Cagney by Cagney Read online

  As for me, my shirtfront was covered with blood—his blood. Nothing could stop Carney. There was a crowd around us, twelve deep, and one compassionate little Jewish lady kept saying, “These boys are killing each other. Where are their mothers? Why don’t their mothers come and stop all this bloodshed?” Interestingly, my mother was there—right in the front ranks, watching her boy take care of things. Carney kept punching and so did I until I broke my hand on him, and we agreed that, once mended, we’d finish the fight. I was in splints the next six weeks, but by the end of that time, Carney was in reform school.

  When I went up to the hospital to have my hand set, the doctor complimented me on the beautiful colors in the black eye Carney had laid on me, and he asked me how the hand had been broken. I said, “Well, I was riding my bike, a truck came along, and in swerving to get out of the way, the bike fell. The handlebar hit my eye, and my fist crashed into the curbstone.” The doc said very dryly, “Really? And what does the other guy look like?” The other guy didn’t look too bad. I never met him again, but I was to hear from Carney later in life, a story I’ll come to in due time.

  There was almost a kind of chivalry about street fighting in our neighborhood. If two fellas were fighting (incidentally, I always say “fella;” pronouncing it as a rhyme to “mellow” would strike me as slightly overdone), as I say, if two fellas were fighting on our street, and one fella was getting badly beaten, he could nominate someone to take his place. One little guy, Peewee, was fighting a left-hander who could really punch, and Peewee suddenly got a powerhouse belt on the eye. It was a swift punch, so swift that none of us watching could see that it had been delivered by the other fighter’s older brother, standing on the sidelines. But when Peewee hit the sidewalk, he pointed to the real culprit and said, “He hit me!”

  The culprit, a big kid about seventeen, said he hadn’t. With that, I stepped in to take Peewee’s place—and got clobbered immediately. I didn’t see the brother’s punch coming either, and I wound up with a shiner the color of Joseph’s coat and found the fight was stopped. Sometimes it doesn’t pay to be chivalrous.

  My mother’s dad, Grandpa Nelson, was a rough and excitable sailor who had attained his barge captaincy in the years when I knew him. I loved him and my grandmother very much, and I used to visit them during trips from port to port as a tug pulled their loads of lumber and coal. I can still recall the fresh doughnuts and milk Grandmother served in that cozy little cabin. Grandpa was a scrapper, and invariably when he had his own load on in some saloon or other, he was “on the prod.” Unfailingly he would get the hell knocked out of him. A guy would belt him across the room to the other wall, and Grandpa would pick himself up carefully and say menacingly to his assailant, “Have you had enough?” He never grew too old to take a poke from anybody.

  Years later when I was in the picture business, I met a captain of Royal Norwegian Air Force Intelligence who knew firsthand the Norwegian town in which my grandfather, Henry Nelson, was born. “Henry Nelson—of Dröbak?” said the captain. “Impossible. There are no Nelsons in Dröbak, never have been.” I then conjectured to the captain that in view of my grandfather’s notorious temper, he may have done something calamitous when in his cups, a something that forced him to change his name to Nelson. I also told the captain that Grandpa had tattooed on his burly, clawlike hands the initials “A. S.” “Ah, now,” said the captain, “that could well be Samuelson, because Dröbak is full of Samuelsons.” Which is as good a guess as any about my grandfather’s origins and early history.

  He and Grandmother came to live with us in 1907, and she died three years later. He lived on to the age of seventy-two, and when he died in 1912 after a broken hip led to pneumonia, he still owned a full head of healthy brown hair.

  My childhood was surrounded by trouble, illness, and my dad’s alcoholism, but as I said, we just didn’t have time to be impressed by all those misfortunes. I have an idea that the Irish possess a built-in don’t-give-a-damn that helps them through all stress. Moreover, we had the advantage of an awful lot of love in our family, and wherever I lived when I was a kid—East Seventy-ninth Street, East Ninety-sixth Street, Ridgewood out on Long Island, and back again to Manhattan—we had each other, and that was enough. We went to church every Sunday and instructions every Tuesday to become good Catholics. We all made our First Holy Communion and received Confirmation at the proper time. Harry was even an altar boy for a while.

