Cagney / John McCabe.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

McCabe, John, 1920-2005.

Contributor:

Gotham Book Mart Collection (University of Pennsylvania)

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Cagney, James, 1899-1986.

Cagney, James.

Motion picture actors and actresses--United States--Biography.

Motion picture actors and actresses.

United States.

Genre:

Biographies.

Penn Provenance:

Gotham Book Mart (former owner) (Gotham Book Mart Collection copy)

Physical Description:

2 unnumbered pages, xvi, 439 pages, 7 unnumbered pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations ; 23 cm

Edition:

[First Carroll and Graf edition].

Place of Publication:

New York : Carroll & Graf Publishers, Inc. : [Distribted by Publishers Group West], [1999]

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.

Notes:

"First Carroll & Graf edition 1999."

Includes bibliographical references (pages 425-429) and index.

Filmography: pages 397-422.

"A New York Times Book Review Notable Book of 1998."

ISBN:

0786705809

9780786705801

0679446079

9780679446071

OCLC:

317966445