Articoli correlati a Cagney
John McCabe's participation in the writing of James Cagney's autobiography, the many years of friendship that followed, and an intense period of interview and discussion in preparation for a musical comedy based on Cagney's life--a show that never saw the light of day--make him Cagney's ideal biographer. And, indeed, he has written a searching chronicle of this major actor's life and career, packed with history and anecdote, and profusely illustrated.
Cagney came from a poor Irish-American New York family but once he found his métier 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.
Cagney came from a poor Irish-American New York family but once he found his métier 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.
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L'autore:
John McCabe was a professional actor from the age of seven, first appearing with various stock companies in his native Detroit. He blended the acting profession with his schooling for decades, finally receiving a doctorate from the Shakespeare Institute, Stratford-upon-Avon, England, in 1954. While at Stratford he met Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, who were then touring British music halls. From this encounter came a deep friendship with Laurel and the authorized biography, Mr. Laurel and Mr. Hardy (1962), which firmly established John McCabe as the world authority on this great comedy team. Other show business biographies followed, and in 1973 he was selected to ghostwrite James Cagney's autobiography, Cagney by Cagney.
In addition to his many years as a professional actor, John McCabe has taught acting at Detroit's Wayne State University, the City College of New York, Interlochen Arts Academy, and New York University, where, as professor of dramatic art, he headed the Educational Theater Department. Now retired from teaching, he lives on Mackinac Island, Michigan, where he has returned to acting and where he lecture-performs a Shakespeare play each summer.
Estratto. © Riproduzione autorizzata. Diritti riservati.:
In addition to his many years as a professional actor, John McCabe has taught acting at Detroit's Wayne State University, the City College of New York, Interlochen Arts Academy, and New York University, where, as professor of dramatic art, he headed the Educational Theater Department. Now retired from teaching, he lives on Mackinac Island, Michigan, where he has returned to acting and where he lecture-performs a Shakespeare play each summer.
Excerpt from Chapter 1:
We were poor, but didn't know it, I guess, because everybody else around us was poor. Out on the street we soon discovered there was a power hierarchy, however, and that was kind of like being rich--when and if you were handy with your dukes, and could hold your own in a fight. I saw that right away, and I used to watch the tough kids, the leaders, the ones who knew how to fight. I didn't admire them because mostly they were bullies, but I did admire the way they handled themselves, facing guys way bigger than themselves. Later I could figure out just how they did it. It was in that simple word made out of two other simple words, "foot" and "work." Footwork. Benny Leonard, Lou Buto, Packy McFarland--fighters I saw and admired, and all the epitome of grace. That is what got me into dancing. I learned how to dance from learning how to fight. It was feint, duck, quick dance around your opponent on your toes mostly, then shoot out the arm like a bullet.
One of the neighborhood tough guys, Moishe, indirectly stimulated Jim to fight--and dance. Moishe had a rhythm to his punches. He never flailed, as so many of the street scrappers did. He held up his fists in defensive arc and rushed in only when he saw an opening. He was adept at seeing the instant when his opponents dropped their guard, and when this occurred, he darted his fist in quickly to the target, then out again just as quickly, standing on tiptoe most of the time. As a seven-year-old Jim began to sense the benefits of standing on his toes either to reach up or to reach in. Darting became second nature to him, and it was to become a key characteristic of his acting. The dance steps of his maturity grow directly from these habits.
As bonus, Jim and the other Cagney boys rejoiced in the greatest fight instructor in their neighborhood: Carrie. This very wise woman, painfully aware that two of her four sons, Harry and Edward, were timid, was determined to give little Jim, the runt of the family, the advantage his small size would not allow. She taught him and the others, despite reluctance on the part of Harry and Edward, the fundamentals of boxing. As a girl she had gone to amateur prizefights with a male cousin keen on the game, and she quickly learned that sluggers always got the bad end of the stick, whereas boxers at least knew how to escape punishment. More, she saw that boxers, those skilled in use of their feet and quick arm thrust, always won.
Carrie got her boys together two afternoons a week and instructed them. She saw that Jim, who had learned the basics of fighting well from Moishe, was her prize pupil. She scheduled regular bouts between her boys in their living room. When they occasionally erupted into anger, she separated them and held the opponents firmly against her sides, a process she called "leaning on yuh." The boys learned to avoid this because the leaning was uncomfortable, Carrie being big of heft and strong of arm.
James Senior loved these sessions and acted as a one-man audience, cheering both fighters and booing whenever he saw unfair advantage taken. He roughhoused lovingly with all his boys and was fond of pretending anger by holding a lad by the neck with one hand, curling the other into a fist, snarling exaggeratedly, "If I thought you meant that--," grazing the chin with the fist. "Simple little thing," said Jim. "Yet so goddamned funny, the way he did it. You'd think--there we were, poor as church mice--you'd think there'd be gloom all over the place. We had our bad moments, sure, when Pop got his fits. But all I mainly remember about the Cagneys in those days was laughter. Songs and laughter."
Despite their mother's expert instruction, Eddie, five years younger than Jim, and Harry, the oldest boy, were gentle souls and soon grew to depend on their brother for protection from neighborhood gangs. Generally one had little to fear from tough guys if one learned to walk quickly from home to destination and back. But Jim, deeply partaking of his mother's indomitable nature, refused that kind of protection. He never sought conflict but never avoided it.
Fighting was simply the neighborhood occupation. Every kid on the block was identified by a nickname. Jim was distinguished in that he had three: Red, his hair color, and two pejoratives that always enraged him when he heard them, Runt and Short Shit. The latter particularly angered him, and the block bullies learned this soon and used it as their prime taunt.
