Legends - James Cagney

The showing of a Cagney movie was always an event when I was a kid. Most of the movies may have been in black and white, not something us colour obsessed children of the 70's would give time to, but this was James Cagney - the little, tough guy who was a favourite with me and my friends. You see to us Cagney was the epitome of cool - he was no muscle bound giant but a little guy, just like the guys you saw on the street, but he was one tough bastard.

'Top of the world, Ma.'

Those Warner gangster films were often shown on BBC2 - Angels with Dirty Faces, The Roaring Twenties, Public Enemy, White Heat and even Each Dawn I die where Cagney wasn't a gangster but a wronged newspaper man forced to spend time in the can - he was still a hard muther though and could have had Don Corleone shaking in his boots with a single stare. Man if Travis Bickle had come up against Cagney he would have grown his hair and relocated to the country.

It didn't matter that Cagney was only 1ft, six inches tall because he was a big man who rammed grapefruits into his bird's face if she dared to give him lip. Okay, maybe that was no way to treat a lady but then grapefruits are good for the complexion.

That Cagney had an impressive backlist of films outside of the gangster cycle didn't matter - we weren't even aware of these films in any case - it was always the same four or five films that were shown.

In the days before video recorders we would watch those movies each time they were on. And even when they weren't on we would replay them over in our minds.

That was until there was a Cagney movie shown on BBC1 one Sunday afternoon.

What the????

Sunday afternoon????

Were the BBC, the protector of public morals, going to show gangster carnage on a Sunday afternoon?

The movie was Yankee Doodle Dandy - didn't sound much like a gangster picture but no matter Cagney was bound to be his usual hard as nails hoodlum with a heart. And besides, I must have figured, it didn't matter that the title sounded naff, here was a Cagney movie I hadn't seen before.

The film ran and my mouth fell open - what the f**k? Cagney had been transformed from the super cool gangster to a jessie, instead of lugging a Tommy-gun, he was dancing and skipping across the screen like a big girl. I didn't like this, nor did any of my friends. Had Cangey lost his mind? What was he doing? Real men didn't dance! From there on in Cagney was relagated from Mr Cool and we switched our worship to Bogart who most certainly didn't dance.



I clearly remember not watching all of the movie, switching the box off and going out to play in the sunshine. The friends that I talked to who had seen the movie were equally shocked and Cagney slipped from our radar. We couldn't idolise someone who danced, well not unless a machine gun was providing the rhythm - rat, ta ta, ta ta.

Course these days Yankee Doodle Dandy is a favourite movie of mine and I've learned some of his dance routines but only the easy ones - watch the routine with Bob Hope above from The Seven Little Foys and see that bad boy move. Of course the gangster flicks are still favourites but these days Cagney's whole filmography finds favour. The man was a true original, a fantastic actor, a performer whose star will never fade.

Still I'm grateful Bogart didn't dance.