November 3, 1997
In 1974, McCabe was hired by Doubleday to ghostwrite movie legend James Cagney's autobiography, Cagney by Cagney. The hours of taped conversation and McCabe's subsequent friendship with Cagney, which lasted until the actor's death in 1984, are the heart of this affectionate biography of one of the cinema's most iconic performers. In excerpts from the biography and previously unpublished portions of the tapes, Cagney comes across as an intelligent, charming raconteur, talking in detail about his tough but joyful childhood in the streets of New York, his ferocious devotion to his family and to his wife of 62 years, his love of nature and country living. Best of all are the stories by Cagney and others of his life in show business, from the street kid to the song-and-dance man to the movies' most famous gangster in Public Enemy and White Heat. This is not really a full-scale biography--McCabe's readings of the films are perfunctory, and there's a tad too much uncritical star-gazing--but the accounts of Cagney's battles with Jack Warner over billing and money, the stories of his lifetime friendships with Spencer Tracy and Pat O'Brien and Cagney's no-nonsense, "just do it" pronouncements on the craft of acting are worth the price of the book. Fans of Cagney--and who isn't one?--will find this to be a vivid, readable portrait of one of the movie's most charismatic stars and most entertaining storytellers. The book is illustrated with more than 100 production stills, and includes an extensive listing of Cagney's stage, film and TV appearances.
August 1, 1997
Insider information from the ghostwriter for Cagney's autobiography.
Starred review from October 15, 1997
"Made it, Ma! Top of the world!" Those were the last words of Cagney character Cody Jarrett as he stood atop an oil tank, firing bullets into it. To watch Cody Jarrett in "White Heat" is to never forget the actor James Cagney. What McCabe has done with his book is to bring back vividly those old, golden images; he has written a reverent and good book, if not an especially creative one. But then the material is so innately dramatic and so reflective of Cagney's filmic persona: he was born in extreme poverty but was part of a tightly knit Irish family with a mother, Carrie, who held them all together with lots of love and a healthy dose of integrity, and a dear, gentle, alcoholic father, James Francis, who could make them all laugh with his wonderful stories; he was a tough New York kid who belonged to a gang, as did the other kids in Yorkville, but was a loner as well who fought for the gang when "bullies" threatened it (Carrie taught him to box); he had friends who fell into crime because of poverty, and paid for it; and in his later years, he wrote poetry, which reminds one of the poetic aspects of each vicious Cagney character who never failed to get the viewer on his side--lawmen be damned. McCabe, once a professional actor himself, compiles the stories of Cagney's life, so that one can see the bits of "business" that Cagney worked into his acting. In writing about the early years, he discusses the fits James Francis would lapse into after the alcohol had damaged his brain, describing the "keening" sound that rose out of him as the pain swept through his head. The description can light up a reader's memory with flashbacks of the prison scene in "White Heat" and that sound of Cody losing it on learning of his mother's death, well before the film itself is discussed. It's a book to get caught up in and hung up on. And, yes, there's stuff about the song-and-dance Cagney. ((Reviewed October 15, 1997))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 1997, American Library Association.)
December 2, 1997
McCabe certainly has the qualifications to write this biography of the film star: as the ghostwriter of Jimmy Cagney's autobiography Cagney by Cagney (1974. o.p.), he became a close personal friend, which led him to do extensive research for an unproduced musical life of Cagney. McCabe sees his friend as an extraordinarily talented man who is also basically a decent human being, not only a gifted actor but also a poet, painter, and environmentalist. The author traces Cagney's life from his poor beginnings with an alcoholic father but fiercely determined mother through his unexpected drift into vaudeville and the theater to his slow but inevitable rise to film stardom. He discusses Cagney's endless fights with Jack Warner and repeated attempts to break free of his film image as a gangster. Readers tired of the "warts and all" school of biography will enjoy this admiring portrayal. For public libraries. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 8/97.]--Marianne Cawley, Charleston Cty. Lib., S.C.