- Often left the set early claiming he was too ill to continue filming in order to ensure an extra day of filming so that the extras and the film crew, whom he thought woefully underpaid, could get an additional day's salary.
- In his autobiography, he mentions that while in the chorus of the musical "Pitter Patter", he earned $55 a week, of which he sent $40 a week home to his mother. As his salary increased, so did the amount he sent back home. In The Public Enemy (1931), he earned $400 a week, sending over $300 back home. Until his mother passed, he never kept more than 50% of his earnings.
- Extraordinarily (for Hollywood), he never cheated on his wife Frances, resulting in a marriage that lasted 64 years (ending with his death). The closest he came was nearly giving into a seduction attempt by Merle Oberon while the two stars were on tour to entertain World War II GIs.
- His electric acting style was a huge influence on future generations of actors. Actors as diverse as Clint Eastwood and Malcolm McDowell point to him as their number one influence to become actors.
- According to his authorized biography, Cagney, although of three quarters Irish and one quarter Norwegian extraction, could speak Yiddish, since he had grown up in a heavily Jewish area in New York. He used to converse in Yiddish with Jewish performers like Paul Muni, Sylvia Sidney and John Garfield.
- His performance as George M. Cohan in Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942) is ranked #6 on Premiere magazine's 100 Greatest Performances of All Time (2006).
- According to James Cagney's autobiography Cagney By Cagney, (Published by Doubleday and Company Inc 1976, and ghost written by show biz biographer Jack McCabe), a Mafia plan to murder Cagney by dropping a several hundred pound klieg light on top of him was stopped at the insistence of George Raft. Cagney at that time was president of the Screen Actors Guild, and was determined not to let the mob infiltrate the industry. Raft used his many mob connections to cancel the hit.
- Broke a rib while filming the dance scene in Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942) but continued dancing until it was completed.
- Cagney's first job as an entertainer was as a female dancer in a chorus line.
- Cagney and best friends Frank McHugh and Pat O'Brien, were known collectively and affectionately as the "Irish Mafia" and would often be seen out together around Hollywood nightclubs having a quiet drink and a chat. Other members of this close knit social group included actors Bing Crosby, William Gargan, Lee Tracy, Lynne Overman, James Gleason, George Murphy, Ralph Bellamy, Frank Morgan, Bert Lahr, Allen Jenkins and Spencer Tracy.
- Often said that he did not understand the method actors like Marlon Brando. Cagney admitted that he used his own personal experiences to help create his performances and encouraged other actors to do so, but he did not understand actors who felt a need to go to the extreme length that method actors went to.
- Francis Ford Coppola wanted him to play Hyman Roth in The Godfather Part II (1974), even going so far as to visit the star at his home in Hollywood. He declined and the role went to Lee Strasberg.
- Though most Cagney imitators use the line "You dirty rat!", Cagney never actually said it in any of his films.
- Earned a Black Belt in Judo.
- He refused payment for his cameo in The Seven Little Foys (1955) even though he spent ten days learning his complicated tap routine for the film.
- His widow Frances (nicknamed 'Bill') outlived Cagney by eight years, dying aged 95 in 1994.
- Encouraged by his mother to take up boxing as a hobby. She thought it was a necessary skill to have, especially in the rough Eastside section of New York City where he grew up. She would often show up and watch him take on neighborhood kids in a street fight. However, when he wanted to become a professional boxer, she disapproved. She started to put on a pair of boxing gloves and told him "If you want to become a professional fighter, then your first fight will have to be against me." He abandoned the idea of doing boxing professionally from that moment on.
- At the time of filming of White Heat (1949), Special Effects were not yet using squibs (tiny explosives that simulate the effects of bullets). The producers employed skilled marksmen who used low velocity bullets to break windows or show bullets hitting near the characters. In the factory scene, Cagney was missed by mere inches.
- Wrote that of the sixty-two films he made, he rated Love Me or Leave Me (1955) co-starring Doris Day among his top five.
- Had two adopted children:James Cagney Jr., born on Nov. 25, 1939 and Casey Cagney Thomas, born on July 30, 1940.
- Part of the first group of major stars to join the Screen Actors Guild in October 1933 as member number 50. Before his Guild presidency, he served nearly a decade on the Board and as First Vice President. Cagney was elected Guild president in September 1942.
- Convinced decorated war hero Audie Murphy to go into acting.
