Cagney by Cagney Page 9

  Next on the agenda was Angels with Dirty Faces, which got some attention at the time but, like so many of the catch-as-catch-can pictures we made then, it had an insubstantial script that the actors patched up here and there by improvising right on the set. In Angels, for instance, one of the first scenes has Pat O’Brien as the priest in the confessional, and I as Rocky the hood on the other side of the covered window. In the script as written, the priest slides back the latticed opening and says, “What can I do for you, my son?” Then I am supposed to say, “What did you do with those fountain pens we stole out of the freight car fifteen years ago?” The priest says, “Rocky!,” and we shake hands. This was ludicrous. Pat and I, raised in the Church, knew the ceremonial forms, and very well did we know them. As it happened, on this picture the director, the producer, and the writer were all Jewish, so how could they be expected to know? I said to the director, Mike Curtiz, “Mike, you can’t do the scene as written.” He asked why and I said, “There is a certain ritual to confession, and the ritual must be observed. The priest doesn’t say, ‘What can I do for you, my son?’ First, the penitent says, ‘Bless me, father, for I have sinned. I confess to Almighty God and to you, father. My last confession was thus-and-so many weeks ago, et cetera, et cetera.’ That’s just for openers. Then after it’s all over, the priest gives the penitent some penance. And there’s no hand-shaking, believe me!” Mike said, “Well, couldn’t they walk outside and shake hands?” So Pat and I fashioned the scene as it needed to be.

  By this time in my career, what with my experiences in the other pictures featuring gunfire going slightly awry, one would think I’d learned my lesson. But here I was in Angels with Dirty Faces facing the real thing again. I was up at a window firing down at the police, and one shot called for me to be right at the opening as machine-gun bullets took the window out around my head. Then, whatever it was—common sense or a hunch—something made me cautious, and I said to Mike Curtiz, “Do it in process.” (That was basically a superimposition.)

  “Jim, this man will not hurt you.”

  “Do it in process, Mike. I will not be there.” I got out of the scene, and Burke, the professional machine gunner, fired the shots. One of the bullets hit the steel edge of the window, was deflected, and went right through the wall where my head had been. That convinced me, need I say it, that flirting this way with real bullets was ridiculous.

  The character I played in the picture, Rocky Sullivan, was in part modeled on a fella I used to see when I was a kid. He was a hophead and a pimp, with four girls in his string. He worked out of a Hungarian rathskeller on First Avenue between Seventy-seventh and Seventy-eighth streets—a tall dude with an expensive straw hat and an electric-blue suit. All day long he would stand on that corner, hitch up his trousers, twist his neck and move his necktie, lift his shoulders, snap his fingers, then bring his hands together in a soft smack. His invariable greeting was “Whadda ya hear? Whadda ya say?” The capacity for observation is something every actor must have to some degree, so I recalled this fella and his mannerisms, and gave them to Rocky Sullivan just to bring some modicum of difference to this roughneck. I did that gesturing maybe six times in the picture—that was over thirty years ago—and the impressionists are still doing me doing him.

  The Cagney mimics I’ve seen lately, however, don’t hitch the trousers so much as just put their hands out in front and kind of wag their heads a bit, and I think they’ve lost something. One item a number of them do get right is the one of holding my arms in front of my thighs instead of at the side, as most people do. This is my natural stance, due to my having done a great deal of weight lifting from boyhood on. Indeed, I have done so much lifting and hard work through the years that I can’t straighten my arms. My tendons have actually shortened. I don’t try to hold my arms in any particular way, they just hang there in front, completely relaxed.

  Most of my imitators also say, “All right, you guys!,” which I don’t remember ever saying. I think some of these modifications of Rocky came from the Bowery Boys grabbing some of those mannerisms and altering them slightly when they made their own series. Their constant repetition of those altered mannerisms might have influenced the professional imitators because, for instance, “All right, you guys!” sounds like a Bowery Boys’ line to me. Moreover, I never said, “You dirty rat!”

