There’s More To Cagney’s Stair Dance Than Meets The Eye

How could Cagney be gutsy enough to do that? How could the studio allow the risk? There’s a story behind that and it too is on the Internet. The director didn’t know and Cagney never rehearsed it! What’s on the screen is take one!

Here’s where the Internet shines. It contains everything! Seriously.

Yesterday I watched a conversation on Twitter about “Yankee Doodle Dandy” being number 100 on the American Film institute’s top-100 movies of all time. That reminded me of a specific scene and of course it’s on YouTube which means it’s embeddable here.

If you’re not using the Internet as the world’s finest reference source you’re leaving cash on the table! But I digress.

I found the scene with Jimmy Cagney tap dancing down a staircase at the White House from Yankee Doodle Dandy and watched it… and then watched it again… and then again.

I know the film well because when I was a kid Channel 9 in New York City would play it twice a day for the entire July 4th week on Million Dollar Movie.

How could Cagney be gutsy enough to do that? How could the studio allow the risk? There’s a story behind that and it too is on the Internet. The director didn’t know and Cagney never rehearsed it! What’s on the screen is take one!

Here’s the story from Roger Ebert:

Cagney wasn’t a dancer by Astaire’s standards, or a singer by anybody’s, but he was such a good actor he could fake it: “Cagney can’t really dance or sing,” observes the critic Edwin Jahiel, “but he acts so vigorously that it creates an illusion, and for dance-steps he substitutes a patented brand of robust, jerky walks, runs and other motions.”

You can sense that in an impromptu scene near the end of the movie. Cagney’s Cohan is walking down a marble staircase at the White House when he suddenly starts tapping and improvises all the way to the bottom. Cagney later said he dreamed that up five minutes before the scene was shot: “I didn’t consult with the director or anything, I just did it.”

Ann Nyberg and I discussed this tonight at the TV station. She rightly points out back in those days a good story like the one Cagney told might be cut from whole cloth to add a little spice to a movie’s promotion. Maybe so, but I’m going to believe it anyway.

This 13 second clip might be the most ambitious and dangerous dance ever put on the screen.

15 thoughts on “There’s More To Cagney’s Stair Dance Than Meets The Eye”

  1. It doesn’t seem dangerous when he does it, though, right? Cagney seems to just throw away these few steps, which makes his story about it seem believable.

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  3. Thanks for reminding me of the “Million Dollar Movie” on channel 9, I lived in NJ right outside of NYC. I loved it, and loved “Yankee Doodle Dandy”. It was great to see the scene again of Cagney dancing down the stairs, and learning about the behind scene stuff. Great fun.

  4. Check out Cagney and Hope on the table in “Seven Little Foys” to see Cagney, and a real dancer face off.

  5. Those are wings he’s doing on alternating feet on the way down. He don’t suddenly improvise them, they’re a difficult tap step to learn and very difficult to do that cleanly and in succession.

    1. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TUR0fInGhu0
      Cagney was a hoofer in his younger days . Rare for him to have the opportunity, his roles didn’t offer the opportunity for such versatility . But he also loved to come up with ideas that will work on film , and surprise the director, cast or audience. In the same film he also privately worked out the audition , trying to sell a song – turning it into an impromptu duet act with Mary.
      He was a talented dancer in his youth-

  6. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TUR0fInGhu0
    Cagney was a hoofer in his younger days . Rare for him to have the opportunity, his roles didn’t offer the opportunity for such versatility . But he also loved to come up with ideas that will work on film , and surprise the director, cast or audience. In the same film he also privately worked out the audition , trying to sell a song – turning it into an impromptu duet act with Mary.
    He was a talented dancer in his youth-

  7. I don’t know where the idea that Mr. Cagney wasn’t a dancer came from. It was a -maybe not well-known- fact that he was an old song-and-dance man before he started doing gangster and other movies.

  8. I think it was ad libbed just as Cagney claimed. For one thing, you can’t hear the taps on his shoes until he starts dancing. Tap shoes make noise even when you’re just walking on a hard surface like stone. If the “dancing” was planned, he would have been wearing tap shoes, and you’d hear the taps from the time his feet hit the stone steps. I think the taps were probably dubbed in afterwards. Dubbing taps after a scene was show was apparently something that was done back then. The great choreographer, Hermes Pan, said that he sometimes used to dub Ginger Rogers’ taps after a dance sequence was completed.

  9. Cagney was a great dancer. When Michael Parkingson interviewed Fred Astaire he asked Astaire how good he thought Cagney was at dancing, Astaire replied “He was the best”

  10. Cagney did the same stair dance in an earlier movie, “Something To Sing About” (1937). I’ve always enjoyed watching his iconic dancing style

  11. I think the great James Cagney was the best Ganster in White Heat etc and dancer in Yankee Doodle ! He was so naturally in he’s acting and he’s dancing is so athletic !! His steps remind me of the Great Micheal Flannigan the transitional Irish dancer his foot work looks very Irish ! What say you ?! And what Fantastic shape Mr Cagney was in Unbelievable !
    A True Great American Star ⭐️ Thank you James for such Entertainment ❤️Huge Movie Fan !! Thank you for expressing my Admiration to this great entertainer and man Kaja Christiansen Buellton ca USA

  12. You are wrong to say that Cagney wasn’t a dancer and he only acted as if he was. One could argue that he wasn’t as good as Kelly or Astaire.(I wouldn’t – different style and no longer hisprimary form of entertaining, as he got more and more into acting). He originally was a song and dance man. He wanted to continue doing both, but the demands for him in movies steered him more and more away from it. Much to his chagrin. If you look at how light he was in his footwork, You can tell he was an excellent tapper and showman. You can’t just act like a dancer if you’re not, unless the camera backs off and another’s feet are shown or nothing shown below waist. One responder says you can tell he wasn’t a dancer because no sound from his Taps when he’s not dancing in the movie. In old movies it was hard to get sound to work all together so often they put in sound like walking and doors opening, nuts cracking later. Most movies with real tap would focusing on that sound since it is integral to the dance. Other sounds were lessened. Often they used regular shoes when not dancing,(not always).. stop filming before the dancing and start up again. Changing shoes. Gene Kelly liked to wear his loafers in most movies and danced with them. Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire each had different styles from each other. It would appear, that they both had a wider range then Cagney. Yet that’s based on what I’ve seen. Not sure how wide his range was originally. He was an excellent song and dance man!

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