Hard to Handle (Warner Bros.) (1933)

PLANT THIS JIM CAGNEY LIFE-STORY AS Kate Trades Punches With James Cagney A Life Story By JACK COOPER Kate Trades Punches With James Cagney A Life Story By JACK COOPER CHAPTER I CCORDING to all the rules of Life, James Cagney should have been any one of several things other than an actor. His early environment and training carried no hint of what Fate had in store for him. His early battles were not with Fame, which later overtook him much to his own surprise. He became an actor quite by accident and as a means of shooing the wolf away from the family doorstep. of James CAagit® with the Fates was laid in New York City. He was born in the noisy Metropolis in an apartment house at 8th St. and Avenue D. His parents were at that time quite in a position to welcome a second addition to the family. The elder James Cagney was then working as an accountant and making a fairly comfortable living, enabling him to have a maid of all work in the house to help his wife take care of the new born Jimmie and his older brother Harry. One of Seven The Cagneys, however, were not content to make it a two-child family. During the next several years, five more children were born. Of the total of seven children, five are now living —four boys and a girl. Besides James and Harry, there are Edward, William and Jeanne. In the meantime, when young Jimmie was two years old, Mr. Cagney made a change in his occupational status. The accountant job was dropped overboard and he opened a saloon uptown in Yorkville, on the corner of 8ist Street and First Avenue. In order to be near his place of business, Mr. Cagney moved his family to a house just two blocks away on 79th Street. It was here that young Jimmie was brought up. On this one street and within his own block he learned all the principles which were later to guide him through life and provide him with color and material for the profession which placed him, literally, in the public eye. The new neighborhood into which they moved was one of those conglomerate districts peculiar only to New York. On one side of the street were staid brownstone houses where lived the quiet, hard-working middle class folk. On the other side were tenements where the poorer class huddled together. The children of both classes played together. Future doctors, lawyers and merchants played with children who later became gangsters and prize fighters. Page Eighteen In those days, this district did not have the air of respectability that it has today. Where the Astor house now stands, was the city dump where Jimmie and his brothers played ball with the other boys from both sides of the street, and where fist fights and free-for-alls first taught Jimmie the first principles of self-preservation. Learned to Hit First Hit first, and hit hardest, was the first thing James Cagney learned. It became not merely a course to be pursued in physical action, but a philosophy as well. To further equip him in the struggles ahead of him, Jimmie had his Irish parentage and his crowning glory of red hair. Coupled with the sense of realism which his environment gavehim, was his inherent imagination, curiosity, e of fantasy and a strong sense of seeial justice. He quickly learned Melty, and today his outstanding ats are his love for his family and faunchness of affection which_he for his friends. Once someone has become his friend, nothing can change that status. Those who have double-crossed him have met with no antagonism on Jimmie’s part. Rather, he is left with a feeling of bewildered disappointment. Jimmie made friends quickly and indiscriminately with the boys in his Irish-Jewish neighborhood on East 79th Street. By the time this red-headed Irish boy started public school, he could talk Yiddish almost as well as English. His list of friends was augmented when he enrolled in Public School 158, where his brother Harry was already attending and where his younger brothers later followed him. Loved to Draw It was in public school that Jimmie first conceived the idea of guiding his career toward becoming an artist. Of all his classes, he loved the draw ing class best. Geography was bright~ ened for him because he could draw maps, and he would sometimes neglect his home-work bent over the table with a box of crayons and some drawing paper in front of him. His mother encouraged every educational trend which he showed. She keenly recognized the danger of bringing up children in the neighborhood in which they lived. Many young boys with whom Jimmie played were already learning to steal and preaching the doctrine that cops are man’s worst enemy. Mrs. Cagney shrewdly did not rule her children with an iron hand. She would not deny them their friends, knowing that it would defeat its own purpose. Talking to her boys kindly on their own level, she managed to steer them clear of the temptations of their environment and into the paths of learning for a high station in life. Today, both Harry and Eddie are doctors with flourishing medical practices, and William is an advertising salesman. Jeanne, the youngest in the family, is still in high school, undecided as to what career to follow. That the Cagney family should have stuck to the straight and narrow is a source of joyful wonder to Jimmie. Two of his best friends whom CHAPTER II Y the time James Cagney graduated from Public School 158 and into Stuyvesant High School in New York City, he knew the answers to all of life’s questions. : Outwardly, he was, and still is, a soft spoken, gentlemanly mannered young man, but inwardly he was tough and hardened against most of life’s rude shocks. His ambition to become an artist still burned within him in spite of the fact that his surround ings were anything but artistic. When he was not playing with the gang of boys in the neighborhood, he would visit his father in his saloon two blocks away, at Sist Street and First Avenue. There he was able, unconsciously, to study another angle of life’s seamier side. Following his father’s example, he learned to tolerate other people’s weaknesses without cultivating them himself. Jimmie never drinks liquor, though it doesn’t bother him when other people do—and he doesn’t even smoke. _ Mr. Cagney’s saloon kept the family in modest comfort, and Mrs. Cagney was still able to keep her maid of all work to-help with the house and the growing family of children. But Fate dealt the Cagneys a double blow which changed the entire tenor of their lives. 