  The Bowery Boys, known as the Dead End Kids when we made Angels with Dirty Faces in 1938, had been throwing their weight around quite a bit with directors and other actors at the time. It developed that I was to have a little off-screen encounter with them. Our opening scene in the picture takes place in the basement of a deserted building. I am fresh out of Sing Sing, and the kids have just rolled me for my wallet. I walk in, tell them to hand over, and with a little emphatic coercion force them to get up the wallet. According to the script my next line was “Come here, suckers,” and I lead them over to the door on which is carved “Rocky Sullivan,” put there when I was a kid. The kids must look at this with respectful awe because of my rough reputation and say, “You’re Rocky Sullivan?”

  We shot the scene, but just before I said, “Come here, suckers,” Leo Gorcey said, “He’s psychic!,” thereby throwing the rhythm of the scene right out the window, souring the whole thing very nicely. So in the next take just before I said, “Come here, suckers,” I gave Leo Gorcey a stiff arm right above the nose—bang! His head went back, hitting the kid behind him, stunning them both momentarily. Then I said, “Now listen here, we’ve got some work to do, so let’s have none of this goddamned nonsense. When we get on, we’re pros—we’re doing the job we’re asked to do. Understood?”

  “Yeah,” they said. One of the kids turned to Gorcey and said, “Who the hell you think you got there—Bogart?” I learned later that Bogie had incurred their disfavor on a film they’d done together, and they expressed their displeasure by taking his pants off. But in our picture, once they had learned that their jumping me would be troublesome for them, we got along fine.

  The leading lady of Angels with Dirty Faces was that lovely, talented gal, Ann Sheridan. So much to offer—and a three-pack-a-day smoker. She just didn’t eat because cigarettes killed her appetite. One day a well-known doctor came on the Angels set, and after we got talking a bit, I asked him to lunch, inviting Annie to join us. At the table she lit a cigarette immediately. She ordered ham and eggs, took one little bit of the ham, then lit another cigarette. The doctor asked her if she smoked a great deal and she said, “Oh, yes.” He said, “And you don’t eat.” Annie said she just didn’t feel like eating at the moment. The doctor said, “You know, time was when coronary thrombosis was a great new thing among women. Whenever it happened, it went up and down the land, doctor to doctor—’a female coronary!’ Not lately. Cigarettes have done it.” Annie said, “Oh, really?” and went right on smoking. Years later when the lung cancer hit, she didn’t have much of a chance, and what a powerful shame that was. A mighty nice gal, Annie.

  The ending of Angels with Dirty Faces has prompted a continually asked question over the years: did Rocky turn yellow as he walked to the electric chair, or did he just pretend to? For those who haven’t seen the picture, I must explain that Rocky becomes the idol of the street kids in his old neighborhood, and when he is ultimately brought to justice and condemned to die, these youngsters still hold him up as a model to emulate. Rocky’s childhood pal, now a priest, comes to him in the death house and pleads with him to kill the kids’ unhealthy admiration of him by turning yellow at the last minute, by pretending cowardice as he is being led to the electric chair. Rocky scorns the request.

  The execution scene is this: cheekily contemptuous of my escorts, I am being led along the last mile when suddenly, without any warning, I go into a seizure of fear, twisting and turning in the clutch of the guards as I try to prevent them from leading me into the death chamber. Or is it a seizure of fear? Am I not instead doing a favor for my priest pal and the kids by pretending to be yellow, thereby discouraging the you
ngsters from following in my convict footsteps? Through the years I have actually had little kids come up to me on the street and ask, “Didya do it for the father, huh?” I think in looking at the film it is virtually impossible to say which course Rocky took—which is just the way I wanted it. I played it with deliberate ambiguity so that the spectator can take his choice. It seems to me it works out fine in either case. You have to decide.

