[16] The red-haired, blue-eyed Cagney graduated from Stuyvesant High School in New York City in 1918, and attended Columbia College,[17] where he intended to major in Art.

When visiting an aunt who lived in Brooklyn, opposite Vitagraph Studios, Cagney would climb over the fence to watch the filming of John Bunny movies.

Cagney also established a dance school for professionals, and then landed a part in the play Women Go On Forever, directed by John Cromwell, which ran for four months.

[46] 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.

[47] Cagney was given a $500-a-week, three-week contract with Warner Bros.[48] In the film, he portrayed Harry Delano, a tough guy who becomes a killer but generates sympathy because of his unfortunate upbringing.

[50] Cagney received good reviews, and immediately played another colorful gangster supporting role in The Doorway to Hell (1930) starring Lew Ayres.

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.

"[61] However, according to Turner Classic Movies (TCM), the grapefruit scene was a practical joke that Cagney and costar Mae Clarke decided to play on the crew while the cameras were rolling.

[66] With the introduction of the Motion Picture Production Code of 1930 that placed limits upon on-screen violence, Warner Bros. allowed Cagney a change of pace, casting him in the comedy Blonde Crazy, again opposite Blondell.

After six months of suspension, Frank Capra brokered a deal that increased Cagney's salary to around $3000 a week, and guaranteed top billing and no more than four films a year.

This was followed by a steady stream of crowd-pleasing films, including the highly regarded Footlight Parade,[78] which gave Cagney the chance to return to his song-and-dance roots.

[82] Cagney spent most of the next year on his farm, and went back to work only when Edward L. Alperson of Grand National Pictures, a newly established, independent studio, approached him to make movies for $100,000 a film and 10% of the profits.

[89] Unknown to Cagney, the League was in fact a front organization for the Communist International (Comintern), which sought to enlist support for the Soviet Union and its foreign policies.

While revisiting his old haunts, he runs into his old friend Jerry Connolly, played by O'Brien, who is now a priest concerned about the Dead End Kids' futures, particularly as they idolize Rocky.

Having been told while filming Angels with Dirty Faces that he would be doing a scene with real machine gun bullets (a common practice in the Hollywood of the time), Cagney refused and insisted the shots be added afterwards.

[127] The wartime spy film was a success, and Cagney was keen to begin production of his new project, an adaptation of William Saroyan's Broadway play The Time of Your Life.

Saroyan himself loved the film, but it was a commercial disaster, costing the company half a million dollars to make;[128] audiences again struggled to accept Cagney in a nontough-guy role.

"[136] However, Warner Bros., perhaps searching for another Yankee Doodle Dandy,[136] assigned Cagney a musical for his next picture, 1950's The West Point Story with Doris Day, an actress he admired.

While watching the Kraft Music Hall anthology television show some months before, Cagney had noticed Jack Lemmon performing left-handed, doing practically everything with his left hand.

[150] Cagney's career began winding down, and he made only one film in 1960, the critically acclaimed The Gallant Hours, in which he played Admiral William F. "Bull" Halsey.

[153] Cagney had concerns with the script, remembering back 23 years to Boy Meets Girl, in which scenes were reshot to try to make them funnier by speeding up the pacing, with the opposite effect.

[155] One of the few positive aspects was his friendship with Pamela Tiffin, to whom he gave acting guidance, including the secret that he had learned over his career: "You walk in, plant yourself squarely on both feet, look the other fella in the eye, and tell the truth.

Such was her success that, by the time Cagney made a rare public appearance at his American Film Institute Life Achievement Award ceremony in 1974, he had lost 20 pounds (9.1 kg) and his vision had improved.

Encouraged by his wife and Zimmermann, Cagney accepted an offer from the director Miloš Forman to star in a small but pivotal role in the film Ragtime (1981).

[164] This film was shot mainly at Shepperton Studios in Surrey, England, and on his arrival at Southampton aboard the Queen Elizabeth 2, Cagney was mobbed by hundreds of fans.

[citation needed] Despite the fact that Ragtime was his first film in 20 years, Cagney was immediately at ease: Flubbed lines and miscues were committed by his co-stars, often simply through sheer awe.

[187] This somewhat exaggerated view was enhanced by his public contractual wranglings with Warner Bros. at the time, his joining of the Screen Actors Guild in 1933, and his involvement in the revolt against the so-called "Merriam tax".

He took a role in the Guild's fight against the Mafia and the Chicago Outfit, which had been using the threat of strike action by a mob-controlled labor union to extort protection money from Hollywood studios.

He regarded his move away from Marxism as "a totally natural reaction once I began to see undisciplined elements in our country stimulating a breakdown of our system... Those functionless creatures, the hippies ... just didn't appear out of a vacuum".

[16] His pallbearers included boxer Floyd Patterson, dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov (who had hoped to play Cagney on Broadway), actor Ralph Bellamy, and director Miloš Forman.