1938 – James Cagney
Angels With Dirty Faces
I have not seen many films with James Cagney, but I have liked him in those I have. He was one of those actors who could whip out that quick dialogue and make it seem easy. And there was a presence about him that was attention-grabbing. He was handsome in an unconventional way and he knew how to turn on the charm. Even though he was the movie’s bad guy, you ended up liking him anyway. He was a gangster who was involved with the mob, a thief, an extortionist, and a murderer. And on top of all that he was charismatic and likeable.
Not having seen any other movie in which he played a gangster, I don’t know if he used a set of traits of movements every time, but I have seen other actors impersonating him and using his moves. That sharp little shrug when he was getting ready to do something, the way he walked with that tough-guy attitude, that fire in his eyes that never left his gaze, whether he was pointing a gun at someone or trying to put the moves on a girl.
And I liked the way he played Rocky. He wasn’t just bad for the sake of being bad. He had a softer side. He made a connection with the Dead End Kids who were pretty important characters in the movie, and you could tell, through his acting, that Rocky felt somewhat paternal towards them. He clearly saw a version of his younger self in them.
There was only one thing that Cagney did that had me rolling my eyes a little. In the big shoot-out scene where Rocky gets captured, he is firing six-shooters. But he looks like he is, I don’t know, furiously working some kind of hand pump, when he is shooting multiple slugs in a row. It’s like he is emphasizing each shot with a forward thrust of his hand, like he is hammering a nail. I’m not a marksman, but it just seems like his accuracy would be zero without a steady hand, and never-mind the recoil of the weapon. The silly motion just made him look like an actor who was playing at shooting a toy gun. Yet somehow, he was more accurate than the police trying to capture him. But that’s ok. Cagney was really a song and dance man, like in Yankee Doodle Dandy, not a real gangster.