James Cagney

James Cagney died of a heart attack while ill with diabetes in Stanfordville, New York at the age of 86 and is interred in the Cemetery of the Gate of Heaven in Hawthorne, New York. Coltrane lives near Glasgow, is married and has two children, and collects vintage cars. The origin of this is from the 1931 film Taxi! where Cagney delivered the line "Come out and take it, you dirty, yellow-bellied rat, or I'll give it to you through the door!" often misquoted as "Come out, you dirty rat, or I'll give it to you through the door!". His roles went from strength to strength in the 1990s with the TV series Cracker (1993-1996) and a BAFTA award as the stepping stone to parts in bigger films such as the James Bond films Goldeneye (1995) and The World Is Not Enough (1999), as well as giant Rubeus Hagrid in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (2001), Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002) and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004). The stereotypical impression of James Cagney involves wearing a trenchcoat and a hat and sneering "You dirty rat!", a line he never said. He also played a would-be private detective obsessed with Humphrey Bogart in the TV play The Bogie Man. As a tribute to the myriad talents and interests James Cagney had in life, his pallbearers included boxer Floyd Patterson, dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov, actor Ralph Bellamy, and film director Milos Forman. He co-starred with Eric Idle in Nuns on the Run (1990), and played the Pope in The Pope Must Die (1991).

Cagney's health deteriorated substantially after 1979, and the role in Ragtime, as well as a later television appearance in 1984, was designed to aid in his convalescence. On television he also appeared in Tutti Frutti (1987), as Samuel Johnson in Blackadder (1987) (a role he later reprised in the more serious Boswell and Johnson's Tour of the Western Islands (1993)), and in a number of stand-up and sketch comedy shows. In 1974 he received the Lifetime Achievement Award of the American Film Institute and in 1984 his friend Ronald Reagan awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom. He soon moved into films, obtaining small roles in a number of movies such as Death Watch (1980), Scrubbers (1983), Absolute Beginners (1986) and Mona Lisa (1986). During this hiatus Cagney rebuffed all film offers, including a substantial one in My Fair Lady, to devote time to learning how to paint (at which he became very accomplished), and tending to his beloved farm in Stanfordville, New York. His comic skills brought him roles in the television series The Comic Strip Presents (1982) and he was one of the stars of Laugh? I Nearly Paid My Licence Fee (1984). Cagney's final appearance on film was in Ragtime in 1981, capping a career that covered over seventy films, although his film prior to Ragtime had been in 1961 with One, Two, Three. He moved into acting in his early twenties, taking the stage name Coltrane (in tribute to jazz saxophonist John Coltrane) and working in theatre and stand-up comedy.

He was one of the founders of the Screen Actors Guild and president of the Guild from 1942-44. He was born in Rutherglen, Glasgow and educated (sporadically) at Glenalmond school in Perthshire, Glasgow School of Art, and the Moray House College Of Education in Edinburgh. He went on to better things including Angels with Dirty Faces (1938), an Academy Award-winning role in Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942), White Heat (1949, "Made it, Ma! Top of the world!"), and Mister Roberts (1955). Robbie Coltrane (birth name Robert MacMillan, some sources say Anthony MacMillan) (born March 30, 1950) is a Scottish actor. Cagney went on to star in numerous films, making his name as a 'tough guy' in a series of crime films such as The Public Enemy (1931), Blonde Crazy (1931) and Hard to Handle (1933). When Warner Brothers bought the film rights to the play Penny Arcade they took Cagney and his co-star Joan Blondell from the stage to the screen in Sinner's Holiday (1930).

He worked in vaudeville and on Broadway, marrying the dancer Frances Willard (aka: "Billie") Vernon on September 28, 1922. Born in Yonkers, New York, Cagney graduated from Stuyvesant High School in New York City in 1918. James Francis Cagney, Jr. (July 17, 1899–March 30, 1986) was an American film actor.