Powers Boothe

Mister Boothe has a daughter who is also an acclaimed actress. 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. Most recently, Boothe has played a featured role as brothel-owner Cy Tolliver on the HBO series Deadwood. 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!". However, his most lauded subsequent performance was in the 1990 CBS-TV film Family Of Spies where he played traitor Navy Officer John Walker. 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 gave several fine performances in other films like Southern Comfort, A Breed Apart, Red Dawn, The Emerald Forest, and Extreme Prejudice, as well as HBO films like Into The Homeland and By Dawn's Early Light. 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 said at the time, "this may be either the bravest moment of my career or the dumbest." He joined the ranks of Humphrey Bogart and other actors when he portrayed Philip Marlowe in a series of short films for HBO in 1983-1986. 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. During the actors' strike in the fall of 1980, he was one of the few who showed up at the ceremonies to claim his prize. 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. A young actor named Powers Boothe captures all the charisma and evil of 'Dad', Jim Jones." Boothe won an Emmy Award for his role, beating out veterans Henry Fonda and Jason Robards. 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. In Time Magazine's story on the production, Boothe was praised: "There is one extraordinary performance. 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.

Boothe's portrayal of the crazed cult leader received critical acclaim. He was one of the founders of the Screen Actors Guild and president of the Guild from 1942-44. A native of Texas with extensive stage experience, Boothe first came to prominence in 1980 playing the title role in the CBS-TV movie Guyana Tragedy: The Story Of Jim Jones. 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). Powers Boothe is a television and movie 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.