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. Cliff Saum appeared in 15 James Cagney films, Lee Phelps was in 13, Pat O’Brien 12, Frank McHugh and Charles Sullivan were in 11 and Mike Lally, Jack Mower, Harry Tenbrook were in 10.

    Reply

    1. Hey Dan…..the only one I would have guessed would have been Pat O’Brien…..they started out together and they ended together in Ragtime. Good stuff.

      Reply

  2. Steve’s epic James Cagney video has been added to our Cagney page.

    “Epic epic video on one of AFI’s greatest actors. Great posters. So of the 50 I have seen 16 of them….most of them were seen after writing my Cagney for HubPages many years ago. Favorites include #1 White Heat (our number one too) #2 Mister Roberts….the Cagney movie I re-watch the most. #14 The Man Of A Thousand Faces and #27 Ceiling Zero. I thought Yankee Doodle Dandy was fine…..just not one of my favorite Cagney movies…I actually like his musical Footlight Parade more. We only have 59 of his movies on our page…..too bad you did not include those as well. Good video….job well done…..voted up and shared on our Cagney page.”

    Reply

    1. Hi Bruce, thanks for the comment, vote and share, much appreciated. IMDB lists 64 movies, I thought 50 would be more than enough for my expanded video, and the original idea was to select his best movies. I’ve seen 24 and Flora’s tally is 31 out of 50. A shame you didn’t think much of Yankee Doodle Dandy, it’s one of my favorite Cagney movies. Good to know we have the same no.1 on our charts.

      Reply

  3. 1 PART 2 1-25 Even when it comes to the acknowledged main Legends of the screen I think the term “greater” is a bit of a misnomer. Those guys and gals had such unique and iconic personalities and talents that whilst we might say this one had more box office films and that one had more Oscars how can one say definitively overall that romantic idol Gable was greater than singer/dancer Astaire or that action/cowboy hero Duke was greater than suave charmer and magnificent screwball comedy performer Cary or vice versa?

    2 Anyway I think the best of many great POSTERS in your Cagney 1-25 are Picture Snatcher, Shake Hands with the Devil, Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye, Man of 1000 Faces with Dorothy Malone in fine saucy mode, G Men, foreign language ones for White Heat and Each Dawn I Die, The Public Enemy, Yankee Doodle Dandy and Love Me or Leave Me with my Doris striking poses that belie hype like “I knew Doris Day before she was a v*****!” However I must single out as par exceptional in my view the very striking two for Tribute to a Bad Man

    3 Can’t complain about too few STILLS in the top half of the schedule with my personal favourites being Cagney with in turn Bette Davis, George Raft, Harlow and Bogie [with guns] A midsummer Night’s Dream, and Jimmy flanked by two of Hollywood’s greatest legends Rita Hayworth and “Livvy” DeHavilland. The combination of those stills and the posters mentioned added up to a 98% rating in my notes.

    4 Bruce and you agree on 8 of Jimmy’s Top 10 for Review which illustrates very uniform choices. He has St Louis Kid and Crowd Roars in his 10 whereas you go for Each Dawn I Die and Love Me or Leave Me. I haven’t seen his two but never liked your Each Dawn I Die whereas obviously I back your selection of my Doris so from my perspective it is a draw between you pair in as far as I am able to judge the entries. G lad you both included Roaring 20s

    Reply

    1. Hi Bob, thanks for the review, rating, info, trivia, comment, quote and comparison, much appreciated. Glad you liked the pictorial content.

      With Eddie and Bogie coming up I had to make sure Cagney didn’t hog all the best posters and stills, these three WB legends have a shared history.

      Mister Roberts is a much loved movie but it is slightly overrated in my opinion, there’s not much to the story at all and John Ford was on holiday here nothing exceptional in his direction and I’ve read about the fights he had with Fonda. It’s the actors that make that movie a classic.

      Five Cagney movies scored 10 out of 10 from my sources – Public Enemy, Angels With Dirty Faces, Yankee Doodle Dandy, White Heat and Mister Roberts.

      Six more scored 9 including Footlight Parade, Love Me or Leave Me and G Men.

      Highest rated at IMDB is White Heat, tops at Rotten Tomatoes is a tie between White Heat and Public Enemy, with Footlight Parade in 3rd place.

      Bruce and I have the same no.1 White Heat, my no.2 Mister Roberts is 4th on his critics chart. Yankee Doodle Dandy is no.1 on the UMR chart. I have no problem with that, it’s one of my favorites. “I’m a Yankee Doodle Dandy. A Yankee Doodle, do or die. A real live nephew of my Uncle Sam. Born on the Fourth of July.” 🙂

      Eddie’s up next.