  If we didn’t have much in material gain, we were amply supplied with the best in nonmaterial gain—lots of laughs. Brother Ed was the wit of the family, and probably for that and for his youth, he was the favorite among the brothers. His humor never diminished. When he was seven we were living in Ridgewood in somewhat cramped quarters. Ed and Harry slept in my mother’s very large bedroom; Harry and I slept together in a bed at the end of the room. Bedtime was eight o’clock, which was also the time for Harry and me to knock hell out of each other. One night we were at it, and Mom ordered us to stop. We didn’t, and in the dark we could hear her scrambling for her shoes at the side of the bed. “Boys, if you don’t stop,” she said, “I’m going to let this shoe fly at you.” Then up piped little Eddie in his reedy voice to chant a popular song of the day, “Shoo, fly, don’t bother me; shoo, fly, don’t bother me.” That broke us up for fair.

  When Eddie grew up to be a doctor, that wit was always with him. Another doctor who went through med school with Ed was a congenital sourpuss, having no time for humor or life’s little pleasantries. Some years after graduation, Ed was talking with some of his classmates and the name of this uncongenial friend came up. “Whatever happened to him?” one doctor asked. Someone replied that he had become a proctologist. Ed immediately shot back, “Mirror, mirror, on the wall!”

  Bill was always the businessman of the family and showed a distinct salesman’s flair from very early age. When he was eight, a cauliflower peddler showed up on our street. He stopped at the corner, put the weight on his horse’s bit, and called all the street youngsters around him. “Listen, kids,” he said, “you go up through that apartment house and see how many of these cauliflowers you can sell. For every one you sell, I’ll give you two cents apiece.” Bill, who weighed fifty pounds at most, took a big bag of the vegetables, climbed up five flights, and started to hawk them from door to door. He sold all he had, came down to get another bag, and went right back up to sell some more. It is the simple truth that Bill was born shrewd, and thenceforth was always on the prowl for a good deal.

  Once he was selling advertising for a women’s wear magazine, and on his lunch hour he’d go to a nearby auction room to pick up bargains and sell them at a nice profit. This was instinctive, as was his flair for gambling. As a superb poker player and knight errant of the pool table, he would have been a kingpin among professional gamblers if he had ever taken that route. Even during high school he was making extra money at the pool tables at lunch hour, and after school, it was over to the friendly neighborhood crap game. Inevitably he became a salesman, and top-flight, too. When I was out in Hollywood and in need of someone to do the business end for me, I asked Bill to come out. That worked out very well indeed. Bill’s business acumen over the years has been notable, and to this day I go to him for counsel on such matters because my judgment in this area I trust not a damn.

  1. Assertive even in the cradle, 1899.

  2. Carolyn Nelson, First Holy Communion.

  3. Carolyn Nelson. The hair was curly, red, and beautiful.

  4. The ball team of the famous Nut Club, Yorkville. Catcher Cagney in the last row, second from left.

  5. The scene that made grapefruit famous. Mae Clarke on the receiving end. The Public Enemy, 1931.

  6. With Jean Harlow. The Public Enemy.

  When Bill and I were youngsters, I had the sweet tooth of the family, but he was close runner-up. One time when he was ill, he was given pennies by my mother to make him feel a little better. In those days, some stores sold broken chips of Nabisco cream cra
ckers at a penny a bag. Quite a bargain. Bill got a sack of these chips with one of his pennies, and my sweet tooth set me quivering on his trail, hounding him down for some of them. I followed Bill until I found a way to get those chips for free. The way was simple, and it brought out the ham in me for the first time. I pretended I was a monkey, scratching my sides, making idiot faces and grunting, “Feed the monkey! Feed the monkey!” This amused him considerably and he kept pushing the Nabiscos at me. The realization that he had given all his sweets away made him go into his howling act. The wail immediately brought my mother. She cuffed me as I deserved and got Bill some more crackers. I didn’t realize until much later that this was my first paid acting job.

  Another time Bill got an apple and I asked him for a bite. He offered it to me surrounded by as much of his hands as could cover the apple. I took him by both wrists so he wouldn’t escape, and I bit into that apple like a little crocodile. When I pulled away, three quarters of it was in my mouth, and Bill did the banshee again. The louder he screamed, the faster I chewed.

