Lentorama 2022: It Happened on Easter

Day 8: Jimmy Cagney dies

Jimmy Cagney was one of the biggest stars during the Golden Age of Hollywood, and his career as an actor and dancer spanned eight decades, from the 1919 stage production Every Sailor to an appearance in the 1984 TV movie Terrible Joe Moran. He starred in classic films like The Public Enemy, Angels with Dirty Faces, and Yankee Doodle Dandy, for which he won an Academy Award.

Cagney had retired from acting in the early 1960s, but when he had a stroke in 1977 he was eventually convinced to start acting again by his wife Billie Vernon and restauranteur Ruth Zimmerman, who wanted him to do something to make up for the activities he could no longer do due to the stroke. He had small parts in Ragtime and in the aforementioned Terrible Joe Moran, though in the latter his dialogue was dubbed by Rich Little as further strokes had made a significant impact on his speech.

On Easter Sunday, March 30, 1986, Cagney suffered a fatal heart attack. He was 86.