James Cagney Movies

Want to know the best James Cagney movies?  How about the worst James Cagney movies?  Curious about James Cagney box office grosses or which James Cagney movie picked up the most Oscar® nominations? Need to know which James Cagney movie got the best reviews from critics and audiences? Well you have come to the right place….because we have all of that information.

RobWrite suggested James Cagney (1899-1986) would be a good subject for one of my movie pages. Here are the few things I knew about Cagney before starting the research for this page…(1) he won the Academy Award® for Best Actor in 1942’s Yankee Doodle Dandy (2) he was in a ton of gangster movies (3) his last movie was 1981’s Ragtime and (4) he was great as Captain Morton in 1955’s Mister Roberts.

After two months of research on James Cagney, not only I am finally ready to write this page, but I have new found respect for his career.  His IMDb page shows 69 acting credits from 1930-1981. This page will rank 61 James Cagney movies from Best to Worst in four different sortable columns of information. Cameos, television appearances, shorts and 4 movies made before he was a star are not included in the rankings.

James Cagney and Henry Fonda in 1955's Mister Roberts
James Cagney and Henry Fonda in 1955’s Mister Roberts

James Cagney Movies Ranked In Chronological Order With Ultimate Movie Rankings Score (1 to 5 UMR Tickets) *Best combo of box office, reviews and awards.

James Cagney Movies Can Be Ranked 6 Ways In This Table

  • Sort James Cagney movies by co-stars of his movies
  • Sort James Cagney movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions)
  • Sort James Cagney movies by yearly domestic box office rank
  • Sort James Cagney movies how they were received by critics and audiences.  60% rating or higher should indicate a good movie
  • Sort by how many Oscar® nominations and how many Oscar® wins each James Cagney movie received.
  • Sort James Cagney movies by Ultimate Movie Rankings (UMR) Score.  UMR Score puts box office, reviews and awards into a mathematical equation and gives each movie a score.

James Cagney Adjusted World Wide Box Office Grosses

James Cagney in 1949's White Heat
James Cagney in 1949’s White Heat

Ten Possibily Interesting Facts About James Cagney

1. His role in 1931’s The Public Enemy(only his 4th film), turned him into a star. The most famous scene in the movie is where Cagney’s character smashes a grapefruit into the face of his co-star Mae Davis.

2. Cagney was one of the first stars to refuse to appear in movie scenes where live ammunition was used, experts would stand off camera and fire the guns near the actors…..sounds pretty safe to me.

3. Cagney was Warner Brothers most profitable actor in the 1930s….his movies returned an average of 42% return on investment. Of the 38 movies he made for Warner Brothers only two did not make money. 1935’s A Midnight Summer’s Dream and 1938’s Boy Meets Girl. On the positive side….1934’s The St. Louis Kid was produced for $80,000 and returned 1.8 million dollars at the box office. Not a bad return on investment.

4. Despite being Warner Brothers most profitable actor….he was one of their least paid stars….this resulted in Cagney walking out on Warner Brothers twice. ….In 1936/37 he successfully sued Warner Brothers…..and starting earning equal money to the other Warner Brother stars.

5. In 1933 Cagney helped establish the Screen Actors Guild (SAG). He served as the President of SAG for two years.

6. Cagney married dancer Frances Willard “Billie” Vernon in 1922, they were married 63 years before Cagney passed away in 1986….pretty impressive for any marriage much less a Hollywood marriage.

7. Cagney was nominated for the Best Actor Academy Award® three times……his first nomination was 1938’s Angels With Dirty Faces, his second and only win was 1942’s Yankee Doodle Dandy and his final nomination was 1955’s Love Me or Leave Me.

8. Cagney’s line “Made it, Ma! Top of the world! from 1949’s White Heat is number 18 on the American Film Institute’s list of the greatest movie quotes. …speaking of famous quotes Cagney never said the line….”You dirty rat”….it is one of the greatest misquotes in movie history….the closest he came to saying that was “Mmm, that dirty, double-crossin’ rat,” in 1931’s Blonde Crazy.

9. Cagney appeared in 63 movies in his career….another Warner Brothers star, Pat O Brien co-starred in 9 Cagney movies…..Cagney retired in 1961 after making One, Two, Three….he would make only one more movie….twenty years later ….in 1981’s Ragtime.

10. Here are some of the more famous movie roles Cagney passed on…..Hyman Roth in The Godfather Part 2, The Adventures of Robin Hood (Flynn did pretty good in role), Harry and Tonto Art Carney won Oscar® for this role), Logan’s Run, and My Fair Lady (as Audrey Hepburn’s father).

Check out James Cagney ‘s career compared to current and classic actors.  Most 100 Million Dollar Movies of All-Time.

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59 thoughts on “James Cagney Movies”

  1. Great article, never knew he was president of SAG I thought he was VP. Also wasn’t Cagney accused of being a communist during the McCarthy hearings? And my understanding from something I read a long time ago, Robin Hood was brought into production in order to lure Cagney back to that studio. I don’t know if he actually turned down the part or just refused to deal with the studio ( was it Warner Bros?)

    Reply

    1. Hey Jimmy C. You have asked some good questions. Pretty sure he was the SAG president for two years. I have never heard him being called a communist before….maybe Bob knows more about that. Pretty sure Robin Hood was done after Cagney came back….but he thought he was not right for the part….I am thinking he was correct. Thanks for the feedback.

      Reply

  2. Not how I’d rank them (how does the Oklahoma Kid rank above Public Enemy?) but great to see what the box office would be today.

