The one and only actor James Cagney hated working with: “I was going to knock him on his ass”
To illustrate the towering legacy he left behind and his enduring status as one of the single most important and influential performers to ever grace the silver screen, James Cagney can best be described in the 21st century as your favourite actor’s favourite actor’s favourite actor.
While the likes of Paul Muni, Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Daniel Day-Lewis, Jack Nicholson, Meryl Streep, Laurence Olivier, Katharine Hepburn, and the rest of the usual suspects have been cited as inspirations and influences by the current cream of the crop, Cagney inspired more inarguably Hollywood legends than just about anyone, ever.
He was Stanley Kubrick’s favourite, Clint Eastwood called him the one person “movies were invented for,” Orson Welles labelled him as “maybe the greatest actor who ever appeared in front of a camera,” and that’s only scratching the surface of the iconic, acclaimed, and awards-laden titans who held him in such high regard.
The only time Malcolm McDowell ever found himself in agreement with Kubrick was when he branded Cagney as “the greatest actor to ever grace the silver screen bar none,” with everyone from John Travolta and George C Scott to Gene Hackman and Robert Redford celebrating him as the be-all and end-all of the profession.
Needless to say, few industry heavyweights tip the scales quite like Cagney, and this is a guy who fought hard to avoid being typecast for the rest of his days after anchoring a string of indelible gangster flicks in the 1930s and 1940s. He had his issues with the studios, quitting Warner Bros twice and suing them once, but for the most part, he never experienced any issues with his co-stars.
There’s always one bad apple in the bunch, but at least it came at a fortuitous time. 1961’s One, Two, Three would mark the end of Cagney’s career as a full-time actor, with his comeback 20 years later in Ragtime the only time he’d ever return to cinema. He had his reasons for leaving, but he didn’t quite walk out with his head held high after encountering the one and only dickhead he ever had to deal with.
“It is very interesting that not until the very end of my career did I meet an uncooperative fellow actor,” he wrote in his memoir, Cagney on Cagney. “As I review the pictures I’ve been in, I realize that each and every actor I worked with had a part in shaping my summary views on acting. We all worked together rewardingly with what I hope was mutual enrichment. I never had the slightest difficulty with a fellow actor until the making of One, Two, Three.”
“In that picture, Horst Buchholz tried all kinds of scene-stealing didoes, and I had to depend on Billy Wilder to take some steps to correct this kid,” he explained. “If Billy hadn’t, I was going to knock him on his ass, which at several points I would have been very happy to do.”
Buchholz was fresh from his star-making turn in The Magnificent Seven, and turned down Lawrence of Arabia to star alongside Cagney. That admiration clearly didn’t translate to professionalism, since he was always remembered as the one and only co-star that the Academy Award-winning White Heat leading actively despised working with.