  I was good in school, particularly in spelling. When we moved to Ridgewood I can remember it was no trouble winning the monthly dollar Mom used to give the one who had the best report card. It was also in Ridgewood that I had a spectacular spelling bee victory. After I had spelled everybody else down, the teacher kept feeding me words for another half hour, and it was plainly boring her. Then came the word “sovereign,” and I blew it. The look of blessed relief on her face is with me yet.

  But Ridgewood was too good to last. We moved back to the hurly-burly of East Seventy-ninth Street, and that was saddening. I went from straight A’s on my report card to B’s and C’s. In time, those feelings were raised a bit by my first encounter with the ladies. My first love (I was five) was a girl named Annie. I never knew her last name. She was probably ten or twelve, and used to come by my house on her way to and from school. Whether by accident or design, my shoelaces were always untied when Annie strolled by, and her sense of neatness drove her to stop and tie them. My next love was a beautifully delicate American girl, and I designate her nationality because our area was almost exclusively first-generation German, Irish, Jewish, Italian, Hungarian, and Czech.

  This “pure American” girl was the sister of a friend of mine, and I simply worshiped her beauty from afar, never once speaking to her. Years later I met the chap who married her, and I learned to my very real sorrow that she had died in her twenties.

  The polyglot nature of my neighborhood is the basic reason why all my life I’ve had such an appreciation and understanding of dialects. I ought to—I was surrounded by them. Indeed, I was twenty-two before I ever met an elderly man who spoke without an accent, and when I heard this fella speak, I was actually startled. We kids picked up all kinds of phrases from the Italians, the Czechs, the Germans, and the Jews, and in school I was a rather good German student. At least 90 per cent of my classmates were Jewish, mostly up from the Lower East Side, and as I studied German, I learned the Yiddish equivalent from my Jewish pals. I still speak some German but a lot more Yiddish.

  Many popular songs of my youth were parodied in Yiddish by clever music hall comedians. Years later, my friend Noel Madison, who perennially acted gangsters in Hollywood movies, taught me a sprightly Yiddish version of “Alice Blue Gown” that I still fondly remember:

  In my little baysaschmidrush downtown,

  When I first put my new tallis on,

  I was both proud and shy.

  Als ruv passed me by; he wished me gut Yontiff;

  Ich hob gezugt alivai.

  Then the rabbeh gave me an aliyah,

  Oh, she whispered right into my ear:

  “How much can you schnorrer?”

  Ich hob gezugt, “Please don’t bother—

  In my little baysaschmidrush downtown.”

  Translated, this goes approximately:

  In my little temple downtown,

  When I first put my new prayer shawl on,

  I was both proud and shy.

  As the old rabbi passed me by; he wished me good holiday;

  I said it should happen to me.

  Then the rabbi’s wife gave me quite an honor;

  Oh, she whispered right into my ear:

  “How much can you contribute?”

  I said, “Please don’t bother-

  In my little temple downtown.”

  I enjoy speaking Yiddish. It’s a wonderful tongue for storytelling, and on occasion I’ve inserted a few bits of Yiddish dialogue in the pictures for the sure-fire comedy effect. We realized when we did it that there would be very little small-town reaction, but in the big towns where there was a substantial Jewish population the effect was pretty stimulating.

  Our neighborhood gloried in exotic types. There was, for example, my friend Maud. Of the girls in our age group, she could fight better than anyone else, so she became their leader. She was a lefty, and when I boxed with her (always without boxing gloves, of course), she would absolutely stiffen me with that left. Her stomach punch would carry through to my backbone. What were my fists doing all this time? Sparring, of course. It wouldn’t be gentlemanly to actually hit a girl, even one a foot taller.

  I remember once a little blocky girl, leader of the Seventy-seventh Street girls, tossed a challenge at my girl, and a match was arranged. With the wild cheers of each gang ringing in their ears, the two girls commenced to beat hell out of each other. Queens-bury rules—no hair pulling or face scratching.

