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Cagney came from a poor Irish-American New York family but once he found his metier as an actor, it was not long before he was recognized as a brilliantly energetic and powerful phenomenon. After the tremendous impact of Public Enemy - in which he notoriously pushed half a grapefruit into Mae Clarke's face - he was typecast as a gangster because of the terrifying violence that seemed to be pent up within him. Years of pitched battle with Warner Brothers finally liberated him from those roles, and he went on to star in such triumphs as the musicals Yankee Doodle Dandy (winning the 1942 Oscar for best actor) and Love Me or Leave Me. Even so, one of his greatest later roles involved a return to crime - as the psychopathic killer in the terrifying White Heat. He retired from films in 1961 after making Billy Wilder's One, Two, Three, only to return twenty years later for Ragtime. But however much Cagney personified violence and explosive energy on the screen, in life he was a quiet, introspective, and deeply private man, a poet, painter, and environmentalist, whose marriage to his early vaudeville partner was famously loyal and happy. His story is one of the few Hollywood biographies that reflect a fulfilled life as well as a spectacular career.

John McCabe was a professional actor from the age of seven, first appearing with various stock companies in his native Detroit. He blended the acting profession with his schooling for decades, finally receiving a doctorate from the Shakespeare Institute, Stratford-upon-Avon, England, in 1954. While at Stratford he met Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, who were then touring British music halls. From this encounter came a deep friendship with Laurel and the authorized biography, Mr. "Laurel and Mr. Hardy (1962), which firmly established John McCabe as the world authority on this great comedy team. Other show business biographies followed, and in 1973 he was selected to ghostwrite James Cagney's autobiography, "Cagney by Cagney.In addition to his many years as a professional actor, John McCabe has taught acting at Detroit's Wayne State University, the City College of New York, Interlochen Arts Academy, and New York University, where, as professor of dramatic art, he headed the Educational theatre Department. Now retired from teaching, he lives on Mackinac Island, Michigan, where he has returned to acting and where he lecture-performs a Shakespeare play each summer.