Chances are if you ask most people under 50 who James Cagney was they’d have absolutely no idea. But that doesn’t worry Robert Creighton, who not only stars as the film legend in Cagney, he co-wrote the music and lyrics. Cagney was a big hit in New York and has its official opening night on Sunday at the El Portal Theatre in North Hollywood.
I spoke to Creighton about his passion project between sold-out performances of the Denver tryout of a little musical called Frozen, which is making it way to Broadway’s St. James Theatre for the launch of previews in February.
“Even if you don’t know who Jimmy Cagney is,” says Creighton, “You can come and get on board with this guy who was a tough guy who tried to support his family with multiple jobs. He hears about a job in vaudeville and he’s paid well. It’s the rise from nothing to one of the great screen legends of all times.”
Creighton’s passion for Cagney came about when he first went to New York after growing up north of Toronto. “I had an acting teacher who said, ‘you remind me of James Cagney. You kind of look like him and I know you like to tap dance on the side. You should watch his films.’ And I became obsessed immediately. I started reading about his life and got excited about him as an actor in film.”
Cagney was one of Hollywood’s great tough guys. But he was also a song-and-dance man. Amongst Cagney’s best-known films are White Heat (1949), Angels with Dirty Faces (1938) and Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942.) He won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of George M. Cohan in the latter film. Cohan is best known for writing such songs as You’re a Grand Old Flag, Give My Regards to Broadway and Yankee Doodle Dandy.
Since Yankee Doodle Dandy was a musical and is featured in Cagney, how did Creighton create new songs that would pair with the Cohan songs? “That was a big goal, to make it a cohesive piece,” he reveals. “Originally when Peter Colley and I wrote the first version it was a play with period music. When Christopher McGovern came in we realized if you want to do a musical about Cagney, you won’t find Cohan songs to tell the whole story. But it would be unsatisfactory to not have that music in there. That’s why I started writing music and lyrics. The new songs are more about his internal struggle. One of the things I’m happiest about is people who see the show say it all comes together.”
When asked why, in the midst of acting in a big Disney Broadway-bound musical, he decided to take some of his downtime and do the show in Los Angeles he immediately laughs. “You sound like my wife. There are three places I dreamed of doing Cagney. The first was New York because he was born in New York. And Los Angeles is where the legend was formed. The other is London. I wish we had more time to run in LA. I think it’s kind of cool that it’s close to where it actually happened.”
Cagney, who was the second person to ever receive the Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Film Institute, credited his “unmistakable touch of the gutter, without which this whole thing might not have happened.” What does Creighton think of Cagney’s own assessment of his career? “Isn’t that amazing? If you read Cagney by Cagney, my favorite book about him, the first 45 pages are about fights in the neighborhood. His breaking his hand, it healed and he finished the fight. He came from a rough and tumble childhood. His song and dance influenced how he was a gangster in terms of his physicality and how he moves. It was a magical combination.”
Creighton is torn when asked which of Cagney’s movies best encapsulates everything he was as an actor, performing and a man. “Great question. Can I answer with two? Yankee Doodle Dandy is one. I never get tired of watching his humor, his strength and his humor and his dancing. There’s a movie called The Roaring Twenties he made with Humphrey Bogart, where I think in that movie he is super tough, he is funny, he is romantic, he’s heartbreaking. He does it all in that film.”
He pauses a minute and then adds, “Angels with Dirty Faces and Love Me or Leave Me which I think would make a great Broadway show. “ Did he just hint at what he might do after he let’s Frozen go?
Photo Credit: Carol Rosegg