There were two other neighborhood preoccupations, baseball and swimming. The latter was a chancy business, but it became habitual. When they lived on Seventy-ninth Street, Cagney said:
We were only a short distance from the East River--which incidentally is not a river at all but a tidal estuary--and in good weather we went there to swim. It was, quite simply, a cesspool, and I suspect it's not much better today. I say cesspool because a large sewer close to our street poured its contents right into the river. And we swam cheerfully right in the midst of all that sewage. Merry turds bobbing by. You just ignored them and kept your mouth shut. We must have been pretty tough because we survived those daily immersions. Except one kid. Phil Dooley. The foulness of the river got to him, and he died of typhoid. Where we used to dive in is now a little park with benches, close to the FDR Drive, built right over where we used to do our daily diving. That little park plus some huge apartment buildings are there today where we used to cavort about so happily.
We were poor, but didn't know it, I guess, because everybody else around us was poor. Out on the street we soon discovered there was a power hierarchy, however, and that was kind of like being rich--when and if you were handy with your dukes, and could hold your own in a fight. I saw that right away, and I used to watch the tough kids, the leaders, the ones who knew how to fight. I didn't admire them because mostly they were bullies, but I did admire the way they handled themselves, facing guys way bigger than themselves. Later I could figure out just how they did it. It was in that simple word made out of two other simple words, "foot" and "work." Footwork. Benny Leonard, Lou Buto, Packy McFarland--fighters I saw and admired, and all the epitome of grace. That is what got me into dancing. I learned how to dance from learning how to fight. It was feint, duck, quick dance around your opponent on your toes mostly, then shoot out the arm like a bullet.
One of the neighborhood tough guys, Moishe, indirectly stimulated Jim to fight--and dance. Moishe had a rhythm to his punches. He never flailed, as so many of the street scrappers did. He held up his fists in defensive arc and rushed in only when he saw an opening. He was adept at seeing the instant when his opponents dropped their guard, and when this occurred, he darted his fist in quickly to the target, then out again just as quickly, standing on tiptoe most of the time. As a seven-year-old Jim began to sense the benefits of standing on his toes either to reach up or to reach in. Darting became second nature to him, and it was to become a key characteristic of his acting. The dance steps of his maturity grow directly from these habits.
As bonus, Jim and the other Cagney boys rejoiced in the greatest fight instructor in their neighborhood: Carrie. This very wise woman, painfully aware that two of her four sons, Harry and Edward, were timid, was determined to give little Jim, the runt of the family, the advantage his small size would not allow. She taught him and the others, despite reluctance on the part of Harry and Edward, the fundamentals of boxing. As a girl she had gone to amateur prizefights with a male cousin keen on the game, and she quickly learned that sluggers always got the bad end of the stick, whereas boxers at least knew how to escape punishment. More, she saw that boxers, those skilled in use of their feet and quick arm thrust, always won.
Carrie got her boys together two afternoons a week and instructed them. She saw that Jim, who had learned the basics of fighting well from Moishe, was her prize pupil. She scheduled regular bouts between her boys in their living room. When they occasionally erupted into anger, she separated them and held the opponents firmly against her sides, a process she called "leaning on yuh." The boys learned to avoid this because the leaning was uncomfortable, Carrie being big of heft and strong of arm.
James Senior loved these sessions and acted as a one-man audience, cheering both fighters and booing whenever he saw unfair advantage taken. He roughhoused lovingly with all his boys and was fond of pretending anger by holding a lad by the neck with one hand, curling the other into a fist, snarling exaggeratedly, "If I thought you meant that--," grazing the chin with the fist. "Simple little thing," said Jim. "Yet so goddamned funny, the way he did it. You'd think--there we were, poor as church mice--you'd think there'd be gloom all over the place. We had our bad moments, sure, when Pop got his fits. But all I mainly remember about the Cagneys in those days was laughter. Songs and laughter."
Despite their mother's expert instruction, Eddie, five years younger than Jim, and Harry, the oldest boy, were gentle souls and soon grew to depend on their brother for protection from neighborhood gangs. Generally one had little to fear from tough guys if one learned to walk quickly from home to destination and back. But Jim, deeply partaking of his mother's indomitable nature, refused that kind of protection. He never sought conflict but never avoided it.
Fighting was simply the neighborhood occupation. Every kid on the block was identified by a nickname. Jim was distinguished in that he had three: Red, his hair color, and two pejoratives that always enraged him when he heard them, Runt and Short Shit. The latter particularly angered him, and the block bullies learned this soon and used it as their prime taunt.
There were two other neighborhood preoccupations, baseball and swimming. The latter was a chancy business, but it became habitual. When they lived on Seventy-ninth Street, Cagney said:
We were only a short distance from the East River--which incidentally is not a river at all but a tidal estuary--and in good weather we went there to swim. It was, quite simply, a cesspool, and I suspect it's not much better today. I say cesspool because a large sewer close to our street poured its contents right into the river. And we swam cheerfully right in the midst of all that sewage. Merry turds bobbing by. You just ignored them and kept your mouth shut. We must have been pretty tough because we survived those daily immersions. Except one kid. Phil Dooley. The foulness of the river got to him, and he died of typhoid. Where we used to dive in is now a little park with benches, close to the FDR Drive, built right over where we used to do our daily diving. That little park plus some huge apartment buildings are there today where we used to cavort about so happily.
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- EditoreRandom House Value Publishing
- Data di pubblicazione1999
- ISBN 10 0517407868
- ISBN 13 9780517407868
- RilegaturaCopertina rigida
- Valutazione libreria
(nessuna copia disponibile)
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