  It was this picture and others like it, of course, that guaranteed me a tough-guy image, an image that I am bound to say has sometimes proved mighty wearisome to me off the screen. People who don’t know me have asked friends if I was really a tough character, and upon receiving assurance that I was just doing a job when portraying a hood, have perhaps not always been convinced. One fella at Warner’s with a very real ability to inject himself into any conversation, had a question for me one time. “Off-screen,” he said, “you’re very quiet and unassuming, but when you get on there, you’re a pretty boisterous fella.” I admitted this. His memorable comeback was, “Now, when are you acting—on-screen, or off?”

  The confusion of the individual with the role he plays can cause the backyard weight lifter to decide that he can easily take the movie tough guy, and these challengers appear at the damnedest times. Years and years ago I was at the Cocoanut Grove for a New Year’s gathering, seated at a table with my back to the dance floor, chatting with my friends. A complete stranger slapped me on the back and demanded to know how I was. This is one thing that really burns me, so I paid no attention. A bit later he came around again and said, “Why don’t you get up and dance, Jimmy? Come on, have some fun—you’re too quiet.” I told the people I was with, “I’ve got to get out of here or I’m going to take this son-of-a-bitch.” They saw trouble brewing so we got up to go, reached the door, and Mr. Loudmouth actually came after me.

  “Oh, what’s the matter, Jimmy, can’t you take it?” he said.

  “Oh, you son-of-a-bitch,” I said, and started for him. Fortunately two talent agents I knew grabbed my arms and pulled me away because I was primed to beat the bejesus out of that character.

  A similar clown confronted me when Jack MacCaulay, an old Columbia school chum of mine, and I went up to see Dartmouth play Yale. During the half, three or four typical college lads with the crewcuts and flowing neck mufflers came over to me. They offered a drink, and when I declined with thanks, they asked if I drank, and I said no. Their ringleader was standing on the long concrete steps leading down to the field, and he regarded me with some truculence. After learning that I didn’t drink, he offered me a cigarette, which I also politely refused. “Look,” he said, “we’re going to a party right after the game and we’d like you to come with us.” I explained that I was committed to going up north right after the game.

  “Ohhh—and you don’t drink?” I said no. “And you don’t smoke?” I said no. “And you won’t come to the party?” I said no.

  “Well, maybe you’d like to fight?”

  “What a horse’s ass you are,” I said. “Starting an argument with your back turned to thirty feet of concrete steps. What do you suppose would happen with one belt?”

  “Oh, yeah-like that, huh?”

  “Yeah.”

  “O.K.,” he said, and walked away.

  My reaction in these instances has inevitably been to do the thing I was raised to do: cheerfully belt the guy who gets out of line. But that doesn’t work these days, and I’ve decided that the only thing to do is to stay out of public places where these clowns foregather. The average person out for a social evening is on his best behavior, but among them is usually a single jackass who has to make the splurge. And if I hit one of these creeps, who would have been wrong? Who would have received all the publicity?

  And yet I should be grateful that my tough-guy image is something I could put on at will. Too many of the lads in my old neighborhood were unable to remove that image because it was engrained. Like Bootah, my old classmate who really did go to death row, and Willie Carney, the boy I had the three-day fight with. Some time after I had been in pictures, I heard from Willie. He had served time for robbery, and while in prison had terrorized all the guards right up to the head keeper. Willie was transferred from Sing Sing to Dannemora, a hellhole for incorrigibles. While there, the story had it, he cut another prisoner’s throat and was consigned to Pilgrim State Hospital for the Criminally Insane on Long Island.

  While there he wrote me. I’ve still got that letter. It reads, “Dear Jim, Maybe you remember when you and me hooked it up on Seventy-second Street and First Avenue. I’m over here at the Pilgrim State Hospital. My nerves are all shot, but I’m going to get out next spring. My sister is going to take care of me. If you have any old clothes you’re not using, I’d appreciate your sending them on. Cigarettes, anything.”

  Of course I sent him clothing, cigarettes, and money, unfortunately putting the last item in cash. I never heard from Willie again. The best guess as to what happened is that the kindly guards glommed onto all of it. His life was such a waste because he had a talent for leadership. All the kids in the block were in great awe of him, and even the grownups kept a respectful distance. His parents were both on the bottle, and his older brother, Danny, tried to substitute for them. But the streets of New York were too tough even for a guy as tough as Willie.

