Word: cagneys
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...George's point of view while filming it in a style as fancy and knowing as Simone's. No wonder audiences have taken to this gritty romance as to a mongrel puppy; for at heart Mona Lisa is an old-fashioned poor-soul weepie, and George is less a Cagney rakehell than a Chaplin tramp. Ever clever, though, Jordan massages the viewer's sentimentality like Simone servicing a dim, fond client...
...Cagney's pugnacious, straight-from-the-shoulder style and his genuine modesty ("I was always a journeyman actor," he once said) belied both his professionalism and his artistic versatility. He could portray protean Actor Lon Chaney in the film biography Man of a Thousand Faces as easily as the irascible ship's captain in Mister Roberts. His performance as Bottom in A Midsummer Night's Dream inspired Director Max Reinhardt to label him the "best actor in Hollywood." White Heat contains a typical bit of Cagney , business, less a trick than a nuance. He had the killer Cody Jarrett...
...favorite film was Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942), a black-and-white musical biography of George M. Cohan that seemed to pop into color whenever Cagney laced on his tap shoes. "Once a song-and-dance man, always a song-and- dance man," said Cagney, who won his only Academy Award for the role. "Those few words tell as much about me professionally as there is to tell...
...used the fast-changing rhythms of a hoofer to orchestrate a characterization. Like all the best actors, he always made it look easy. Like Spencer Tracy, he seemed a natural force: everything seemed to flow out without calculation. Tracy, however, made chamber music; Cagney was a marching band. It is probably this particular blend of effortlessness and theatricality that moved Orson Welles to marvel, "You're supposed to be scaled down and subtle in movie acting. But look at Cagney--he's big. Everything he does is big, and it works...
...Cagney's own acting technique was not concerned with size or scale. "Want some advice from the old man?" he once inquired of a desperate newcomer. "Walk in, plant yourself, look the other fellow in the eye and tell the truth." That...