“The most difficult son of a bitch I’ve ever known”: James Cagney once named the best actor of all time
Great actors of a similar ilk often end up in the running for the same parts, but James Cagney never let the fact he was always in competition obscure the fact he viewed one of his peers as the finest performer in the business.
Not that Cagney didn’t deserve to be placed in the exact same bracket. The star’s instantly recognisable cadence and penchant for playing tough guys marked him out as a popular and in-demand talent who flexed their muscles in Angels with Dirty Faces, The Roaring Twenties, White Heat, and many more.
Orson Welles once called him “maybe the greatest actor who ever appeared in front of a camera,” so it was clear that Cagney would make the top of many people’s all-time list, too. Ironically, given his fondness for playing burly bruisers, the crowning achievement of his career came when he won the Academy Award for ‘Best Actor’ in a musical, with 1942’s Yankee Doodle Dandy a far cry from his usual on-screen persona.
Wherever he went, though, Spencer Tracy was never too far behind. In fact, not only were they born just nine months apart, but they even travelled in the same social circles. Alongside fellow Irish-American actors Pat O’Brien, Allen Jenkins, and Frank McHugh, the quintet were somewhat disparagingly dubbed as Hollywood’s ‘Irish Mafia’ by the gossip columnists of the time, even if they preferred the name ‘Boys Club’ themselves.
Classic crime drama Angels with Dirty Faces earned Cagney his first Oscar nomination for ‘Best Actor’, but he ended up losing out to Tracy, who scooped the prize for his turn in the biopic Boys Town. In another dash of the irony that had a habit of repeatedly popping up during his time in the spotlight, Cagney was under consideration to play Father Flanagan in the latter, but the producers decided against it because he’d been largely typecast as a no-nonsense ruffian.
They remained close friends for decades regardless of how often they found themselves being considered for the same roles, and the respect between them even saw Cagney brand his buddy as the cream of the performative crop. In Garson Kanin’s Tracy and Hepburn: An Intimate Memoir, he did admit that the subject was a pain in the arse, not that it dissuaded him from celebrating his talent.
“Spence? He’s the most difficult son of a bitch I’ve ever known,” he said. “And the best. Certainly the best actor.” In some cases, accusations might have been levelled that one friend calling another the greatest they’d ever seen could be construed as transparent back-slapping, but that’s hardly the case when both Cagney and Tracy are regarded as among the biggest stars and most naturally gifted actors of their time.