  A dope addict (“cokie” or “hophead” we called them then) named Daly was urging the little blocky girl on very loudly. Fat Bella, one of Maud’s pals, said a few words to him, he replied in kind to her, and she retorted with an overhand right. Daly grabbed the wide, tightly wired ribbon in her hair and swung her off her feet, making her go round and round like a Roman candle. Then we young kids jumped Daly and heaved rocks at him as he scuttled up the street. Maud’s fight flowered into another between two younger girls about ten years old. The brother of one of the girls stepped in, slapped his sister in the face, and told her to go home. Then this little child said indignantly to her brother, “Well, she ain’t gonna call me no whore!”

  People. Wonderful, remarkable people. This, it seems to me, is what an autobiography should be rich in—the people who make up a person’s real environment. For the past fifteen years I have grumbled my reasons to various people why I have refused all along to do an autobiography. One time in reply to a pal who suggested I put it all down, I versified

  Mine not the searching eye;

  Mine not to ask the why;

  Mine not to vie with wit;

  Mine not to give a damn.

  There are ladies present.

  But, on reflection, in addition to setting the record straight about my life, I have come to realize that these pages give me the chance to talk about these wonderful people who have enriched my life, and I propose to do so. A particular friend of mine has tagged me “the faraway fella” for reasons that I’ll presently uncover. On the whole it seems an appropriate designation and a fitting subtitle for all I set down here, but an equally appropriate subtitle would be The Remarkable People. People fascinate the hell out of me. Frankly, most biographies and autobiographies bore me witless because things the authors find engrossing, I frequently don’t. I’ll put the onus on myself there. What is trivia to me is undoubtedly very important to the writer and I don’t want to second guess him. But the fact remains that in a number of show business autobiographies, for example, I find (for my taste) too much of the author’s connections with the upper reaches of society and not nearly enough of the really remarkable people who make up his workaday world.

  One of the most remarkable people in my life is Artie Klein, my second oldest living friend. (Pete Snyder is the oldest.) Like most of my closest pals in the early days, Artie was Jewish, coming along when I was about thirteen. I first met Artie on the dock when I “hooked it up” with “The Jap.” The Jap was a lefty, and he threw
that hand into my belly until I damned near threw up. Finally, in a clinch, I coughed as a preliminary to vomiting, and that seemed to clear my head, giving me my second wind. I worked the boy over and beat him rather badly.

  The Jap was Jewish but had slanting eyes and looked decidedly oriental, hence the nickname. Nicknames proliferated along our street. If a kid was dark-skinned, Caucasian or not, he became “Yellow” or “Nigger.” A very light-haired fella was “Whitey;” a diminutive boy was “Shorty,” and a guy needing a haircut was “Wiggy.” The fella running errands for the drugstore had to be “Doc.” One lad when asked what was the matter with so-and-so answered, “Oh, he’s got a skinthease!,” meaning skin disease. He was called “Skinthy” from then on, even into adulthood. I was always “Red” because my hair was the solidest of that hue in our family.

  But back to Artie. Artie was always Artie, and so he is to this day. I still call him about every week, and we go over the old days. He was with me when I had some of my most memorable “hook ups.” Once as he, a pal named Bert, and I were walking down First Avenue, a couple of characters on the corner of Eighty-seventh Street were watching as we strolled by. Suddenly one of these lads started for Bert and he took off down the street. It seemed the pursuing guy’s gal friend rather fancied Bert. I looked at one of the remaining characters, and it was clear he was spoiling for a fight. “Looking for trouble?” I said. He replied with a beautiful right that caught me over the left eye.

  My head flipped back and I saw a spectacular flash of yellow light, but through it all I heard Artie say, “Go ahead, Red!” He caught the new hat I was wearing before it hit the ground. I was glad he made the catch as that hat had cost me $1.50 just the day before. As to the size of the gent I was facing, I was standing on the curbstone, a foot high, and I was looking right into his Adam’s apple. We went at it. He threw some of those long roundhousers, hoping to nail me again, but I stepped inside and threw a short right to the nose. I heard it break. And this big clown who had just (to use a word then current) “sundayed” me, broke into tears, and in answer to my “Had enough?” agreed sobbingly that he had.