Cagney

[ kag-nee ]

Phonetic (Standard)IPA

noun

Cagney

/ ˈkæɡnɪ /

CagneyJames18991986MUSFILMS AND TV: actor James. 1899–1986, US film actor, esp in gangster roles; his films include The Public Enemy (1931), Angels with Dirty Faces (1938), The Roaring Twenties (1939), and Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942) for which he won an Oscar.

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The movie also contains a scene that likely inspired Cagney impressionists to sneer, “You dirty rat!”

His criminal reign harkened back to the days of Jimmy Cagney and the Warner Bros. gangster movies of the 1930s.

My childhood dream was to go out in a blaze of gunfire like James Cagney; instead, I was rotting in a New Hampshire prison.

And yet Cagney did a flourishing business—there could be no doubt as to that.

Hallo, Mrs. Cagney, what's all this—who's a Russian spy, eh?

How Mr. Michael J. Cagney managed to arrange matters with the excise commissioners is no concern of ours.

All right, Mrs. Cagney, put it to me some other time; you didn't understand my uncle, that's all—you needn't stay.

I don't know that they amuse me much, but, at all events, they're livelier than Mrs. Cagney.

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