Cagney spars with Bette Davis in 1934’s Jimmy the Gent, and in the second, he speaks Yiddish in a scene from Taxi! (1932).
In the final offering, our Jimmy appears as the mystery guest on an episode of What’s My Line? that aired in May 1960.