Cagney: A Biography - Hardcover

McCabe, John

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1854105450 ISBN 13: 9781854105455

Publisher: Aurum Press, 1998

Synopsis

Drawing on countless hours of interviews wit h James Cagney that were not used in Cagney''s autobiography, John McCabe has written a searching chronicle of a major ac tor''s life and career. '

About this title

Review:

A biography that truly lives up to its star billing. -- Film Review

From the Back Cover:

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.

About this edition

• Publisher: Aurum Press
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 1854105450
• ISBN 13: 9781854105455
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 464