    Reply

    1. Hey Stan…..thanks for checking it out. My ranking system takes all three major parts of a movie’s stats (box office, reviews and awards) and puts them together. If you sort (highly recommended) by critic audience ratings..then Public Enemy comes in 8th and Oklahoma Kid is 44th. Kid benefited from it’s huge box office.

      Reply

      1. Yes, I realize you have your own rubric. It’s fascinating to see what a huge box office draw he was. That was real money back in depression times!

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        1. He was a huge. I have about 500 movie pages like this one…and I keep track of career adjusted domestic box office. Cagney is in 34th place with $6.35 BILLION…which is right before Joan Crawford and right after Sean Connery. Huge numbers for the acting legend.

          Reply

  3. Great that this James Cagney page was updated.

    Interesting information from Robert Roy.

    The number of films I have seen of Cagney now: 31 of the films.

    One of the films on my to-see list – quite long, of course – is Ragtime. I’d like to see what he was like in his last movie.

    Reply

      1. Okay. Now that I have a warning, I won’t be as shocked as I would have been. It will likely take me some time to find it.

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  4. 1 Cagney seems to have been a kind of mentor to the younger Travolta. John explained in an interview that he would often stay at Jimmy’s ranch and that they would sit long into the night having highly useful chats. They got on very well but didn’t agree on everything. Jimmy hated Bud whereas Travolta is an open admirer of the latter.

    2. Doris Day said in an interview that when she was making That Touch of Mink in 1962 with Grant she told Cary that Jimmy was her all-time favourite actor and that Cary was only second. She said she hoped that Cary didn’t mind being second and that Grant replied that he could live with that. Jimmy had been mutually complimentary when Doris and he made Love Me or leave Me Together in 1955. He ceded top billing to Doris because her character, Ruth Etting, was more central to the plot than Jimmy’s role.

    3 I got the impression that in the films they made together before Bogie became a star the relationship between him and Cag might have been somewhat strained. According to Jimmy he was sitting in a traffic queue one afternoon when he glanced out the window and noticed Bogie also sitting in the queue in a taxi; Humph was picking his nose. Jimmy said that he subsequently wrote a poem about a big movie star’s hygiene habits in a taxi and released the poem in the media.

    4 Cagney was one of my dad’s great favourites and he is not far outside my own top 10; his acting was magnetic and for such a small guy he had massive screen presence. Therefore the update is another that I have eagerly awaited for transcription to my data base. However they
    say that it is an ill wind that blows nobody any good and the reverse is also true. My wife was wanting me to cut the grass; but as Bruce said about McQueen when Bruce wanted to concentrate on Newman: she can wait !

    Reply

    1. Hey Bob.
      1. Interesting about Cagney mentoring Travolta. Good to know that a screen legend like Cagney was willing to help out the new actors.
      2. Even more impressive about Cagney letting Day get top billing on Love Me or Leave Me….especially since at that point in time Cagney was the bigger star.
      3. Wow…a poem about a star picking his nose….your knowledge is incredible…I imagine it has been awhile since you thought about that story…or poem.
      4. Good to know he was one of your dad’s favorites. Despite his size…..he filled the screen up like nobody else did. My top 3 Cagney roles are found in Mister Roberts, White Heat and The Seven Little Foys….even though his part was pretty small.

      Reply

  5. I love James Cagney. He’s my all time favorite actor.He was GREATEST gangster/dancer/tough guy in motion picture HISTORY.

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    1. Hey Joseph A. Williams…..glad a James Cagney fan found this page. I agree Cagney was the greatest dancing/gangster/tough guy in the history of movies. Thanks for stopping by.

      Reply

      1. 1 As I mentioned previously Bogie’s publicists claimed that HE was ‘the screen’s toughest tough guy.’ It was said that Ladd considered himself in contention.

        2 Some of those actors took seriously that kind of accolade. For example before Robert Taylor died someone gave out an actual award for ‘Cowboy of the Century’ (up to then). The trophy was handed to Jimmy Stewart and apparently Taylor was very cut up about it. He accepted that he was never going to get an Oscar; but had convinced himself that he was in line for that secondary award.

        Reply

        1. That’s odd. Glenn Ford was the fastest draw of all the cowboys of Hollywood – .4 of a second. and yet, I don’t think he would have cared if he got that trophy or not.

          Ford loved making westerns. He called it a man’s world.

          And as much as I think of Robert Taylor as a cowboy – when listing cowboys, he is not the first person I think of at all. He would be way down at number 50, I think.

          Reply

          1. FLORA:

            1 Taylor did make a string of westerns in the 50s [Ambush, Devil’s Doorway, Ride Vaquero, The Last Hunt, The Law and Jake Wade [with ‘our’ Richard] Saddle the Wind and many others. However I think that it was his playing of such a historical figure a Billy the Kid in 1941 that mainly gave him a sense of entitlement to the award that I mentioned.

            2 But I agree with YOU. The Duke and Randolph Scott as well as the actual recipient Jimmy Stewart all strike me as having a greater claim to the trophy.

            2 Also Glenn was one of my own favourites too. I loved the string of westerns that he made from 1955-58 at the height of his career: The Violent Men; The Americano; The Fastest Gun Alive; Jubal; 3.10 to Yuma; Cowboy; and the Sheepman. Though his wife at the time complained that he always took his work home with him and that she was sick of watching him walk about the house in a cowboy outfit !

            3 Incidentally regarding the ‘man’s world’ concept Stewart Granger said in an interview that he did films for just the money and that if he could get the same money for doing something else that he considered worthwhile he would not have chosen the cinema as he thought that acting of any kind was a ‘”sissy” occupation. Back to Dalton again: opinions vary.

          2. An interesting and informative conversation between you two…..making points with movie history….my kind of conversation.

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