Research Catalog

Cagney

Title
Cagney / [by] John McCabe.
Author
McCabe, John, 1920-2005.
Publication
New York, NY : Knopf : Distributed by Random House, 1997.

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TextRequest in advance PN2287.C23 M27 1997Off-site

Details

Description
xvi, 439 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations; 24 cm
Summary
  • Cagney came from a poor Irish-American New York family but once he found his metier as an actor, it was not long before he was recognized as a brilliantly energetic and powerful phenomenon. After the tremendous impact of Public 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 musicals Yankee Doodle Dandy (winning the 1942 Oscar for best actor) and Love 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's One, Two, Three, only to return twenty years later for Ragtime.
  • 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.
Subjects
Bibliography (note)
  • Filmography: p. 397-422.
  • Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN
0679446079
LCCN
97005067
OCLC
  • 36407711
  • ocm36407711
Owning Institutions
Columbia University Libraries