Anton BRUEHL
Australia 1900 – United States of America 1982
United States from 1919

Portrait of James Cagney 1935
gelatin silver photograph
Recto, signed in pencil on support, lower right, 'Anton Bruehl'.
image 34.6 (h) x 27.2 (w) cm
Gift of American Friends of the National Gallery of Australia, Inc., New York, NY, USA, made possible with the generous support of Anton Bruehl Jr, 2006.
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
NGA 2006.125

Cinema’s ‘Tough Guy’, James Cagney (1899–1986) was a versatile actor who was famous for cinema gangster roles playing a menacing Irishman. He first appeared in theatre as a chorus girl in the all-male Every Sailor at Keith’s Eighty-First Street Theater, a part for which he learned to tap dance. From then on, song-and-dance man Cagney appeared on Broadway and toured the vaudeville circuit before making his cinema debut in 1930 with Sinner’s Holiday.

Cagney made numerous films portraying the Irish-American experience. During 1935 he starred in Devil Dogs of the Air and The Irish in Us. Although of Irish and Norwegian extraction, he spoke fluent Yiddish due to his early years in the Jewish area of New York.