2 Bad Blows Prohibition came in to close the Cagney saloon, and shortly afterward, in 1919, the elder Mr. Cagney died. Jimmie “wac-feurteen years old when this happened—too young as his mother thought, to be of any financial help to the stricken family. They had some money saved up which would carry them through for a while, but not enough for any great length of time. Jimmie did not wait to be consulted. He realized the situa % JAMES CAGNEY and JOAN BLONDELL First Met in a Booking Office, tion the family was in, and as soon as school let out for sum mer vacation, he went job hunting. The job he landed was as office boy in the New York Sun. If his mother had not insisted that he return to school he would have hung on to the job and, in time, perhaps become a newspaper man. But there was his own resolution, coupled with his mother’s insistence, which sent him back to school. He was still determined to become an artist. He had seen the illustrators at work on the newspaper, and realized that he would make up in money for the time spent in training. Went to Work at 14 This did not prevent him from returning to the newspaper office when next summer vacation came around. The money he earned was beginning to make some sort of a show in the declining fortunes of the Cagney family. Realizing this, Jimmie supplemented his earning power by working at night when he was back again in high school. For two years, he worked at night as a page in the Public Library, beginning when he was sixteen years of age. He became a bundle wrapper at Wannamaker’s, one of the largest department stores in New York City. He was a bell boy at the Friars Club. But all the time he had his mind set on taking an art course at Columbia University. High School days were over for Jimmie Cagney, but there was not enough money in the family treasury to let him take that art course at Columbia University which he so much desired. Jimmie knew this was no time to grieve over thwarted ambitions. He had to get out and They Were Signed Together by Warner Bros. Cut No. 22 Cut 30c Mat 10c he used to try to emulate became two of the toughest gangsters in New York. One of them has since been shot in a gang feud, and the other is now serving life at Sing Sing. . It is on the habits and mannerisms of these two boys that Jimmie patterned his role in ‘The Public Enemy,’’ the film that shot him skyward to stardom. (Continued tomorrow) make some money for the family and also save enough for his own studies. There was only one way to do things, Jimmie had learned: Go out and do it! He was very much pleased when he landed a job in an architect’s office. Here was something that he wanted; it dealt with line and form. For six months he stuck to his job, learning a great deal about drawing. NOTE:—Here is a complete life story of James Cagney, divided into three installments. We suggest that you plant it either as a three-day serial or a Sunday feature. illustrations in this story can also be used individually as scene cuts. At the end of six months he had enough for a semester at Columbia. He could now enroll as an Art major and supplement his studies with a night job which would help stock the family larder. Worked and Studied There was not much for him to choose from in the way of jobs, and he had to be satisfied with the task of waiting on tables in a tea room as a part-time job. His first semester at Columbia was not ended before he realized that his job was barely paying his own incidental expenses while his family was sadly in want. This was no time for selfishness—a trait which is happily lacking in Jimmie Cagney. His career would wait. Quitting school without giving it another thought, Jimmie started walking along Broadway intent on getting a job. What sort of a job it was to be he had absolutely no idea, nor did he care. He was willing to do anything providing it brought a sizeable weekly pay check. Several forms ‘of labor offered themselves, but there was no more money in them than could be gotten from a part time job while attending college. A chance meeting with an acquaintance, a chorus boy in musical productions, delivered Jimmie once more into the hands of Fate and shaped the course his life was. to take. cscs = Plenty of Nerve SS They were casting for chorus boys for a musical production called ‘“Hvery Sailor,’’?’ the acquaintance told him. With a slight knowledge of ‘‘hoofing’’ and a lot of nerve, he might be able to get a job. But Jimmie didn’t even have that slight knowledge. What he did have was an abundance of nerve, and it propelled him through the stage door and backstage to were some forty boys were lined up, all showing their dancing wares at the same time to a hawk-eyed director. Jimmie took his place in the line on the stage. There was no time for stalling. He had to think and act fast in order to land one of these good paying jobs. It was a case of hit first—and hit hardest. He watched the dancing boy next to him and made a mental picture of the intricate dance steps. Then he went into the dance himself, for the first time in his life, putting everything he had into it. Pretty soon the director yelled: ‘“‘The short fellow step out! ’’ A cold sweat broke out on Jimmie’s forhead. He thought his grand bluff had not worked. But imagine his amazement when he learned that instead of being kicked out, he was hired! Jimmie realized that he had to really learn how to dance on short notice. Worked Like a Trojan Jimmie Cagney worked like a Trojan at dancing to make good on the bluff that had won him a job in the chorus of the musical production, “Every Sailor.’’ The little red-headed Irish boy stuck to it, and by the time the show folded up a number of weeks later, Jimmie was a seasoned hoofer. Once again out of work, Jimmie found that waiting for theatrical jobs was too much of a gamble. He went to work immediately as signal man and runner on the curb market on Wall Street. It was his last position in the commercial field, for soon another chance was offered him in a stage production where Fate was holding another deciding factor in his life, (Concluded Tomorrow)