  * “I must really insist on footnote space here. What I meant additionally by ‘far-away fella’ is that this lad Cagney also has a deep strain of altruism running under his words and deeds. Unlike most, he is a thinking man, and a good and kindly one to boot.

  —PAT O’BRIEN”

  5

  By the late 1930s, my pattern of living was fairly well set. Learn the words, do the scenes, and then when the picture was finished, without any delay, back East to Martha’s Vineyard. On the final day’s shooting, I’d hector the assistant director a bit by asking him if this really was the last day, if I could absolutely count on being free tomorrow for departure. And when it was certain that I was, on the phone immediately to reserve a drawing room for the following morning.

  When we moved to Martha’s Vineyard, I didn’t understand the Vineyarders. Or more specifically, I couldn’t understand why they were so distant, so obviously resentful of off-islanders. I would say good morning to them, and they deep-froze me, going right on by. Gradually I began to understand. First, of course, I was an off-islander, and, second, I was an actor. I might as well have had three heads. At that time I wrote:

  When you give your heart to fair Martha’s Isle

  That Queen of insular sluts,

  It’s like falling in love with a beautiful whore

  Who hates your goddamned guts.

  Once a group of newspapermen and cameramen was coming to the island to do a story on me. This was late November and a very harsh November, too, when boats were irregularly scheduled. On the scheduled date the boat didn’t come, and the Warner’s publicity man asked me to please make it to Woods Hole over on the mainland. I asked a farmer who worked for me just how I could charter a boat, and he arranged for Frankie Vincent to take me over. On the way over in the darkness, Frankie Vincent began to talk about the farmer who had arranged the charter. He learned from me that the farmer was MacInnis, from “up-island”—the west side of the island.

  “Oh,” said Frankie, “the son of MacInnis, the jeweler downtown. I understand he works for an actor fella up-island.” I admitted that, I admitted I was the actor. “Oh, good God almighty!” said Frankie, “you never know who you’re going to meet, do you?” I told Frankie I had found an old genealogy in my attic tracing the Vincents back in all their full chronology to 1765. He said these were his people. I said I presumed that they might be, and I asked him if he ever got up our way, to Chilmark. “Oh, no,” he said, “last time I was up that way was fifteen—twenty years ago.” Chilmark is eight miles away.

  A mighty pleasant old fella, Frankie, and we got along fine. The next time I saw him he was over at Woods Hole, and I said, “Hello,
Mr. Vincent.”

  “Hello, Mr. Cagney.”

  “I enjoyed my trip with you,” I said.

  “I did, too. It was very entertaining for me ’cause we don’t meet very many people like you.”

  Not long after that, I ran into him again, and he said, “You know, it’s a very interesting thing—but everybody says you’re kind of a snotty guy. That’s what they say. I haven’t found you that way.”

  “Mr. Vincent,” I said, “let me explain. I came to the island because it’s quiet and remote from all the things I’m used to. And when people come into my backyard and drive busloads of tourists in there, that’s when I get really snotty and say mean things. The bus driver complains of my snottiness. Well, he simply demands the privilege of coming into my property with his big bus loaded with people clicking cameras, full of questions, when all I want is a bit of quiet and the privacy any person is absolutely entitled to.”

  During those early years at the Vineyard our front yard, about a ten-acre piece, had become badly overgrown, so Mr. MacInnis thought of Gilson Hammett, a farmer next door, who owned a mowing machine. Mac walked over to Hammett’s, talked with him, and it was all arranged. I left the island for a few days, and on return I noticed that the cutting had not been done. Mac walked over to Hammett’s and asked him why nothing had happened.

  “Well,” said Hammett, “I got there to do it with my horse and the mowing machine, and there was a sign on the gate that said ‘No Admittance—Trespassers Punished.’ So I turned around and came on home.”

  “That didn’t mean you—!” Mac said to him.

  “It didn’t say that,” said Hammett. Remarkable people—people of their word.