      Reply

      1. 1 By all accounts Jimmy was very gracious to my Doris when they made Love Me or Leave Me together though she in turn was a great fan of his. She told Archibald Alexander Leach on the set of That Touch of Mink that Cag was her most favourite movie star of all time and that Archie was just her No 2 fave, to which Archie replied that he didn’t mind being 2nd! However I’ve recounted that story before and I’m not sure that the Work Horse has ever forgiven my Doris for such sacrilege!

        2 Conversely when questioned about the mumbling 1950s New Kid on the Block Cag retorted “Have never watched him, never intend to.” That seemed to me pure spite as you would think that the artist in Jimmy would have been at least curious to see what all the fuss was about.

        3 However Cagney claimed in his later years to be an “arch-conservative” driven to the “right” of politics by the “appearance of hippies” in the US [although ironically Mr Yankee Doodle Dandy was once accused but cleared of being a Communist sympathizer] and maybe he thought that the Democratic Mr Mumbles, often considered “leftish”, was letting down the American people as the Duke would have expressed it. Anyway shame on Cag for rubbishing the “contender” for stardom who is one of my idols without apparently properly trying to evaluate the latter’s work – the dirty rat!

        4 Looking forward to Little Caesar so just keep giving us these wonderful illustrations of the products of heyday Hollywood.

        Reply

        1. STEVE

          Further to my previous post in which I mentioned that Cagney definitely detested Mr Mumbles, if the Great Mumbler was aware of Jimmy’s animosity he didn’t seem to reciprocate it as the following item in Wikipedia appears to suggest.

          “Cagney was among the most favored actors for the director Stanley Kubrick and the actor Marlon Brando and was considered by Orson Welles to be “maybe the greatest actor to ever appear in front of a camera Warner Bros. arranged private screenings of Cagney films for Winston Churchill.”

          Reply

        2. Bob, looks like the ‘old school’ actors didn’t much care for the new fangled methody approach, all pauses, a few mumbles, a yawn or two, looking up at the sky, picking your teeth while conversing sort of thing. Just say your lines and get on with it, they might argue. 😉

          I’m sure Cagney must have had a peek or two at the great Mumbler’s movies (when no one was looking of course). Newman and Clift too, maybe even some of Dean on TV. How could he resist seeing The Godfather during the 70s, everyone was lining up to see that and he was one of the first great gangsters 40 years earlier.

          Reply

          1. HI STEVE

            I agree with you about Cagney’s probable aversion to the new boys though there also seemed to be a political divide in general between the old and new. Eddie Robinson said about The Godfather “This guy is my offspring.” and it’s difficult to envisage Cag not enjoying On the Waterfront which was about the docks being ruled by gangsters, the type of project that was meat and drink to the young Cagney.

    2. Okay there was a delay in my post turning up and I tried posting it again. I see it’s up now. So I’ve deleted the duplicate post.

      Reply

  4. Hi Bob, your post has survived the trip! So did mine! Rejoice! 🙂

    I agree with you on Cagney’s iconic and legendary status, a unique personality on screen. I don’t think he ever gave a boring performance.

    Glad you enjoyed the first half of this lengthy video, it does get better.

    Look forward to part 2.

    Reply

    1. Part 2 of Cagney post now in the long grass so please watch out for it when WH kicks it out again and for now I’ll just say great video with posters/stills that are collector’s items.

      Reply

  5. PART ONE 50-26

    1 I always remember that when Ann-Margaret came on the scene in the early 60s she expressed her own admiration for James Garner and predicted that as a star he would become “bigger than Cagney, bigger than Brando,” as she put it. I loved Garner as an actor and a person and he was very popular and respected on the big screen and on TV but he never attained the status of Cagney nor of any of those on for example the AFI’s Screen Legends list and certainly Cagney had one of the most iconic and legendary screen personalities that ever existed. Do you agree?

    2 Anyway good to see him getting the extended Lensman treatment that he deserves and my favourite POSTERS in the enlarged video are – A Lion is in the Streets, West Point Story, Smart Money, These Wilder Years [which was on a double bill in UK with Charley Bill Stuart’s The Fastest Gun Alive] the raunchy Hard to Handle, Blood on the Sun 13 Rue Madeline and Run for Cover which I thought was sensational.

    3 There were relatively few stills in the first 25 but boy! the few that you gave us were packed with Legends – Jimmy with in turn Eddie Robinson, Bette Davis, Bogie, and Cagney’s great pal Pat O’Brien along with Ann Sheridan.

    4 Part 2 will provide comments on 1-25, give an overall Bob rating and make a Cogerson Top 10 [rather the normal top 5] comparison. See you again soon.

    Reply

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