James Cagney

One of Hollywood's pre-eminent male stars of all time (eclipsed, perhaps, only by "King" Clark Gable and arguably by Gary Cooper or Spencer Tracy), and the cinema's quintessential "tough guy." Was also an accomplished if rather stiff hoofer and easily played light comedy. Ending three decades on the screen, retired to his farm in Stanfordville, New York (some 77 miles/124 km. north of his New York City birthplace), after starring in Billy Wilder's One, Two, Three (1961). Emerged from retirement to star in the 1981 screen adaptation of E.L. Doctorow's novel Ragtime (1981), in...