- In an interview towards the end of his life, Cagney was asked by the interviewer who should play him if a movie was ever made about his life. Cagney replied that there was a 'young kid' called Mike Fox (referring to Michael J. Fox), who's really terrific and added that he thought Fox was even a spitting image of him as a young man. Although a movie of Cagney's life was never made, Fox, a huge Cagney fan himself, hosted an hour long biographic tribute to him called James Cagney: Top of the World (1992).
- Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942) is ranked #88 on the American Film Institute's 100 Most Inspiring Movies of All Time.
- He once claimed that problems with Horst Buchholz had convinced him to retire from acting.
- Named the #8 greatest Actor on The 50 Greatest Screen Legends List by The American Film Institute
- A proposed project that would have had him starring as an elderly Wyatt Earp set in Los Angeles in the 1920s was in development prior to his death.
- In an interview with Michael Parkinson, Orson Welles said Cagney was "maybe the greatest actor who ever appeared in front of a camera".
- To protest the quality of scripts he was given at Warner Brothers, instead of violating his contract by refusing to appear in a picture he reputedly used his appearance to get even. In Jimmy the Gent (1934), he got an ugly crewcut to make himself look like the hoodlum Warners wanted him to play. In movies like He Was Her Man (1934), he grew a thin mustache to upset thin-mustachioed studio boss Jack L. Warner.
- Lost the role of Knute Rockne to his friend Pat O'Brien when the administration of Notre Dame - which had approval over all aspects of the filming - nixed Cagney because of his support of the far-left (and anti-Catholic) Spanish Republic in the then-ongoing Spanish Civil War.
- At one time he owned the Santa Barbara Pier.
- Ranked #45 in Empire (UK) magazine's "The Top 100 Movie Stars of All Time" list. (October 1997)
- Brother of actor-producer William Cagney and of actress Jeanne Cagney.
- Pictured on a 33¢ USA commemorative postage stamp in the Legends of Hollywood series, issued July 22 1999.
- He was originally intended for the role of Robin Hood in The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) but left Warner Brothers who then shelved the film for three years.
- Originally a very left-wing Democrat activist during the 1930s, Cagney later switched his viewpoint and became progressively more conservative with age. He supported his friend Ronald Reagan's campaigns for the Governorship of California in 1966 and 1970, as well as his Presidential campaigns in 1980 and 1984. President Reagan delivered the eulogy at Cagney's funeral in 1986.
- According to his autobiography his wife, "Bill", (who was also his manager), actively pursued the role of Cohan in the ultra-patriotic film Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942) as a way of removing the taint of Cagney's radical activities in the 1930s, when he was a strong Roosevelt liberal. When Cohan himself learned about Cagney's background as a song-and-dance man in vaudeville, he okay-ed him for the project.
- He was voted the 14th Greatest Movie Star of all time by Entertainment Weekly.
- He was voted the 11th Greatest Movie Star of all time by Premiere magazine.
- (1942-1944) President of Screen Actors Guild (SAG).
- In 1973, he was offered the title role in the comedy Harry and Tonto (1974) but Cagney, who was then 74-year-old and had not starred in a feature film since 1961, did not want to come out of retirement. The role, and the Best Actor Oscar, would go to Art Carney.
- His paternal grandparents and maternal grandmother were all of Irish descent, and his maternal grandfather was from Norway. As he told an interviewer shortly before his death in 1986: "My mother's father, my Grandpa Nelson, was a Norwegian sea captain, but when I tried to investigate those roots I didn't get very far, for he had apparently changed his name to another one that made it impossible to identify him within the rest of the population.".
- Was best friends with actors Pat O'Brien and Frank McHugh.
- Charles Durning admired Cagney and said he learned everything directly from him.
- According to Steven Spielberg, Stanley Kubrick considered Jimmy Cagney one of the five greatest actors in history.
- Had appeared with Frank McHugh in eleven films: The Crowd Roars (1932), Footlight Parade (1933), Here Comes the Navy (1934), Devil Dogs of the Air (1935), The Irish in Us (1935), A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935), Boy Meets Girl (1938), The Roaring Twenties (1939), The Fighting 69th (1940), City for Conquest (1940) and A Lion Is in the Streets (1953).
- Turned down Stanley Holloway's role as Eliza's father in My Fair Lady (1964).
- A studio changed his birth date from 1899 to 1904 to capitalize on his youthful appearance.
- Awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Ronald Reagan at a ceremony at the White House on March 26, 1984.
- Turned down the lead role in The Jolson Story (1946), which went to Larry Parks.
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