James Cagney was an enduring movie star of Hollywood’s Golden Age. He was a versatile actor, from a tough guy to a song-and-dance man to a comic. How did he get so good? Sports helped enormously, boxing especially.
Cagney grew up in a rough neighborhood in Yorkville on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. To survive at 5 feet, 5 inches, he had to learn to defend himself with his fists. That led him to become an amateur boxer, a semi-professional baseball player, and a judo black belt.
Cagney in training (photo courtesy of the James Cagney Fan Club for #1 Fan’s Post on Facebook
He competed as an amateur boxer and was runner-up for the New York State lightweight title. Although his coaches encouraged him to turn professional, his mother wouldn’t permit it.
He also played baseball in his youth and became a semi-professional athlete. In 1919, Cagney’s Yorkville Nut Club team played an exhibition game against the inmate baseball team at Sing Sing Prison. It became known as “The Sing Sing Game.”
His baseball career didn’t end there. Cagney sometimes played on studio baseball teams and he played in high-profile celebrity and charity baseball games alongside other notable actors of the day, including George Raft, another screen tough.
Cagney’s sporting interests didn’t end there. He trained in judo and eventually earned a Black Belt. Far from a diversion from his acting career, Cagney displayed his judo acumen in the film Blood on the Sun (1945). Cagney was recognized as the first American actor to showcase martial arts on the big screen, and do it authentically and without relying on a stunt double.
Cagney also starred in sports-related films. He played an arrogant boxer named Jimmy Kane in the boxing film Winner Take All (1932). He portrayed race car driver Joe Greer in the auto racing film The Crowd Roars (1932). In City for Conquest (1940), Cagney played a truck driver who turned to boxing to earn money to support his brother’s dreams.
Apropos, Cagney’s final role was in a boxing film (photo from boxing role Terrible Joe Moran, courtesy of MUBI)
His final acting role (1984) came in the made-for-TV movie Terrible Joe Moran, where he played a retired boxing champion alongside former heavyweight champion Floyd Patterson.
Those are just a few of the films Cagney appeared in. His prolific half-century career included many other memorable films. Among them were The Public Enemy (1931) and Taxi! (1932), Footlight Parade (1933), Irish in Us (1935), Something to Sing About (1937), Angels with Dirty Faces (1938), The Roaring Twenties (1939), The Bride Came C.O.D. (1941), Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942), White Heat (1949), Mister Roberts (1955), The Seven Little Foys (1955), Love Me or Leave Me (1955), One, Two, Three (1961), and Ragtime (1981).
James Cagney lived a remarkable life. He died in 1986 at the age of 86.
